Follow these 4 steps to improve the fundamentals of data analytics at your brewery and transform your data into cost savings.
From tracking data, to analytical assessment, to performance indicators—let’s explore how brewery analytics can be used for your KPIs and success metrics.
Successful breweries must go beyond brewing great beer—they need to maximize efficiency and profitability. By adopting data-driven practices through brewery software, brewers can leverage the power of analytics to brew better beer, reduce costs, and improve operational performance.
But what does taking an analytical approach toward the brewing process mean? How does it make a difference in all brewery operations? Keep reading to learn more.
Brewery Analytics with Brewery Software: Collect, Transform, Predict
Many of us track data. But when asked why we do it we hear phrases like “we’re supposed to track data” or “that’s just the way we’ve done it”.
So before we jump into how you can use the data from brewery software for your brewery, let’s identify why we do it and why it’s important.
There are 3 steps to brewery analytics:
Collection (raw data)
Transformation (visual representation)
Prediction (inferences)
Step 1: Collection is gathering data.
The tracked data points are the foundation for the next steps. Good data is crucial! Without it, the following steps are more difficult. Having poor data tracking practices that lead to bad data points will have negative consequences, such as false-positive inferences, and potential data that can falsely seem unrelated.
Step 2: Transformation is organizing the tracked data.
Raw data is essential, but visualizing it through charts and graphs allows brewers to quickly understand trends and identify areas of improvement. Brewery software helps transform your data into visual representations that are easy to interpret. Whether it’s temperature control, pH levels, or batch timelines, brewery analytics software creates dashboards that display your data, making it easier to track trends and make informed decisions. This step, known as descriptive analysis, helps brewers see past performance and plan future production accordingly.
Step 3: Prediction is using organized data to assume the outcome of future events.
This is taking patterns and other meaningful information gathered from data analysis and making inferences to predict future events. It becomes critical to understand how your next beers will turn out simply based on past data.
In the world of brewery software and analytics, the more tracked data that is available, coupled with proper organization, provides deeper insights into various aspects of the brewing process and its results.
Using Beer30 at Pals Brewing (North Platte, Nebraska) to replace paper logs in the brewhouse.
Tracked data is continuously used to improve recipes and efficiency in a brewery by using new technologies of grain-to-glass data management. Let’s compare this to the current “paper-to-digital-spreadsheet” approach.
Paper logs and spreadsheets have been used with varying degrees of success for years! However, to make the data work for brewery analytics, hours of manual data review and analysis would be required each day. The more robust the calculation, the more time it will require.
If you rely on paper logs or spreadsheets to track and record your data, then you know how time-consuming this can be. Not to mention, there is an all-too-real potential for human error during the recording process.
Don’t you think you could put your time to better use? It's time to utilize brewery software like Beer30.
Evolution of Technology: Grain-to-Glass Tracking with Brewery Software
Over the last few years, new advancements in brewery technology have emerged to help breweries improve their data analysis. Beer30 software is a grain-to-glass data management software. It is designed to help breweries brew more and brew better. A brewery software like Beer30 can use technology and proprietary algorithms to save the hours spent each and every day on calculating:
process and quality data
costs of goods and work in process
state or government taxes
A good data management system also creates transparency within the process. This will help identify why that last batch of beer was one of the best the brewery has produced. In addition, it will list what steps can be taken to replicate the results. Decisions can be made to improve a beer that are based on empirical evidence, rather than anecdotes and assumptions.
Mike Foran, Market Garden Brewery cofounder and COO, says of Beer30: “The process insights have empowered our entire team to be plugged in to real time data and make efficiency driven decisions to grow our business and profitability.”
Evolution of Technology: Using Beer30 at Protector Brewery (San Diego, California).
Data management software that integrates with internet-enabled sensors provide an excellent way to gain real-time visibility to trends in the status of tanks and beers, while reducing the need for manual entry of those data points.
Manually entering measurements remains the practical method for most breweries, particularly for measurements following human action. But we are seeing a rise in automation of repetitive status-based measurements (i.e., temperature of beer in the fermentation tank).
Either method is acceptable across the majority of cases—the important part is getting the data into the platform for real-time analysis.
Now that we understand more about the importance of data, what’s next? How do we use this information to make better decisions for the brewery?
Brewery Analytics: The 4Ps for Successful Data Management
We have developed the 4Ps for Successful Data Management for all the data that is being tracked and analyzed. Our team shares these with our clients to help them save time and become more efficient.
P1 - Proactive Validation
For starters, proactive validation of your data means that instead of spending time reviewing the data after a process is completed, the data is validated in real-time as it is entered.
A magical thing happens when proactive validation is implemented successfully. Issues are recognized sooner, meaning the problem is smaller, the response time is shorter, and the solution is executed more quickly.
In many cases, issues in the brew process compound over time. They grow larger and more difficult to recover from the longer they exist. By shortening the response time we approach smaller issues and increase our probability of correcting the issue.
Another benefit of proactive validation is catching bad data from being recorded. Entering a value with a few extra 0’s could be recognized and easily corrected before it finds a home in your dataset.
An example of proactive validation in brewery analytics is setting target tolerances for critical brew specs. Setting traffic light styling of green, yellow and red can alert users to values that fall outside of the acceptable range for the brand. Beer30 can tell the brewer if a threshold is or is not being hit real-time while brewing. This results in adjustments to the recipe to ensure targets and yields will be hit.
P1 – Proactive Validation: Set Target Tolerances for each critical brewing spec.
P2 - Predictive Analysis
Predicting how key parameters will line up for different batch numbers for the same beer is key to profitability. The analysis aspect is to look at these parameters with visualization tools and make meaningful insights to stay consistent.
For example, a customer noticed their flagship brand had slight inconsistencies and flavor variations between batches. So, they started graphing fermentation metrics of each recent batch. They discovered that even though their gravities were tight and consistent, their pH had a pretty far spread.
The solution for these wide variations was to calibrate pH meters daily. In addition, they also adjusted adjunct additions during brewing if specs were not lining up during the brew day.
P2A – Predictive Analysis: Tight gravity control contributes to consistent ABV and flavors.
P2B – Predictive Analysis: Off-target pH impacts consistency between batches, and wide-ranging data can be displayed by graphing.
