Keeping the ART in CRAFT Beer
Keeping the ART in CRAFT Beer
Craft beer continues to grow in popularity and has ignited a highly- competitive industry. As consumer demand grows for product variety so does the importance for production efficiency.
A brewer’s main objective is to produce high-quality beer to meet customer demand. Today there are numerous pressures to have a profitable, productive brewery. Consistent quality while reducing production time and costs are key. To create and maintain a sustainable brewery flexible processes and better insight into those processes can be achieved with the use of automation.
The degree of automation often depends on the size of the brewery. For smaller breweries maintaining a high level of consistency is second nature due to the limited amount of manpower needed to control the process. However as breweries grow, it is important to have automation incorporated into the process to help maintain consistency and reduce the number of hands involved altering the end product.
An automated system takes a lot of the labor out of brewing. There are many options on the market with different degrees of automation. Optimizing beer production addresses each phase of the process, which helps address cost, quality, and flexibility as well as grain handling through waste treatment and packaging. Whether a brewery makes 10 or thousands of barrels all are looking for ways to address the many challenges they are faced with: time and cost reduction, consistent quality, improved yields, health, safety and security in current processes.
Delta Technology, with key partner Siemens Automation, has developed a state-of-the-art scalable system to make the brewing process efficient and consistent. A fully automated system will basically do it all for you. Reliability, consistency and quality are key factors for those who want a long-lasting and successful presence in brewing market. Today thousands of breweries and malt houses all around the world are operating with Siemens. Siemens offers a complete spectrum of functionalities for the needs of brewing industry including PLC hardware, industrial network components, input and output modules, process instrumentation and sensor technology. They also provide drives and motors, operator panels and industrial computers, manufacturing execution and labor management systems. Solutions for low and medium voltage distribution as well as process simulation software and digitalization enable a full closed loop system.
Due to the enhancements in brewery automation, craft beer has and will continue to be incredibly popular. Beer drinkers and breweries alike will continue to look for and love consistent quality products. So the next time a brewer asks if automation can really keep production costs low while providing a consistent quality product, don’t be surprised if you hear experts at Delta Technology say, “Hold my Beer! “