Executive Summary

• A data centre and brewery may not seem to have much in common: one processes your cat videos, one processes hops, but both have heat as a common enemy.
• For thermal management, data centres have an array of cooling solutions, from CRAC and chilled water loop to liquid, hybrid, direct-to-chip and immersion cooling. For the brewery, they have a glycol jacket around the tank.
• Craft brewers cool their beer in open-air trays or submerge kegs in cold running streams. On the other side of the coin, data centres have the cutting-edge tech that is liquid immersion cooling.

A server, a stout and a chiller walk into a bar… yes, the headline does sound like I’m setting up a joke, but I’m not. At first glance, data centres and breweries don’t have much in common. One processes your cat videos, the other processes hops. But if we were to look closer at the plumbing of both infrastructures, you’ll find they have a common enemy: heat. The thermodynamics are surprisingly similar, from trying to keep a CPU from melting or a lager turning into hot trash juice, I take a look at how data centres and breweries are practically cooling twins.

Fermentation tank vs server rack

A brewery has a fermentation tank, where yeast eats sugar and burps out CO2 and alcohol, an exothermic process that means it generates huge amounts of heat. If the tank is too hot, the yeast dies and the beer just doesn’t taste nice. For data centres, it’s the CPU and as it processes data, it generates heat. Too hot and we have crashes and downtime.

For thermal management, data centres have an array of cooling solutions, from CRAC and chilled water loop to liquid, hybrid, direct-to-chip and immersion cooling. For the brewery, they have a glycol jacket around the tank.

On a quest for free cooling

Both industries want to be efficient but frugal, because if nature can provide the cold for free, why pay for massive chillers to do the job? Historically, breweries were built in locations with cool climates or caves, so they could use the natural temperature for cooling. For data centres, big hyperscale facilities from giants such as Google and Microsoft are now being built in places such as Finland, where they can pump freezing outside air into the building.

Taking the plunge with immersion

Both industries have a cool new trend (get it?): immersion. Some craft brewers cool their beer in open-air trays or submerge kegs in cold running streams. On the other side of the coin, data centres have the cutting-edge tech that is liquid immersion cooling, dunking the entire server into non-conductive dielectric fluid.

Next time you’re sipping on a hoppy IPA, raise a toast in the name of thermofyanmics and spare a thought for the servers working 24/7 to keep our digital world running. Whether it’s PUE scores or target femernatation temp, both are just trying to keep their cool in a hot world.