P3 - Process Improvement
Stated simply, process improvement is increasing brewery efficiency. Increasing brewery efficiency means less wasted product, more revenue, and more profit per unit. By breaking down the brewing process from grain to glass, every step can be analyzed individually to identify where your brewery can improve and then track those improvements over time.
Profitability is the ultimate driver of a successful business. Therefore, measuring process improvement requires an understanding of the cost for each batch. These costs commonly tie in with raw materials such as grains, hops and adjuncts. But they can also include additions like yeast and package supplies.
More advanced algorithms could include additional components like fixed costs or tank utilization costs. As you start looking at transfers, filters, and merges, the true dollar value per barrel of beer becomes apparent.
Using averages for process improvements is a common pitfall. Instead, brewers should use actual lot numbers and true landed costs to understand how to improve the cost per beer. In the example below, we are tracking actual raw material costs to determine the cost to brew this Indian Brown Sugar Ale is $102.66/BBL. With this information, a successful brewery can ensure that they’re maintaining appropriate costs across batches. They can also compare against other brands, price new products appropriately and track margins as input prices vary over time.
P3 – Process Improvement: Use batch cost as an efficiency metric to understand how much it cost to brew per BBL or HL.
P4 - Performance Indicators
Performance indicators are key data points for benchmarking your brewery against itself over time and industry standards as a whole. Collecting, aggregating and analyzing these data points allows you to ensure your employees are meeting their production goals on a weekly basis, and are consistently following best practices.
Below are 18 key metrics for brewery analytics that we have shared with our customers—spanning brew, ferment, yeast, quality, packaging, scheduling, inventory, and sales.
The data being recorded should be entered into a software system to streamline the tracking of these areas and help you understand how to improve your team’s efficiency and success. From there, the data entered can then be aggregated for weekly metrics and scorecards. If you start deviating from the baselines, you can identify potential causes and create a game plan to correct the issue.
P4 – Performance Indicators: Set up weekly meetings to assess key performance indicators for your brewery.
Brewery Analytics - The Bottom Line
Now that you’re armed with a greater understanding of analytics, we hope you implement the proper tools at your brewery.
Instead of making decisions based on anecdotal evidence, a data-driven approach at a brewery will result in a systematic analysis. This allows for concrete conclusions on areas that need improvement at your brewery. The best route for data management comes down to the 4Ps:
Proactive Validation
Predictive Analysis
Process Improvement
Performance Indicators
These operational cornerstones were the catalyst for the founding of The 5th Ingredient. With years of experience in the industry, we recognized the brewing process needed a more dynamic solution. It was time to ditch the traditional paper logs and spreadsheets. From there, Beer30 brewery software was born. Our product roadmap has been forged through collaboration with our customers since the beginning.
We are in a constant state of growth and improvement! Our team will always provide the brewery analytics tools that matter most for our customers’ success.
Reach out today for a demo on how Beer30 can help you brew better beer by using brewery analytics.
Do you have more questions regarding brewery analytics? Schedule your FREE Beer30 demo today to learn how we can help you save time, increase profits and brew more beer.
Managing raw material inventory, particularly yeast, is crucial for any brewery aiming to improve efficiency and profitability. Beer30 by The 5th Ingredient is the perfect brewery inventory software, offering robust solutions for tracking and managing yeast—the most variable and essential ingredient in beer production. Additionally, Beer30 features unique yeast genealogy software that helps brewers visualize and manage yeast strains across batches and beers.
The Importance of Brewery Inventory Software for Yeast Management
While most brewers focus on tracking hops and malt in their inventory, yeast requires more attention due to its variable nature. Yeast isn’t just another ingredient—it’s a living organism that directly impacts the quality and flavor of your beer. With Beer30, you can track every aspect of yeast management, from inventory to performance, making it a critical tool for improving your brewery’s operations.
Customizable Yeast Cost-Tracking with Brewery Inventory Software
Tracking the cost of goods like hops, malt, and adjuncts is relatively simple: you buy, use, and deplete. However, yeast adds complexity because it can be reused across multiple batches. How do you accurately calculate the cost of yeast when it continues to impact multiple brews?
With Beer30’s brewery management software, you have the flexibility to:
Write off the yeast cost when it’s first used.
Amortize the cost across all batches where the yeast was pitched.
Wait until the yeast lot’s lifespan ends to apply the total cost.
This customizable approach ensures that your accounting and inventory tracking is as accurate as possible, giving you control over your yeast cost strategy.
The Beer30 Yeast Dashboard shows the details of all yeast inventory that you have available to pitch, harvest and propagate.
Keeping Tabs on an Unpredictable Staple
Yeast labs use innovative technologies which make their strains stronger and more reliable. However, it still requires more oversight than other ingredients in beer. Yeast can surprise you more than any other ingredient in the brewing process. Sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse!
Beer30 provides a dedicated Yeast Dashboard where brewers can see all available yeast inventory for pitching, harvesting, and propagating. This advanced brewery inventory software ensures that yeast is monitored meticulously, helping to mitigate its unpredictability. Key yeast management features include:
Yeast Inventory Tracking: Manage all yeast lots and track their usage across batches.
Yeast Analysis: Record important metrics such as cell counts, viability, and performance history.
Custom Fields: Add as many custom fields as necessary to track additional yeast parameters tailored to your specific brewing process.
Brewers and staff will be able to add in custom fields and metrics like cell counts, generations, viability as it is brought in or harvested from a tank.
Yeast Genealogy Software: Tracking Yeast History with Precision
Beer30’s yeast genealogy software takes yeast tracking to the next level by generating genealogy charts for every yeast lot. These charts provide a visual representation of yeast usage across batches, making it easier to follow the lineage of each strain and its impact on different beers. Brewers can use these yeast genealogy trees to:
Track by Brand or Batch: Search yeast history by specific beer styles, batch numbers, or yeast strains.
Log Issues: Track anomalies like stalled fermentations, extra pitches, or unexpected changes in yeast behavior.
Filter and Search: Easily find data related to any yeast strain or batch through an intuitive filter and search function.
This yeast genealogy software allows brewers to understand yeast's performance over time, making it easier to improve processes and predict outcomes in future brews.
