The Brewery of the Westmalle Trappists recently introduced a bottling plant with a capacity of forty five thousand 33 cl bottles per hour. The design paid extra attention to the working conditions and the environment. The noise pollution has thus been kept to a minimum and there is natural lighting everywhere. And the washing installation uses a minimum quantity of water and detergents.
The entire bottling process is done by machine: from unpacking and cleaning of the crates and bottles to filling, labelling and coding with a laser printer. Only with the Dubbel kegs is a fair amount of manual labour required.
Of course hygiene is extremely important at this stage. Hence the bottle washing machine washes the bottles in a caustic bath at a temperature of 80° Celsius, after which they are rinsed three times with water at steadily lower temperatures. At the end of the bottle line, the crates are automatically filled and stacked onto pallets. They are now ready for secondary fermentation in the maturing cellar specially designed for this purpose.
