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Leading independent regional brewer, Hall & Wood-

house has seen productivity increase and operational

efficiencies improve thanks to Siemens Braumat auto-

mated process control system solution.

A key objective for any craft beer maker is to ensure con-sistency of its product and have confidence that it has to-

tal control of the entire brewing process. Add to this the

desire to have production flexibility to satisfy differing

seasonal requirements, as well as the capacity to expand

production volumes as demand grows, and it is clear that

the role of a robust system that can automate, monitor

and control the production process is critical to any suc-

cessful brewing operation.

Hall & Woodhouse is a successful regional brewing enter-

prise based in the South of England. Brewing beer since

1777, and renowned for its popular Badger beer and cider

brands, the company took the decision to make a strategic

investment in its main brewery and brew house to meetgrowing demand for the companys popular craft beers.

A fundamental element of the investment included the

upgrade of what was a highly manual process control sys-

tem used in the brew house so that improved operational

efficiency, volume output and energy efficiency targets

could be realised.

Paul Daniels, Food & Beverage Liquid Process Manager at

Siemens UK & Ireland, explains: We entered discussions

with the brewhouses engineering vendor, T Musk Engi-

neering Ltd through control system manager and principal

engineer, Robert Jackson who was working alongside the

Hall & Woodhouse management team, and presented the

Braumat process control system designed specifically for

the needs of the brewing industry. We quickly reached

agreement that Braumat could give the company the dy-

namic, flexible, supportive and energy efficient solution

they were seeking.

In particular, we were able to demonstrate key benefits

which would be essential if the company was to derivebest value from its investment decision. These included

Cheers to Braumat

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Braumats ability to deliver exacting standards of process

repeatability to ensure consistent beer quality. Secondly,

the Braumat solution would give Hall & Woodhouse the

system flexibility to adapt their beer recipes when re-

quired, for instance to meet seasonal demands such as

Christmas and Easter. Finally, a much improved visualisa-

tion of the entire plant status via the new automated con-

trol system would enable the process team to react to any

issues quickly and avert incidents of production downtime

and with it improve efficiency.

The Braumat and Braumat Compact (designed for small-scale brewing operations) process control solutions are al-

ready widely used across the world by brewing businesses.

The systems success is attributable to many features in-

cluding the built-in brewing engineering libraries which

have pre-defined solutions for the process covering the

craft brewing, fermentation, cellar and filtration stages.

In addition, the standardised production scheduler to help

operators manage and oversee production order lists

more easily is another key feature.

Robert Jackson, who helped manage the Braumat system

specification, configuration and installation for Hall &

Woodhouse, comments: We had clear objectives when

the decision was taken to install the Braumat control solu-tion into the brewery. We could see that it was a popular

and proven solution across the brewing sector, and this

coupled with the clear operational benefits gave us the

confidence to invest in a solution that should support Hall

& Woodhouse for many years to come as the business

continues to expand.

The production team is now in much stronger control of

the brewing process, benefitting from the high visibility

now available across all elements of the process. Hall &

Woodhouse can also now quickly and easily adapt produc-

tion, if, for instance, it has to react to changing market de-

mands and needs to speedily manufacture alternative

product lines. The built-in recipe controls ensure total con-

sistency and repeatability of product by automating what

were previously labour-intensive tasks and this is backed

up by standard system archiving and reporting functions.

Head Brewer, Toby Heasman says Hall & Woodhouse is de-

lighted with the results the Braumat solution is helping to

deliver as it embarks on the next stage of its development.

Contact Information

Siemens plc

Digital Factory & Process Industries and Drives

Sir William Siemens House

Princess Road

Manchester

M20 2UR

Tel: 08458 507600

Email: marketing.ad.uk@siemens.com

siemens.com/processautomation