Custom Yeast Actions for Improved Brewery Inventory Management
Custom fields provide a detailed record of yeast’s lifecycle, making it easier to manage propagation and ensure optimal performance across batches. In worst-case scenarios, such as a yeast recall from your supplier, Beer30 makes it simple to backtrack and identify every impacted batch, minimizing potential loss.
Planting and Nurturing Yeast
Yeast is unlike any other primary beer ingredient because each pitch equates to a new chapter in an often long story in its history. A history that covers multiple beer styles and many months bringing each beer to life.
Beer30 takes this complex story and turns it into a powerful tool for managing yeast. Our software uses genealogy charts to build visual representations as it is automatically tracked through every batch of beer it touches. The entire history of your yeast inventory is searchable and filterable to make the tool even more powerful.
Use Beer30 to generate yeast genealogy trees that are filterable and searchable by brand, batch, dates and yeast strain.
The branches of these trees include the triumphant chapters in your yeast’s story. For example, you can log stalled fermentations that required an additional pitch or any number of anomalies that may occur.
The Beer30 genealogy trees show you how each parent and child node are interconnected for true traceability.
Beer30 keeps track of yeast’s origin story.
Not all of the yeast a brewer uses comes from a company like White Labs, Lallemand or Wyeast. One brewery will provide it to another. Our software notes the source of intra-brewery pitches and track its performance at your brewery.
We also understand that many brewers like to mix and match different strains in beers! Brewers can do yeast substitutions and add in different variations from different brinks or pitches while knocking out a beer. This also shows up in the genealogy trees!
In Beer30, you can do yeast substitutions dynamically in either Brew or Ferment mode.
We Treat Yeast like the Vital Ingredient It Is
Yeast plays arguably the most important role in the production of beer or, more importantly, quality beer. Therefore, it must be regarded and monitored in a significant way. But all too often it isn’t. Its dynamic nature leads brewers and data-management software developers to throw up their hands instead of attempting to track it. This creates a major blind spot that hurts a brewery’s operation.
At Beer30, we understand the challenges of tracking yeast costs and performance. In order to help you save time, increase profits and brew more beer, our team developed the best brewery management software devoted to fermented beverages to help brewers overcome these monotonous challenges.
Why Beer30 is the Best Yeast Genealogy and Brewery Inventory Software
Beer30 is designed to streamline brewery operations by providing a comprehensive solution for tracking yeast inventory, performance, and history. The yeast genealogy software is a powerful tool for understanding the lifecycle of your yeast, while the brewery inventory software ensures that your entire brewing process—from raw material intake to finished product—is tracked with precision.
Beer30 supports multiple approaches to yeast cost-tracking, ensuring flexibility based on the size and needs of your brewery. Whether you’re tracking simple brewhouse inventory or managing complex yeast strains, Beer30 gives you the tools you need to improve quality, lower costs, and enhance overall efficiency.
Do you want to know more about how we can help you track and manage yeast inventory and utilization at your brewery? We’d love to discuss it with you. Schedule a FREE demo today!
Brandon Hernández is a contributing writer for The 5th Ingredient who provides freelance marketing services to companies in the beer industry. You can reach Brandon via email.
So, you’re considering Beer30 as your brewery management software – but wondering what the startup process involves?
If you're considering Beer30 as your brewery management software, you may be wondering what the implementation process looks like. Whether you're switching from another platform or implementing a management system for the first time, the process can seem overwhelming. Will it be hard to get started? How long will it take?
We’ve all heard stories of complicated, months-long software implementations that aren’t fully functional or embraced by teams. Beer30 is different. We’ve worked hard to ensure that setting up our brewery management software is quick, easy, and efficient. You can be up and running with Beer30 within a day and a half, and best of all—there are $0 onboarding fees.
Why Choose Beer30 as Your Brewery Management Software?
Beer30 is modular, giving you the flexibility to fully switch to the platform or use it specifically for brewhouse and quality data tracking. You can even maintain your existing ERP/MRP system for financials. This makes Beer30 an ideal fit for any brewery, whether you’re a small craft operation or a larger commercial brewery.
In just four simple steps, you’ll have Beer30 fully set up and running in your brewery:
Setting up your brewery
90-minute Beer30 training session
Start using Beer30
Further training (as needed)
What really blew us away was the speed of implementation. 24 hours from decision to go with Beer30 and we had loaded our inventory, stock, what was in our tanks and set up for packaging. Then 36 hours after decision, we were brewing with the support of Beer30.
The first step to setting up your brewery management software is filling out a quick onboarding form. This allows us to customize Beer30 specifically for your brewery by detailing three key areas:
Brewery volume units (BBL, HL, liters, gallons)
Daily measurement units such as temperature (°F, °C), gravity units (Plato, Specific Gravity), weight (kilograms, pounds), DO, and pressure
Tank types (UNIs, FVs, BBTs, LAGs, Yeast Brinks)
A key benefit of Beer30 is that it offers unlimited users per license, so you can easily onboard your entire team with the necessary permission levels.
Step 2: 90-Minute Beer30 Training Session
Our live, 90-minute training session is designed to get your team familiar with Beer30's features. We cover everything from managing ingredients and recipes to tracking packaging supplies and fermentation data. By the end of the training session, you’ll know how to:
Add ingredients like grains, hops, yeast, and adjuncts
Onboard your tanks and track fermentation
Create and manage recipes
Use batch history for comprehensive grain-to-glass analysis
This session ensures your team is confident in using Beer30’s intuitive interface and ready to replace paper logs, whiteboards, and spreadsheets with real-time data management.
Implementation was simple… We did an hour or two training session with Pulkit and our management team then sat down our brewers for a lunch & learn and by the end of it our people felt proficient enough to hit the ground running. Initially we purchased iPads to help our crew keep information easily accessible but within a week most of them preferred to use their phone due to the simple user interface.
Step 3: Start Using Beer30 Brewery Management Software
Following our comprehensive training session, you will be ready to start using the brewery management software to transform your business!
Once you login to your Beer30 account, you will be shown our onboarding wizard, which breaks down onboarding into five easy steps – define grains, define hops, define adjuncts, define yeast, onboard tanks. That’s it!
This process doesn’t require you to go back through months worth of data – we’re not interested in digging through that.
Instead, this onboarding process is a snapshot in time of your current situation. It is the inventory you have on hand, and details of what is in your tanks, right this minute.
