Brewhouse Efficiency: 5 Metrics That Directly Impact Brewery Profitability

If you have been following along with our series on Operational Efficiency, you have likely read through our latest article providing an overview of Operational Efficiency and why it matters for Your Brewery. If you haven’t, check that out as well as other writings and info available at our Brewery Resource Hub.

As I mentioned, in that article, we provide a high level overview of why tracking, reviewing, and improving overall Operational Efficiency in Your Brewery is so important. After receiving some feedback, we decided to take a deeper dive into each of the primary areas of the brewery and brewing process: The Brewhouse, Fermentation, Packaging, and Sales and Distribution. We hope to provide some tips on what to track, how to track, and the benefits that can be gained for your brewery in doing so. In this article, we will begin with arguably the most important part of the brewing process and piece of equipment in your brewery: The Brewhouse.

Your Brewhouse: The Foundation of your Operations

For most breweries, Your Brewhouse is the heart and soul of your entire operation. It is highly likely that every single batch of beer you produce flows through it (unless you are contract brewing to supplement some or all of your production). Let’s assume you are a typical brewery, one who is brewing all your beer in house at one facility. If you are like most breweries, you are probably brewing multiple batches per week, or in some cases multiple batches per day per week. This can add up to hundreds of batches annually. As you can imagine, a small change in your brewhouse efficiency can have major implications when compounded over hundreds of batch turns each year.

For example, lets say you own a small to mid size brewery. You produce about 6,000 barrels of beer each year on a 20 barrel brewhouse. Let’s also assume that you are brewing in such a way that each turn of your 20 barrel brewhouse knocks out 20 finished barrels of wort to your fermenters. That is 300 batches of beer each year to produce 6,000 finished barrels of beer.

Now let’s assume on that same 20 barrel brewhouse you are brewing 6,000 barrels of beer each year, but you are only knocking out 18 barrels each batch instead of 20. Not only are you missing out on about 10% of your batch capacity, but you would have to brew 34 additional batches each year to make up for the same volume. That is 34 batches of additional ingredients, raw materials, labor hours, water, gas, electricity, and time.

While this is an admittedly simple example, this is one of the most common, and usually first place we look to determine a breweries batch, labor, and cost efficiencies. 9 out of 10 Operational Audit clients we work with, we are able to provide an average improvement of 7% in batch yields alone. But it doesn’t stop there.

The 5 Brewhouse Metrics You Should be Tracking Today

1.      Batch Yield

This may seem like a no brainer, and it is by far the simplest metric to track, but it is imperative that you are tracking your brewhouse batch yields. You should be tracking your final yield with every single batch you brew, no exceptions. You should then segment and review your batch yield trends first by style type (e.g. IPA, Pale Ale, Hazy, Lager, Blonde, etc.) then by brand. This is especially true for your core brands that are brewed year-round. Tracking yields is just step 1, you also need to regularly sit down to review and visualize how they are trending over time. Are there any outliers, and what can you do to ensure they are generally trending up over time.

2.      Mash Efficiency

We all know it is important you track your gravities for consistency in alcohol production, body, and flavor. But ensuring you understand how efficiently (or not) you are extracting sugars with each batch is important for your overall brewing efficiency as well as Cost of Goods and Product Unit Costing. It will give you a sense of what malts (and maltsters) are providing the best and highest converting raw materials and where you may want to sub out one ingredient for another more efficient product. It will also let you know if you are resting your mash long enough, need to make a pH adjustment for better conversion, or run off more slowly to capture greater efficiency. Ultimately tracking this over time will give you a sense of whether you are getting that conversion out of your malt or not. If not, you may have to adjust rest time, mash pH, water mineral content, or something else. Low mash efficiency is one of the silent killers in your brewhouse if you aren’t tracking and improving it over time.

3.      Total Batch Time

Batch time is something we often see as a metric brewers record, but just as often it is overlooked or never reviewed. Are some brew days clocking in at 6.5 hours and others at 8.5 hours for the same brand of beer? Does this happen more than once a month? If so, that increase of 30% in batch time and associated labor costs are eating into your cost per barrel in a big way in terms of labor utilization. It is important to track these times with every batch and when those outliers pop up, ID the root cause right away, and determine how to take the necessary corrective action. Each brand should have a target brew day length with a reasonable threshold for variance.

4.      Mash, Lauter, and Runoff Times

Equally important to total batch turn time is recording the time of each part of the brewing process. Segmenting your batch into each operation is important. Having a specification for your mash in times, mash rest, recirculation, lautering, and run off times is highly important for both batch consistency and ensuring overall batch time and labor utilization stays consistent as well. Each of these areas should be recorded and tracked over time, by style, and by brand to establish a baseline specification, then improved over time.

5.      Kettle Full, End Boil, Knockout Volumes

Finally, recording your Kettle Full, End of Boil, and Final Transfer volumes of your wort to fermenters. This is the second layer of KPI’s that all serve to improve your overall batch yields. These all play into your overall batch yield, but much like keeping track of your process times, keeping track of all of your volumes throughout the process will ensure you have visibility into where loss is occurring as well as where it can be improved. Tracking and improving these over time will ensure you are getting the most out of your brewhouse capacity and each batch turn.

These Metrics are just the Tip of the Iceberg

We could write a full book on every brew house metric to track and the importance of each one (and maybe we will one day!), but we wanted to keep things light in this piece. It goes without saying that there are dozens of other metrics to be tracking and reviewing with each batch, but if you were to only pick 5 to track, review, and improve, these would be the best to start with.

The Plato Improvement Process

A “PIP” that actually works for your Brewery. At Plato Beverage Consulting our Plato Improvement Process tracks over 80 metrics throughout the brewing process for every batch of beer. We then distill those into the most impactful metrics and ratios within the process to Track, Visualize, Review, and Improve. We complete reviews of every batch and provide reports to out clients on a Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual basis.

Plato Beverage Consulting handles aggregating all the detailed numbers, spreadsheets, and calculations into a monthly report with actionable recommendations for improvement to allow you and your brewing team to focus on what matters most: keeping high quality beer flowing. All while still getting real, actionable, recommendations to continuously improve your operational efficiency from an experienced Head Brewer and Director of Operations. Find out more and book a free call at https://www.plato.beer/contact