Benefits of Real-time Gravity Monitoring

From the team that reinvented fermentation for homebrewers with Plaato Airlock, comes the exciting new frontier for alcoholic and alterative beverage producers: Plaato digital fermentation. Empowering passionate producers to visualize on their mobile devices and over time all key parameters to optimize fermentation. In a simple easy to use mobile tool, see with a single view key fermentation parameters: temperature, density, fermentation activity and ABV percentage. Real-time gravity monitoring and precision fermentation will have a significant impact on the beverage production industry.

Wether a winery, kambutcha, brewery or distillery, the market landscape today is competitive and saturated. Amongst all the challenges any brewery faces, the brew itself is the core of the business, it is the main attraction that is associated with great pride for the brewer. Efficient production, consistency, and quality are key parameters that affect the end result of the product. Digital fermentation is the new real-time gravity monitoring system for breweries - designed to help you optimize these three key aspects of your brewing. It is the worlds only wireless, clean in place (CIP), real-time gravity monitoring system. It is a brewmasters ideal tool that can help you take your brew to the next level and outperform your competitors.This article will explain Plaato Industrial and compare traditional manual gravity measurement with Plaato Industrial real-time gravity monitoring to illustrate the significant potential improvements of choosing the latter.

Plaato Industrial: Real-time Gravity Monitoring
Gravity levels tell you the sugar remaining in solution for yeast to convert to ethanol. Real-time gravity monitoring with Plaato Industrial can help you avoid the difficulties in manual, traditional gravity measurement. Gathering and analyzing real time gravity levels directly from the fermenters throughout the fermentation process empowers a the brewer with continuous insights into every brew that would be impossible to get with the traditional trial and error method. Following the gravity changes, provides the brewer with valuable insight into yeast health and performance of the fermentation. Know exactly when the primary fermentation is completed. With Plaato Industrial, you get complete insights to the gravity / density levels in both successful and unsuccessful batches which enables you to repeat and adjust every detail of your batches with great precision.

How it Works
Plaato Industrial is designed to be as simple as possible to install and use with several groundbreaking features. The sensor snaps directly on any fermenter. The process of installing the sensor should not take more than five minutes, which is unique. There is no additional cost of installation. The device is wireless, so no need to connect it to a power supply. The battery is estimated to last one year. Once the sensor is connected, real-time gravity measurements, fermentation activity ABV%, and temperature data is available on an unlimited number of devices, both mobile and PC. Real-time data is always available in the software and the brewers will receive notifications when something happens in the fermentation which require action.

Manual Gravity Measurement
Thre traditional way of measuring gravity requires daily sampling from the fermenter and lab-testing. This is an inefficient, labor intensive and time consuming process. The process gives the brewer insight to the specific gravity at the time of measuring, not consistently, which makes it difficult to be in complete control of the process. Quite often, brewers need to intervene during a fermentation. This can happen in several scenarions: Pitching more yeast long after the last knockout or alter the conditions of a fermentation due to sub-standard performance, which can be changing fermentation temperature, yeast pitch rate or oxygen dose. When measuring gravity once a day, the success of the interventions can vary significantly.

Traditional Method Vs. Plaato Industrial
"Over-Fermentation" vs Perfect Fermentation
Traditional Method: Over-fermentation means leaving the beer in the fermenter after the fermentation process is finished. This is historically the only way to be guaranteed of avoiding under-fermentation. The practice leads unnecessarily to losing hours to days of a tanks productivity. However, without real-time gravity monitoring, there is no other guaranteed way of ensuring that the fermentation process in a brew is complete.

Plaato Industrial: With Plaato Industrial, the beer can be transferred the exact moment the fermentation process is finished. Less unnecessary time in the fermenter, enables increased production capacity with the same equipment. By using real-time gravity monitoring for knowing when the fermentation process is finished, a conservative estimation shows that the fermentation capacity can increase by over 10% in the brewery. This additional capacity can be achieved without having to make large investments, and is achieved by providing the brewer with a tool to take the right decisions.

Degree of Repeatability
Traditional Method: Recreating a brew several times is today accomplished by keeping a strict management over controllable conditions for every brew, including pitch rate, temperature during fermentation, wort profile (grain and hops) and water chemistry. However, there are many other uncontrollable factors and reasons a batch can go bad. Without sufficient data of the details in the fermentation process, understanding and preventing bad outcomes is difficult.

Plaato Industrial: Gathering gravity data and providing it to the brewer in a simple, actionable manner, enables breweries to understand the whole fermentation process, not only fragments of it. This data is essential for reproducing the same optimal conditions in several batches.

Degree of Control
Traditional Method: Altering a fermentation after it has started is an impractical and slow process. There are many factors that play a role: fermentation temperature, pitch rate, yeast strain, hop selection, grain bill, mash temperature and water chemistry. Any change in these factors will have an impact on the final product and without having real-time data from the fermentation, it is difficult to conduct planned changes. In addition, any changes that could improve a fermentation are only possible after the fact; after yeast is pitched and wort is produced. When only measuring gravity occasionally, few options exist to improve the result of a fermentation.

Plaato Industrial: Real-time gravity monitoring enables the brewer to intervene if needed. One example is if gravity does not start to drop at the expected time, the brewer can repitch yeast far earlier than possible in the traditional method.

Labor Intensity
Traditional Method: Daily manual sampling of gravity is not only a subpar way of measuring gravity in terms of precision, it is also labor-intensive work. The cost of having staff collect manual samples and checking these samples in the lab is significant. Breweries probably take these costs for granted as it is how it alway has been done. In addition to being costly, it is also not the most fulfilling work, especially doing on-site sampling after hours.

Plaato Industrial: Real-time Gravity Monitoring enables you to focus on perfecting the craft of brewing the perfect beer instead of being occupied with the boring things. We recommend comparing the cost of the traditional method with Plaato Industrial to get an overview of the exact differences. In our experience, the difference is often greater than expected.

Limited Pilot Program

Before Plaato Analytics is fully accessible for anyone with a brewery, we are running a limited pilot program for feedback from passionate brewers on how they want the final solution to be. It is important for us to work closely with brewers to make sure that the solution is as easy to use and valuable as possible for brewers. If you are considering integrating Plaato Industrial in your brewery, don´t miss your chance to enter, by signing up for the limited pilot program here.

Btw: The signup for Plaato Analytics, Tap monitoring for bars is also open now. Cheers!