Say goodbye to paper logs and see everything in real time.
The guys at Beer30 told us that integration would be quick & easy, and it actually was. We’ve moved almost all Brewhouse planning & management into Beer 30. It allows comprehensive management in just a few minutes. All tank monitoring, QA/QC, transfers, yeast management & batch tracking are unbelievably quick & easy. Also, B30 has an unbelievably cool charting tool, that allows quick access to trending across styles, brands and a myriad of other brewhouse data points. It’s easy and intuitive, and makes decision points clear & simple.
At The 5th Ingredient, we believe in supporting our customers long after implementation. We offer additional, free training sessions on various aspects of Beer30, such as sales, distribution, and integration with accounting platforms like Xero or QuickBooks Online. These modules can be added at any time and are designed to save you hours of administrative work by seamlessly integrating your brewery data.
If you prefer to learn on the job, no problem! These training sessions are optional and can be scheduled whenever needed. Plus, with Beer30's user-friendly interface, many customers find that they can navigate the system intuitively.
The easy onboarding process and seamless integration to QuickBooks Online is, and has been, a great time saver. We have been able to eliminate several manually updated inventory spreadsheets. Now we can get the same information with just a couple of clicks in one software program.
What sets Beer30 apart from other brewery management software solutions is our commitment to ongoing customer support. We communicate with our customers through WhatsApp, ensuring immediate access to help and guidance. Whether you’re facing a challenge at 10 p.m. or need assistance on a weekend, our team is available to support you with response times ranging from seconds to hours.
We don’t just set you up and send you on your way, our team is there for you if an issue should arise.
Throughout the onboarding and now as we use it we have instant customer support via a WhatsApp chat or quick call and despite our 18 hour time difference we have immediate support throughout our day (when do they sleep lol?) Customer service is absolutely top notch which is a rare commodity in today's world.
Our customer support is one of the key elements that makes Beer30 unique, and one that we pride ourselves on holding to the highest levels of standards. But you don’t need to take our word for it – hear it directly from our customers.
PS: It doesn't matter if you are a workaholic and you work on a Sunday at 4am, the technical support does not sleep, they are always there to help you!
Why Beer30 is the Best Brewery Management Software for You
Beer30 is designed to optimize every aspect of your brewery operations—from grain-to-glass analysis to real-time data tracking. By simplifying brewhouse management, inventory tracking, and quality control, Beer30 empowers your team to make faster, data-driven decisions. The platform is modular, so you can choose the features that fit your brewery’s needs and scale as your business grows.
With 30% of our customers switching from competitors, Beer30 has proven to be a game-changer for breweries seeking a faster, more intuitive solution. Our software helps you track the true cost per batch, enabling you to make smarter business decisions and improve overall profitability.
Are You Ready to Start?
Like what you’ve read so far? We hope we’ve convinced you on just how easy it is to get going with Beer30!
With a few hours of integration, watch as you can now track all of your data, from grain-to-glass.
You can manage your inventory with ease.
View your brew log and fermentation data with the click of a button.
And, of course, by assessing the true cost per can, bottle, or keg of beer, you will be able to better understand your overall margins and make real-time business decisions to help your brewery be better.
At this point, 30% of our customers are those that have switched from a competitor, after realizing how easy it is to do so!
We are invested in your success and want to see our customers reach their goals.
Get in touch to start your Beer30 journey. You could be just days away from starting the process to increase your efficiency and focusing in to #BrewMoreBeer and #BrewBetterBeer, with Beer30.
So, you’re considering Bucha30 as your brewery management system – but wondering what the startup process involves?
Are you ready to streamline your kombucha brewery operations with Bucha30? Whether you're transitioning from another platform or implementing a brewery management system for the first time, we understand the startup process may seem overwhelming. But with Bucha30, getting started is simpler than ever! As the world’s first kombucha brewery software, Bucha30 is designed specifically to meet the unique needs of kombucha breweries, and our onboarding process ensures that your system will be up and running within a day and a half.
We’ve all heard the stories of long, difficult, and tedious software implementations that span months and are still not fully functional or embraced by the team.
Well, we decided to change that, and specifically for Kombucha breweries! After we built Beer30, we then decided to make a new system focused on the kombucha breweries, and The 5th Ingredient Launched the World’s First Software for Kombucha Brewers.
Our goal is to make the process for starting up with Bucha30 so incredibly straightforward that you can be up and running within a day and a half (and if you don’t believe us, keep reading our client testimonials and quotes below!) This is a massive difference from the multiple weeks to months of implementations you may experience with other brewery software.
And the best part, all of our customers spend $0 on onboarding fees when implementing Bucha30!
Since Bucha30 is completely modular brewing software, customers have the flexibility to switch fully into Bucha30, or can choose to only use Bucha30 for brewhouse and quality data tracking, SCOBY health, fermentation and pH curves, while keeping their existing ERP/MRP system in place for finances. This makes Bucha30 a great fit for any brewery, and a win for any team!
In just four easy steps, you will be up and running in Bucha30:
Setting up your brewery
90-minute Bucha30 training session
Start using Bucha30!
Further training (as needed)
And we will be there, by your side, to walk you through!
Bucha30 was a real game changer for our business. Having the history of that continuous brew right there, being tracked at all times is invaluable. I can see every action that’s been done with it and the information is easy to read. When you have a continuous brew it’s easy to let it go for a couple of weeks. But when you have this software tracking its quality, you can see the data and it encourages you to take action. And it links with inventory and accounting, as I can see the associated cost of harvesting the SCOBY and repitching the SCOBY. Bucha30 also makes it really easy to go back and look at brews - and do analysis of flavors and taste and how it fermented out. It encourages us to constantly look at ways to increase quality and figure out what’s working - and what’s not. thing I know I’ll struggle to find anywhere else is the responsiveness of The 5th Ingredient team. If I have a question and I’m sweating it out at 10 o’clock at night, stressing about a problem - they are there. I don’t know how much sleep they get! But the response time is generally 15 - 20 minutes. There really isn’t anything that can replace the value of this kind of service.
