Nowadays, Ukraine is one of the leaders in brewing among the CIS countries. Let’s visit one of the most technically advanced breweries of the country, Pivovarnya Ziberta (Obolon).

The company is situated in the city of Fastov, the Kiev Region. Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross built in the beginning of the 20th century is the gem of the city.

Church of the Intercession was built in 1740.

Pivovarnya Ziberta is situated near this church, the oldest construction in the city.

Pivovarnya Ziberta was founded by a Prussian citizen Julius Zibert over 100 years ago, in 1906. The same year, they started producing keg beer to sell it in the city and surrounding villages.

In the photo: by the entrance to the brewery.

A delivery truck entering the brewery.

Along with Zibert beer, they produce Obolon.

In 2008, the brewery went through a recontruction. In fact, they built a new powerful brewery. The company’s producing capacity reached 12 million decaliters of beer a year.

Let’s see how Zabert beer is brewed.

On the right you can see a carbonic acid recuperator. They use it to collect carbon dioxide oozed from the beer to later use the gas again in beer production. First of all, this gas is ecologically safe. Secondly, it’s a nonwaste production.

They use their own malted barley and hops imported from Germany.

The boiler room.

They use filtered water for their beer because regular and drinking water contain carbonates and mineral substances which make it unfit for beer production.

Sand and Na-cationite filters.

Coal H-cationite filters.

In other words, you should not be worried about purity of water used in Zibert beer.

Those visiting the brewery should wear disposable paper gowns.

They use Ziemann equipement which is also used by such breweries as Beck and Miller.

First of all, they mill malt with a special mill. Different sorts of beer need differently milled malt.

They mix milled malt with water and reactivated ferments start turning starch – which concentration reaches 70% in grain – into brewing sugar. They slowly heat the mix to 760C to speed up fermentation.

Milling malt.

They strain the mix to receive wort.

This is where they boil wort adding hops.

Hops are a natural antiseptic and preservative which prevent wort and beer from going sour.

They boil wort for up to three hours. The bigger density the wort has, the stronger the beer will be.

Then they strain boiled wort and leave it for settling.

Here they take samples of beer for testing.

Two operators watch the production process using a special computer program.

The yeast department.

Beer ferments inside these huge cylinder-conic tanks.

It’s automated.

They cool off wort before fermentation.

There are three categories of brewery yeast – top fermentation, bottom fermentation and “wild”.

They use the same yeast no more than 15 times before replacing it with new one.

The lower part of the cylinder-conic tank.

The view of the cylinder-conic tanks from the side.

When fermentation is over, they filter their beer with kieselguhr. However, today more and more people prefer non-filtered and non-pasteurized beer.

Conditioning can take from 2 to 4 weeks, sometimes longer, depending on the type of beer.

Second fermentation and conditioning take place in huge stainless steel tanks.

Special equipment monitors and maintains necessary temperatures inside the tanks.

After conditioning, they filter their beer over again and bottle it.

These bottles are going to be recycled.

A robot puts them on a conveyer…

That brings them into a washer.

After washing, each bottle gets visually checked by a worker.

Then they get filled with beer and sealed.

They stick new labels on each bottle.

The robot places bottles into cases.

The old church is seen from the brewery.

The bottling department.

It all starts with preforms that look like test tubes.

A special machine turns them into 1.5 l bottles.

Bottling.

“Defective produce”.

Labels.

Everything goes really fast here at the brewery.

376 people work for Pivovarnya Ziberta.

Packing.

A service elevator takes the bottles to the main floor where they get loaded on trucks.

Keg beer is also produced here.

Pivovarnya Ziberta (Zibert Brewery) works every day (especially in the summertime).

Beer sampling.

Zibert beer is exported to 13 countries, including Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, England, Germany and the USA.

Next to the brewery is a store selling proprietary goods and beer.

Unfortunately, the company focuses on production of popular affordable sorts of beer. Hopefully, one day they will launch elite beer production as well.

Location: Fastov

via holy-mozart