Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/66152
Winemaker Inquiring TIM P A T TERSON Brewery Automation in Action E very winemaker knows that it takes a lot of beer to make good wine. But beyond the value of momentary refreshment, the wine industry could do worse than to learn a few things from the brewery business about adult beverage technology. Commercial brewing is years ahead of commer- cial winemaking in the adoption of advanced technology— automation, process control, temperature control, inline monitoring and clean-in-place systems. This gap exists not only at the elevated level of the big, industrial-scale players on each team but also down the size ladder, where regional, craft and microbreweries are more likely to embrace automation than comparably sized wineries. Indeed, there is at least one company specializing in fully automated systems for amateur homebrewers. It's far too easy to just say that winemakers are artists needing to express themselves, while brewers are engineers cranking out product. Some of the difference in the rate of technology adoption has to do with differences in the products and processes them- selves; some has to do with differences in what consumers are looking for in their respective beverages, and some resides in the different structure and culture of the industries. One way or an- other, it all adds up to different climates for innovation. Could it be that the higher level of automation is the reason brewers always seem to be having more fun than winemakers? Might those smiles reflect the fact that, as Charley Banford, the Anheuser-Busch-endowed professor of brewing science at the Uni- versity of California, Davis, notes, "Brewers never, ever have stuck fermentations?" Or is it just that wort management is inherently more amusing than cap management? Staff at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. use optek optical analyzers to monitor yeast discharge at the Chico, Calif.-based facility. Highlights • Automation, process control and other advanced technologies seem more widely adopted in brewing than in wine production. • Part of the explanation comes from differences in the raw mate- rials and processing steps of the two operations. • Part may also come from differences in the structure of the two industries, limiting incentives for innovation in wine. Brewing on autopilot I'm not aware of any comprehensive statistical comparison of technology levels in the beer and wine industries; both are so de- centralized that once you get beyond the very top tier of mega- producers, that rigorous sampling is beyond daunting. In talking with equipment suppliers selling to both industries, it's pretty clear that the beer crowd has the technical edge. What started me on this topic in the first place was talking with Al Worley, a team leader for optek-Danulat specializing in provid- ing inline monitoring and control technologies to the food, dairy and beverage industries. The optek line of optical analyzers are a sophisticated way of measuring wine solids ("What We Wish We Knew About Wine Solids," Wines & Vines, August 2011), but Worley sells far more of his equipment to medium-sized craft breweries than to wineries. Markus Milz of Kreyer, a German wine technology company, puts it more bluntly: "The wine industry is one of the most underdeveloped, drinkable liquids in terms of au- Wines & Vines sePTeMBeR 2011 51