Quality Control Coaching

Years ago you could get away with making good beer and still had a successful brewery, today that's the minimum to entry. 

With over 9,000 breweries in the US, make good beer and you won't last very long; you have to consistently make great beer.   

And how exactly do you do that?  

There's plenty of information online about starting your own quality control program. There are plenty of free resources on my website. Unfortunately, you've tried to do it on your own in the past, and didn't get much accomplished. There's a lot of information on there and you don't have time to search for what makes the most sense for your specific brewery, for your circumstances, budget, resources, experience, availability. 

This isn't a consulting service where I come in and tell you everything that needs to change, and oh yeah that'll be $10,000.   

We'll start with an audit of your brewery and current QC practices, where you want your brewery to go and how much time and energy you're able to devote to quality. Each month we'll focus on a new topic, from document control, yeast health, to sensory and everything in between. I'll offer education, guidance, insight, and give you specific projects to work on to meet your goals.  

This program won't be successful if you don't do your part each month. It's not for someone looking for a quick fix. 

You need to put in the work, but you don't have to do it alone.   

This program is for brewers who are ready to take their brewery to the next level. To grow and expand, not just in production volume but in quality and capability.   

Each month we'll cover quality methods related to each of the below areas:

1.  Document control - this is the foundation of your brewery, and of your quality control program. Organized, well maintained logs help you troubleshoot, find data, look for trends, and make decisions based on useful information. Don't waste time collecting information you'll never use. Find out what you do need to collect and how to use it to make better beer.    

2.  Recipe development - you can't make great beer with a poorly developed recipe. Learn how to you use the information and tools you have available to make improvements, and go from good to great.     

3.  Cleaning - Cleaning is essential to brewery success but how do you know you're doing enough? We'll talk about cleaning validation, best practices, what information to collect, SOPs to implement and weekly and monthly cleaning schedules that leave your brewery squeaky clean and brewery tour ready.    

4.  Specifications and baseline - One of the keys to a quality product is to consistently meet or exceed your customers needs and expectations. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know if your beer is consistent. A wide specification range can highlight an area for improvement. If you don't know your baselines, you don't know if recipe or process changes are making a difference. The more you know about your beer the more you can improve, predict, adapt, and respond.     

5.  Yeast health - you can't make beer without yeast. To consistently make great beer, you need a well thought out plan to make sure your yeast is happy and healthy. Together we'll come up with a plan for collecting, storing, pitching and tracking - leaving you with more consistent and reliable fermentations.     

6.  Micro - you don't need to be a microbiologist to start looking for possible contamination. Even some of the most well respected breweries have dealt with contamination and the sooner you find it the easier it is to deal with. If you wait until you have off flavors or exploding cans an infection can be very hard to get rid of. You'll save time, money and headache with a proactive approach to micro and avoid the horror stories.    

7.  Packaging QC checks - You spend weeks getting your beer ready to package and if you're not careful you could ruin a great beer by using a poorly maintained packaging line.     

8.  Shelf life stability - Once a beer leaves your brewery it's outside of your control. The more you know about your beer, the more in control you can be. I'll show you what you can do in-house to make sure your beer holds up outside the brewery.     

9.  Sensory - if your beer doesn't taste good, your customers won't keep buying it. Learn how to train and use sensory data to trouble shoot, identify off flavors, evaluate consistency and make better beer.