Step 1: Setting Up Your Kombucha Brewery in Bucha30
The first step in the Bucha30 setup process is straightforward: filling out our onboarding form. This form customizes your system based on three key areas for your kombucha brewery:
Brewery volume units (BBL, HL, liters, gallons)
Daily measurement units like temperature (°F, °C), gravity (Plato, Brix), and pH
Tank types such as Mother Tanks, UNIs, FVs, BBTs, and SCOBY Brinks
You’ll also be able to assign users and set permission levels. With Bucha30's modular design, you have the flexibility to integrate only the features you need, making it an excellent fit for any kombucha brewery.
What really blew us away was the speed of implementation. 24 hours from decision to go with Beer30 and we had loaded our inventory, stock, what was in our tanks and set up for packaging. Then 36 hours after decision, we were brewing with the support of Beer30.
Step 2: Bucha30 Kombucha Brewery Software Training
In our live training session, we will walk you through the brewing process and how it works in the Bucha30 system.
It’s important everyone is on the same page for the software to work to its full potential, so your entire staff is invited to attend. This is where we show your team all the ins and outs and how to accomplish their everyday responsibilities in Buca30!
We will go through all the key tools for your brewery, thoroughly covering steps like –
adding ingredients (base sugars and teas, hops, adjuncts, and SCOBY)
onboarding – understanding how to brew with Mother Tanks and harvesting and repitching SCOBY
creating recipes
adding packaging supplies
taking a brand new batch from brew day, to daily ferment readings, transferring or filtering into a brite tank, adding in new flavor ingredients, completing packaging runs
batch history for full tea-to-glass analysis
At the end of this training session, you will feel confident about operating Bucha30 on your own and can start removing paper logs, whiteboards, and spreadsheets at your brewery!
Implementation was simple… We did an hour or two training session with Pulkit and our management team then sat down our brewers for a lunch & learn and by the end of it our people felt proficient enough to hit the ground running. Initially we purchased iPads to help our crew keep information easily accessible but within a week most of them preferred to use their phone due to the simple user interface.
Step 3: Start Using Bucha30 Kombucha Brewery Software
Following our comprehensive training session, you will be ready to start using the brewery management software to transform your business!
Once you login to your Bucha30 account, you will be shown our onboarding wizard, which breaks down onboarding into five easy steps – define base sugar & teas, define hops, define adjuncts, define SCOBY, onboard tanks. That’s it!
This process doesn’t require you to go back through months worth of data – we’re not interested in digging through that.
Instead, this onboarding process is a snapshot in time of your current situation. It is the inventory you have on hand, and details of what is in your tanks, right this minute.
Say goodbye to paper logs and see everything in real time.
The guys at Beer30 told us that integration would be quick & easy, and it actually was. We’ve moved almost all Brewhouse planning & management into Beer 30. It allows comprehensive management in just a few minutes. All tank monitoring, QA/QC, transfers, yeast management & batch tracking are unbelievably quick & easy. Also, B30 has an unbelievably cool charting tool, that allows quick access to trending across styles, brands and a myriad of other brewhouse data points. It’s easy and intuitive, and makes decision points clear & simple.
At The 5th Ingredient, we believe in ongoing customer support. After your initial training, you’ll have access to additional free training sessions whenever needed. Whether you want to dive deeper into sales, distribution, or integrating Bucha30 with your accounting software (like QuickBooks or Xero), we’re here to help you every step of the way.
Our training modules cover every aspect of kombucha brewery management, from brewing to accounting, ensuring that Bucha30 grows with your brewery’s needs.
The easy onboarding process and seamless integration to QuickBooks Online is, and has been, a great time saver. We have been able to eliminate several manually updated inventory spreadsheets. Now we can get the same information with just a couple of clicks in one software program.
Oh, you’re still reading! That’s great, because this is the best part. Like everything at The 5th Ingredient, we have a secret 5th step — ongoing customer support!
We don’t just set you up and send you on your way.
We are there for you, if ever an issue should arise.
We communicate through WhatsApp, so you will have top-notch support right at your fingertips. Our response times can be as quick as a few seconds to a few hours, providing immediate support.
Throughout the onboarding and now as we use it we have instant customer support via a WhatsApp chat or quick call and despite our 18 hour time difference we have immediate support throughout our day (when do they sleep lol?) Customer service is absolutely top notch which is a rare commodity in today's world.
Our customer support is one of the key elements that makes The 5th Ingredient and our Beer30 and Bucha30 products unique, and one that we pride ourselves on holding to the highest levels of standards. But you don’t need to take our word for it – hear it directly from our customers.
Bucha30: Designed for Kombucha Breweries to Succeed
Bucha30 is the only brewery management software built specifically for kombucha producers. With its modular design, real-time fermentation tracking, and flexible inventory management tools, you can customize Bucha30 to meet your brewery’s needs. Plus, with features like SCOBY health monitoring and full batch history analysis, you’ll have everything you need to improve quality and efficiency.
Are You Ready to Start with Bucha30?
Getting started with Bucha30 kombucha brewery software is simple, fast, and risk-free. With our easy onboarding process, you’ll be tracking your data, managing inventory, and analyzing your brews in just days. Let Bucha30 help you improve efficiency, enhance brew quality, and focus on what matters most—brewing better kombucha.
Get in touch to start your Bucha30 journey. You could be just days away from starting the process to increase your efficiency and focusing in to #BrewMoreBucha and #BrewBetterBucha, with Bucha30.
With the End of Financial Year stocktake approaching, use this month to integrate with Beer30 and make sure your brewery is in order for Start of Financial Year 2022.
Stocktake and inventory management varies from brewery to brewery…but not much! Nearly every brewing professional has stress inducing memories of all-hands-on-deck floor counts, or poring over spreadsheets and stacks of physical invoices, assorted emails and other records.
So, with the EOFY right around the corner that means three things:
You and your brewery staff are making that last big push to close out the financial year strong
You’re starting to see the light at the end of the FY2021 tunnel
It’s about time for the dreaded End Of Financial Year (EOFY) stock-take
A Typical Brewery Stock-take Story
Monotonous, haphazard and a drain on a business’ resources… it’s an annual headache that takes precious time away from the all-important processes of producing, selling and growing your business. The more haphazard a brewery’s inventory management and oversight processes are throughout the year, the greater the chances you’ll encounter discrepancies. This would prolong the already lengthy process as you and your staff work to get to the bottom of things. Yet, for so many breweries, their inventory management processes leave a lot to be desired.
