BREWING TRADITION – EFFECTIVELY SHOWCASED
The Schattenhofer brewery in the small Bavarian town of Beilngries can look back on a history spanning more than 300 years, yet it is anything but antiquated. The operators of the modern, forward-looking enterprise underline this with futuristic coloured light that showcases the stainless-steel tanks in the refurbished fermentation tank building.
Even though Germany still enjoys a reputation as a beer-producing nation and has a high density of breweries, the traditional, regional, family-owned breweries face tough competition in the form of large industrial breweries and hip, small-scale, urban producers of craft beer. This is why the Schattenhofer brewery in Bavaria went on the offensive. It joined forces with Gutmann brewery from the nearby village of Titting, renovated its buildings dating back to the 1920s and invested in state-of-the-art brewing technology. With its large windows, the room for the gleaming stainless steel fermentation tanks takes centre stage and signals transparency and quality awareness. This is where the master brewer can be observed monitoring and controlling the maturation of the beers.
However, the operators wanted to take the plant to a new level by adding an emotional aspect to its technical character with coloured light for a dynamic presentation of the room – turning it into an attraction during brewery tours and a local talking point. The hygiene conditions required for beer production placed special demands on the illumination technology, as the entire lighting installation had to be splashproof and easy to clean.
Dynamic, coloured light as an eye-catcher
The lighting designers from the engineering firm Bamberger, from Pfünz, realised this idea very efficiently by using lighting technology from WE-EF; six high-performance, digitally controlled type FLC220-CC RGBW projectors were placed on the ceiling between the stainless-steel tanks to highlight them and bathe the entire room in magical colours at the press of a button. The spectacle is also visible outside through the room’s panoramic window to people using the popular cycle track along the banks of the river Sulz.
The lighting is controlled via the DMX interfaces of the colour changer luminaires and a DMX touch panel fitted in the anteroom. It allows different lighting scenarios to be activated at the touch of a button – from pre-set, highly saturated colours to dynamic progressions which, needless to say, can also be activated automatically, for example, with a timer. With their neutral technical design, the projectors from the FLC200 family are perfectly integrated in their surroundings. They also meet the special requirements of beer production as their housings in protection rating IP66 have been designed for use in outdoor areas.
Project data
Project: Fermentation tank room Schattenhofer brewery, Beilngries
Light planning: Engineers Bamberger GmbH & Co, Andreas Fürsich, Pfünz
Electrical installation: Elektro Kraus, Beilngries
Completion: 2020
Photos: Frieder Blickle for WE-EF