I should really emphasize that everything here was at amazing scale. I don't think that comes out in my writing.
Asahi Beer
Factory Study Tour
For our second factory study tour of the quarter we went to the Asahi Beer Factory in Kanagawa prefecture. The Asahi Beer Factory is an eco friendly factory where the Asahi beer that gets shipped to the Kanto region is produced. Recently the emphasized lots of eco and energy friendly technologies to make the production of beer more efficient.
This factory study tour was much more touristy than the other tours that we have gone on. The guide was a paid guide who spoke very good english, and the walkway that we went on had posters and signs describing all sorts of information pertaining to the brewing, or in this case production of beer.
The introduction was a video produced to give an overview of the brewing process and also was one giant advertisement for Asahi beer and its various products. The video covered all aspects of brewing, from raw goods acquisition to the bottling and shipping of the finished product.
After the video we started the tour. The first stop on our tour was the mash room. Mash is what later gets fermented into beer by yeast. To create mash one must first bring the barely to a boil and physically mash it up. After the barley has been mashed it is then added to another vat that contains hops. The whole thing is stirred until its dissolved and then the solid seeds of the barely and hops are filtered out, leaving only the mash.
The mash is then transferred to fermentation units outside. These units are where the mash is converted to beer by yeast fermentation. It takes about 10 days to ferment the mash into beer. The process is carefully controlled and watched to make sure the entire process occurs at 0 C. A single fermenting column contains something like 50,000L of beer
When the beer has been created the yeast must then be filtered out of the final product. Yeast makes beer taste bad, and has, various other health effects. Therefore the yeast is filtered out.
After the filtering process, the beer is moved into the sterile bottling area. I found out something new about metal bottles that day, they originally come in two parts, the top and the bottom. The bottom is filled with beer, the top is placed on and then the top has a lip that gets folded and pressed into the bottom to seal the can.
When the bottling is done packing occurs. Because the demand for beer in Tokyo is very high one 24 pack of Asahi beer is produced every second in the plant. It was a really cool sight to see.
The tour ended with a 30min nohihoadai, which was a lot of fun. The tour guide showed us how to pour a beer the “proper way” although I disagree. Her instructions were as follows: first you need a chilled mug (I agree with this), then pour the beer into the cup so that a head is formed. Then til the cup so head is no longer created while pouring and fill the cup up all the way. The end result should have about 1/3 of the cup filled with head, and the rest beer. In my opinion thats way to much head on a beer. Actually beer should be so thick it doesn't even form a head.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Factoty Study Tour report Kawasaki Eco town
As normal I figure people might want to see this so I'm posting it as well as turning it in.
I really should keep this more updated. I've done a lot of cool things recently, stated dating, went to the gibiri museum, walked around some really nice parks, and I'm planning on going on a crazy fun vacation soon. Maybe I'll post here with more memories when I get some free time.
With that here is my really really badly written Kawasaki Eco Town report.
Kawasaki Eco Town
Factory Study Tour
For our first factory study tour of the quarter we went to the Kawasaki Eco Town in Kawasaki city. The Kawaasaki Eco town is actually a combination of a few different factories in the same area that are all united in providing ecologically friendly factory conditions, and recycling of materials. It is probably the greenest factory we have been to so far.
We began the visit by waiting briefing room for a bit before we were introduced to the a factory head. He gave a brief introduction, and then described the basic layout of the factory and the techniques and technology used inside.
The introduction and the tour followed the same basic pathway so I will describe them in simultaneously.
The factory that we toured that day was a factory for making toilet paper out of recycled goods. All the toilet paper was 100% recycled and they were able to make many different kinds of paper, which I will describe later on.
The first part of the tour we saw the reciving area, where the factory received the goods that have been recycled and fed them into the rest of the supply chain. In the receving area there were trucks and boxes of various things, paper from companies, train tickets, and milk containers . Milk containers were the best paper to make toilet paper out of because of their high fiber count.
