Monitoring every processes inside and outside a brewing plant.
In the 20th century, the brewery remains at the forefront of industrial developments in two very important technical areas :
- - The control and automation of manufacturing processes
- - The design of specialised and remotely controlled equipment.
The production processes (water, grain, malt, wort, yeast, beer) were controlled first in the industrial countries of the time (Great Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Austria-Hungary), then in all the production sites of the world with the colonial expansion.
At the very end of this evolution, an industrial brewery will have become a fully automated production site, monitored from a central command room. Malt, hops and water are the inputs, packaged beer (kegs, bottles, cans), spent grain and waste water are the outputs; almost no human involvement in between. The brewery is at the forefront of industrial automation and product quality control. The brewing sector is rarely facing any scandals involving toxic or spoiled beers as the others food sectors have been.
By exporting itself, the Western brewery technology will put other brewing raw materials to the test. These native Asian, African or Amerindian cereals have been used for millennia in brewing, according to processes and technical schemes whose diversity we have been admiring.
So what's new? The laboratories are studying how to incorporate rice, maize, cassava or millet without completely altering the Western industrial brewing pattern.
- The rice in China and Southeast Asia.
- The maize in Europe and South-America.
- Millet and sorghum in South Africa (Kaffir beer) and French-speaking West Africa.
- The cassava in South-America.
An economic and technological compromise was established: the colonial locally grown starch was introduced into the composition of the beer, which nevetheless retained the commercial and organoleptic characteristics of the western type beer (filtered, carbonated, sparkling, bottled, cooled).
The can or the bottle stay the physical support of the label and the capsule, two effective and distinctive markings that separate the "western-style beer" from its indigenous sisters which never need to be "advertised" even if these beers are brewed and sold on local markets.