And it makes sense. In most cases, all brewery personnel are constantly busy. They are simply doing their best to keep up with the everyday business of producing, packaging, selling, and distributing beer. Those crucial tasks leave little time for keeping exacting records of inventory and cost of goods. There’s no shame in it; that’s just the way it is. We get it, and we know you do, too.
However, that’s where Beer30 by The 5th Ingredient comes in. As you do your stocktake for the EOFY, it’s the perfect time to start fresh with brewery management software that will keep your books in order for the Start Of the Financial Year (SOFY)!
A Beer30 Brewery software and Brewery Stock-take
Beer30 is a brewery management software that makes it easy to track the onslaught of data breweries need to keep track of on an everyday basis. We’re not just talking about brewing ingredients like grains, hops, yeast and adjuncts. You’ll always be up to date on packaging materials including: cans, bottles, crowlers, growlers, kegs and labels. You’ll also know where you stand, not only with finished products, but the beers fermenting in your cellar. Beer30 software gives users crystal-clear visibility over work-in-process products in tanks.
Do a full stocktake of your inventory, making end-of-financial-year reporting a breeze. There is nothing more frustrating than the end-of-financial year/start-of-financial year inventory management. That’s why The 5th Ingredient built an easy-to-use inventory management software built with the brewer in mind. Don’t get locked out of your brewing software ever again. Become a legend with Beer30.
Beer30 acts as an inventory management software and allows real-time tracking of material usage and tank inventory across an entire brewing facility or even multiple facilities. This makes it a single, reliable point of truth where your business’ inventory is concerned. Not only will you know where your money is at all stages of your business, you’ll also save money by saving time and energy. Which then leads to increased efficiency, reduced workloads and a load of unnecessary stress.
Doing stocktake and adding / subtracting inventory is as simple as a few clicks in Beer30.
Best of all, the wealth of information Beer30 tracks will always be just a simple keystroke away and available in multiple at-a-glance formats. Our software allows you to export data and break it down in any fashion you’d like so that you can analyze it to suit your specific needs.
Using Beer30 to understand the exact $ value for Work in Process Beer, sitting in all of the brewery tanks.
This includes the ability to get a snapshot of inventory management and COGs data for a particular timeframe down to a single date.
This is particularly useful as you prepare year-end financial statements or even the end of each month. Our craft beer software also provides stock-movement reports. Therefore, brewers can see what inventory items have been added over any customizable time span.
Though we are speaking to Beer30’s assets in the context of EOFY reporting, this is just one way in which our brewery management software can save breweries and their personnel major time, money and frustration. We have designed it as a tool to be heavily used and relied upon on a daily basis to: streamline operations, simplify workplaces, reduce workload and ensure accuracy to a degree that no other brewery software can.
The ways in which Beer30 can assist your brewery and its employees is vast and multifaceted. It would be our pleasure to set up a call and take you through a demo of what our software can do for your brewery.
If you’re ready to learn how our brewery management software can help you, schedule a demo today!
Brandon Hernández is a contributing writer for The 5th Ingredient. He is an award-winning journalist and founder of San Diego Beer News LLC, an all-in-one online resource on San Diego’s craft-beer scene. He can be reached via email.
In a major advancement for brewery management, Precision Fermentation® has partnered with The 5th Ingredient® to integrate the groundbreaking BrewMonitor® system with Beer30™ brewery software. This revolutionary combination allows brewers to view real-time fermentation data directly within their Beer30 dashboard, streamlining the brewing process and enhancing decision-making with automated, real-time performance readings from fermentation tanks.
How BrewMonitor from Precision Fermentation Benefits you
Here at Precision Fermentation, our mission is to help brewers make great product, operational, and business decisions, while also helping them to save time and cost. BrewMonitor is the world’s first comprehensive, real-time fermentation monitoring solution. It works with your existing tanks and gives you 24-7-365 remote access to your tank’s activity via seven measurements:
Dissolved Oxygen
Gravity
pH
Pressure
Liquid Temperature
Ambient Temperature
Conductivity
By automating fermentation tank monitoring, brewers not only save time but gain a wealth of data to drive decision-making. BrewMonitor’s cloud-based platform eliminates the need for manual sampling, offering greater process insights with minimal effort.
How Brewery Software Like Beer30™ Enhances Data-Driven Brewing
The integration of BrewMonitor with Beer30 is a game-changer. While BrewMonitor offers advanced fermentation monitoring, Beer30™ brewery software provides end-to-end data management for brewery operations. The result is a "single source of truth" for brewing data, allowing brewers to analyze both their actions and outcomes with unparalleled accuracy. With this integration, brewers can access:
Batch History
Ingredient Tracking
Tank Management
CIP (Clean-In-Place) Tracking
This synergy between fermentation data and operational data enables brewers to pinpoint the precise factors contributing to a batch’s success or shortcomings, streamlining quality control and production efficiency.
Revolutionizing Brewing with Real-Time Insights and Brewery Software
As Jared Resnick, CEO of Precision Fermentation, put it, “We are thrilled to be part of another first in our industry. Accessing real-time data from the BrewMonitor Sensor Hub® from Beer30’s brewery software suite allows brewers to track, from a single dashboard, all operational actions and ingredients that produce each batch, side-by-side with precise outcomes of these factors as data is streamed directly from inside the fermentation tank. Beer30 excels in management of all elements that go into each batch, including precise ingredient information, tank management, CIP tracking and so much more. Adding live, high-resolution fermentation data not only greatly reduces the overhead and inconsistency of manual sampling, but it also finally puts in the hands of brewery staff the ability to correlate detailed results from all brewery processes at a single glance and with high accuracy. This integration offers a leap forward in quality assurance that can have a major impact on any brewery’s bottom line.”
Pulkit K. Agrawal, founder and CEO of The 5th Ingredient, added, “With this new integration, we continue to pioneer and evolve a new wave of brewery data management software. We are committed to helping breweries #BrewBetterBeer and helping brewers take a more confident, proactive approach to their processes, rather than a reactive one. From a quality perspective, the first 3-4 days of fermentation are crucial, and with BrewMonitor fermentation data sent directly to Beer30, breweries have even more flexibility to make better data-driven decisions powered by smart sensor technology. Beer30’s data visualization tools allow brewery software users to graph all data, identify trends and anomalies, and compare a beer brand across multiple batches. By combining BrewMonitor’s real-time data with Beer30’s robust Batch History functionality, breweries can take their grain-to-glass analysis to the next level. Whenever two of the top innovators in an industry come together, the industry wins as a whole.”
