stop functionality: it provided for no recipe management, no automated dosing, no alarms and no meaningful process feedback. Critical brewing stages relied heavily on manual intervention. Volumes were estimated, temperatures adjusted by experience rather than data, and additions timed manually.
This created the risk of inconsistent beer quality, wasted water and ingredients, unnecessary energy use and limited scope to scale production with confidence. Just as important was the effect on the people at the centre of the operation – the brewing team. As brewer Chris Stanley says, everything was a manual process, from monitoring thermometers to guessing volumes of mash.‘ You were so busy fighting the equipment that you lost sight of the craft,’ he says.
Combining Modern Process Control With Legacy Equipment
Purves and Stanley knew that automation could solve the problems which the ancient building put in their way. Done the right way, automation would:
• Improve accuracy and repeatability without removing brewer control
• Reduce risk and stress on brew day, while providing visibility into what the process is actually doing
• Keep the system flexible, open and future proof
The automation system which would provide these benefits needed to be open and modular, so that the brewery could retain existing systems. This was a sensible approach for a small craft brewery to take, since it avoided the high up-front capital cost entailed in discarding equipment before the end of its useful life and replacing it with an all-new solution.
This decision to, as Ian Purves describes it,‘ build on what we started with’ was in tune with the ethos of WAGO’ s engineers, who are experienced in implementing modular systems which combine best-of-breed equipment from multiple vendors. Ian Purves, who noticed the difference between WAGO and large automation system integrators, says‘ The WAGO engineers did not come to us with a product catalogue, they came for a conversation.’
WAGO’ s application engineering team began with a site visit, working closely with the brewers to understand the process, the constraints of the historic estate and the brewery’ s long-term ambitions.
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