Right after the reviving area there was a basic separation station. There the paper and large metal objects were separated out, via centrifuge. However this was not enough to create pure paper for recycling. Staples and other things that can't be recycled were still left in the paper.
That brought us to the next container, which was a giant vat of water + chemicals that dissolved the paper into its constituent fibers making it so the metal settled to the bottom and the paper itself remained at the top. It takes about 12 hours for one run to be totally dissolved and moved on for further processing.
After the paper is dissolved it must be bleached to remove dyes and inks that made the paper useful, this was done with H2O2 in smaller vats, this processing was much faster.
After the fibers were fully processed it was time to turn them back into paper. This was done by quickly spinning and drying new paper at the same time on rollers, I'm not exactly sure how this was done but it was really cool to watch. Also the paper rolls generated were giant, over 1.8m in diameter. It was really cool to see. Each of these rolls were then spun down, into smaller rolls for the purposes of making toilet paper. The smaller rolls were about 2m long, but the diameter of toilet paper rolls.
These smaller rolls were then cut up in many different places, leaving a roll of paper the size of a toilet paper roll remaining. They were then sent to a packaging system that packages them 24 at a time and move to the distribution section of the warehouse.
The plant in total produces about 1million rolls a day, which I though was really cool, but actually its not so much if you think about it.
I really should keep this more updated. I've done a lot of cool things recently, stated dating, went to the gibiri museum, walked around some really nice parks, and I'm planning on going on a crazy fun vacation soon. Maybe I'll post here with more memories when I get some free time.
With that here is my really really badly written Kawasaki Eco Town report.
Kawasaki Eco Town
Factory Study Tour
For our first factory study tour of the quarter we went to the Kawasaki Eco Town in Kawasaki city. The Kawaasaki Eco town is actually a combination of a few different factories in the same area that are all united in providing ecologically friendly factory conditions, and recycling of materials. It is probably the greenest factory we have been to so far.
We began the visit by waiting briefing room for a bit before we were introduced to the a factory head. He gave a brief introduction, and then described the basic layout of the factory and the techniques and technology used inside.
The introduction and the tour followed the same basic pathway so I will describe them in simultaneously.
The factory that we toured that day was a factory for making toilet paper out of recycled goods. All the toilet paper was 100% recycled and they were able to make many different kinds of paper, which I will describe later on.
The first part of the tour we saw the reciving area, where the factory received the goods that have been recycled and fed them into the rest of the supply chain. In the receving area there were trucks and boxes of various things, paper from companies, train tickets, and milk containers . Milk containers were the best paper to make toilet paper out of because of their high fiber count.
Right after the reviving area there was a basic separation station. There the paper and large metal objects were separated out, via centrifuge. However this was not enough to create pure paper for recycling. Staples and other things that can't be recycled were still left in the paper.
That brought us to the next container, which was a giant vat of water + chemicals that dissolved the paper into its constituent fibers making it so the metal settled to the bottom and the paper itself remained at the top. It takes about 12 hours for one run to be totally dissolved and moved on for further processing.
After the paper is dissolved it must be bleached to remove dyes and inks that made the paper useful, this was done with H2O2 in smaller vats, this processing was much faster.
After the fibers were fully processed it was time to turn them back into paper. This was done by quickly spinning and drying new paper at the same time on rollers, I'm not exactly sure how this was done but it was really cool to watch. Also the paper rolls generated were giant, over 1.8m in diameter. It was really cool to see. Each of these rolls were then spun down, into smaller rolls for the purposes of making toilet paper. The smaller rolls were about 2m long, but the diameter of toilet paper rolls.
These smaller rolls were then cut up in many different places, leaving a roll of paper the size of a toilet paper roll remaining. They were then sent to a packaging system that packages them 24 at a time and move to the distribution section of the warehouse.
The plant in total produces about 1million rolls a day, which I though was really cool, but actually its not so much if you think about it.
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