Precision Fermentation Money-Back Guarentee
Precision Fermentation offers a money-back guarantee* to make it as easy as possible for breweries to get started and see the tremendous benefits of comprehensive, automated fermentation tank monitoring. Visit precisionfermentation.com to request a demo, or contact us at info@precisionfermentation.com / 919-717-3983.
With the powerful combination of BrewMonitor and Beer30™ brewery software, brewers can now make faster, more informed decisions based on real-time data. This integration is revolutionizing brewery management by offering a comprehensive view of the brewing process, from fermentation metrics to batch history, all in one place. Get started today and take your brewery's efficiency and quality to the next level.
Back in the day, the life of a brewer was rather regimented. Going back to the early ages of kettles boiling over crackling, smoldering logs as brewsters churned out beers as liquid sustenance for their Old World villages and townships, variety was not a concern. Like many of the world’s consumables, adherence to tried-and-true recipes is the basis of essentially every regional beer style in the world. But as with any artisanal practice, creativity crept in, with brewers trying their hand at new recipes, utilizing techniques observed elsewhere or dreamt up in their own brewhouses.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and the craft beer industry in the U.S. has revolutionized brewing. Brewers across the world—especially in the UK, Germany, Belgium, and the Czech Republic—began taking notice of American brewers’ creativity, particularly in styles like pale ales, lagers, stouts, and IPAs. The U.S. emerged as a new epicenter of brewing innovation, driven by a passion for variety and creativity.
As the craft beer movement grew, so did the demand for variety. Brewers no longer stuck to predictable core-beer production but began exploring new ingredients and techniques—such as barrel-aging, dry-hopping, and experimenting with different grains and yeast strains. This shift required brewers to stay innovative year-round, which in turn created a demand for advanced brewery management software.
In today’s fast-paced brewing environment, flexibility is key. Brewers need to be able to change plans on the fly without disrupting their production schedules or sacrificing quality. This is where brewery software like Beer30 and Bucha30 comes into play, offering brewers the flexibility they need while maintaining full traceability on costs, quality, and taste.
Monitoring the Fruits of Your Labor - Transfers and Varietals During Fermentation
It’s hard to believe, but it was nearly a decade ago that the fruited-IPA trend bloomed. Grapefruit, blood-orange, tangerine, and mango-infused IPAs from that era remain some of the best-selling beers at retail and in brewery taprooms to this day. But the adjuncts abounding in these hop-driven ales went beyond citrus and tropical fruits (stone fruit, melons, berries) to spices (ginger, coriander, grains of paradise) and other agricultural products (coffee, cacao nibs, chili peppers). A cornucopia of ingredients lay at a brewer’s ready care of comprehensive supply groups, making for endless possibilities. A current cost-effective and on-trend practice is brewing a base kettle-sour ale, splitting the batch and adding different fruits to create a variety of flavor options to consumers.
Beer30's brewery management software allows for a base beer to be split into multiple tanks, where additional ingredients can be added. In FERMENT mode, brewers can rack equal (or different) amounts of, say, a Berliner weisse, into three tanks, then record fruit additions. And let’s say the original plan was to leave one fermenter unfruited, while adding cherries to one tank and raspberries to another… but on brew day, you discover a leftover box of all-natural blueberry purée left over from a previous beer and decide to split the beer into four tanks and make a fourth variation of that Berliner Weisse. Doing so will mean lessening the amount of the other two fruit additions as there will be less beer in the tank, but you’ve already entered the previously determined amounts into your brewing software. How difficult will it become to fix this change?! Well, with Beer30, it’s no problem. These split-batch beers can easily be annotated with fruit additions to make new flavored beers!
All it takes is a few keystrokes—entering the new amounts—for the program to update, in real-time, not only the quantities of the ingredients utilized but also other information such as remaining inventory and ingredient cost. The latter is particularly important as each adjunct has a different associated cost (e.g., pineapple is more expensive than, say, habanero peppers). Beer30's brewery software allows a company to factor in the cost of goods at every step in the process. Costs are appropriately allocated with each split using Beer30’s proprietary batch trace node algorithms so that projections and records are accurate to the penny! Similarly, tank volumes are tracked at every stage to ensure accurate yield projections.
Transfer options in Beer30 allow a brewer to have true flexibility while also maintaining proper traceability on costs, quality, and taste.
Filters, Merging, Barrel Aging, and Back-Blending
Beer30’s brewery software ensures precise cost tracking, not just for split-batching but also for merging tanks. In FILTER mode, brewers can blend variant batches of the same beer using PARTIAL FILTERS into a single UNI tank. Before merging, all cost and production data is readily available, giving you full insight into the process. This feature is particularly useful for merging potent fruited kettle-sours with portions of their unfruited base to create a smoother, more market-friendly final product. This can also be done in BBT mode, offering flexibility in production.
The benefits of Beer30’s brewery management software extend further, providing advanced tools for barrel-aged beers. For example, if you divide an imperial stout into multiple barrels—some bourbon, some brandy—and rest half of the beer on different confectionery-inspired ingredients to create a barrel-aged pastry stout, Beer30 allows you to track every detail. You can calculate costs and project outcomes before filling barrels and adding adjuncts during the aging process.
After a barrel-sampling session helps determine the ideal blend, Beer30’s brewery software can handle the complex calculations for secondary blends or leftover beer marked as a loss. This comprehensive approach to barrel aging, blending, and back-blending makes Beer30 an essential tool for managing the complexities of modern brewing operations.
Barrel Aging in Beer30 allows you to take quality notes, add ingredients and beers to barrels, and blend different barrels into tanks.
Beyond Beer: Bucha30
The science of Beer30 is the backbone of our spinoff interface, Bucha30. Launched in 2020, it quickly proved itself a valuable tool for hard-kombucha manufacturers. Its split-batch and merging features are particularly valuable to these operations, where adding multiple fruits to split batches of base products and combining them to create complex, balanced end products is even more prevalent than the brewing industry. This becomes increasingly complex in the real-world as kombucha brewers will brew multiple times into the same mother tanks and continuously split-batch into separate smaller tanks.
Whereas the majority of fruited and spiced beers incorporate one adjunct, hard kombuchas often include two or more to produce a uniquely flavorful offering capable of standing out from the competition on retail shelves. But no matter how many ingredients you throw at Bucha30 (or Beer30, for that matter), the software will generate accurate projections that brewers, owners, operations professionals and the accounting department can all count on as they strive for success in an increasingly competitive marketplace where every bit of fiscal discipline and planning matters.
Variations in Bucha30 incorporate all costs from the mother tank starter into multiple FVs / BBTs/ UNI tanks.
Whether Beer or ‘Bucha, You Can Count on Us!
As with all things Beer30 and Bucha30, our simple user interface is the key. Brewing can feel like rocket science sometimes, but the tools your brewery relies on don’t need to.
Our systems allow a brewery to be fully flexible and make changes in real-time – meaning that if you need to adjust a tank’s contents or volume based on sales projections or forecasting, you can do it on the fly, which, let’s face it, has become a way of life for brewers in the modern era. But that’s OK, because we’ve got your back!
With our brewery management software, beer (and bucha) quality and overall efficiency are tracked on a batch-number-by-batch-number basis for easy traceability. For example, merging Batch 101 of a hazy triple IPA with Batch 102 of that same hazy IPA infused with strawberries will result in a new batch number: Batch 101+102, so there’s no guesswork as to the identity, composition or origins of that batch.
No brewery software is better equipped to provide what we can in this—and many other—areas. We’re understandably proud of what we’ve built and love talking about it. In fact, we’d love to talk about it with you. If you’re up for a conversation, fill out the contact page and we’ll send you more information about Beer30 or Bucha30.
Brandon Hernández is a contributing writer for The 5th Ingredient. He is an award-winning journalist and founder of San Diego Beer News LLC, an all-in-one online resource on San Diego’s craft-beer scene. Over the past 14 years, his brewing-industry reporting has been featured in dozens of national and regional magazines, newspapers and websites, as well as on television, radio and podcasts. He spent nearly a decade providing marketing services as an employee for high-profile craft breweries Stone Brewing, AleSmith Brewing and Societe Brewing, has authored and co-authored multiple books, and continues to provide freelance marketing services to companies in and around the beer industry. He can be reached via email
As we’ve discussed before, managing raw material inventory—such as yeast—is essential for maximizing the efficiency and profitability of any brewery.
When thinking about inventory, most brewers picture stacks of hop boxes in the cold room or grain sacks by the mill. Monitoring these everyday ingredients is crucial, especially when using a powerful brewery software like Beer30. But at Beer30, we go beyond just tracking the basics.
Our team has dedicated significant time to improving how brewers manage beer's most vital and variable ingredient: yeast. Beer30 brewery software enables breweries to track yeast inventory, performance, and viability in a customizable way that suits individual operations, setting it apart from other tools.
Here’s How Beer30 Brewery Software Enhances Yeast Management:
Cost-Tracking Customization
Tracking the cost of hops, malt, and adjuncts is straightforward—purchase, use, and adjust inventory until it depletes. However, yeast is a more complex resource to manage since it can be used across multiple batches of beer.
With Beer30, brewers can choose their preferred method for calculating yeast costs. You can either write off the cost upfront, spread it across the batches it’s applied to, or wait until the yeast reaches the end of its productive life. Our brewery software offers the flexibility to manage yeast costs in a way that fits your operations.
Flexibility for Breweries of All Sizes
We designed Beer30 to be an adaptable brewery management software for breweries of any size. Whether you’re a small craft brewery or a large-scale operation, Beer30’s yeast tracking system is flexible enough to accommodate your specific needs.
With multiple approaches to yeast cost tracking, our brewery software ensures that you have the tools to manage resources in the most efficient way for your business, aligning with your unique accounting systems and operational requirements.
The Beer30 Yeast Dashboard shows the details of all yeast inventory that you have available to pitch, harvest and propagate.
Keeping Tabs on an Unpredictable Staple
Yeast labs use innovative technologies which make their strains stronger and more reliable. However, it still requires more oversight than other ingredients in beer. Yeast can surprise you more than any other ingredient in the brewing process. Sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse!
With Beer30 brewing software, brewers do more than keep up with yeast inventory. They can record the results of yeast analysis which includes: cell counts, viability, generation and performance history. More importantly, they can add as many additional fields as they want to track with our custom fields module!
Brewers and staff will be able to add in custom fields and metrics like cell counts, generations, and viability as it is brought in or harvested from a tank.
Using our brewery management software to track yeast inventory by lot also becomes handy in worst-case scenario situations. For instance, if your yeast provider issues a product recall, the backtracking of every batch potentially impacted is quick and easy. Therefore, you can react instantly to nullify the threat and account for potential loss.
Planting and Nurturing Yeast
Yeast is unlike any other primary beer ingredient because each pitch equates to a new chapter in an often long story in its history. A history that covers multiple beer styles and many months bringing each beer to life.
Beer30 is the only brewery software on the market that takes this complex story and turns it into a powerful tool for managing yeast. Our beer software uses genealogy charts to build visual representations as it is automatically tracked through every batch of beer it touches. The entire history of your yeast inventory is searchable and filterable to make the tool even more powerful.
Use Beer30 software to generate yeast genealogy trees that are filterable and searchable by brand, batch, dates and yeast strain.
The branches of these trees include the triumphant chapters in your yeast’s story. For example, you can log stalled fermentations that require an additional pitch or any number of anomalies that may occur.
The Beer30 genealogy trees show you how each parent and child node are interconnected for true traceability.
Beer30 unique brewery software keeps track of yeast’s origin story.
Not all of the yeast a brewer uses comes from a company like White Labs, Lallemand or Wyeast. One brewery will provide it to another. Our brewery software notes the source of intra-brewery pitches and track its performance at your brewery.
We also understand that many brewers like to mix and match different strains in beers! Brewers can do yeast substitutions and add in different variations from different brinks or pitches while knocking out a beer. This also shows up in the genealogy trees!
In Beer30, brewery software, you can do yeast substitutions dynamically in either Brew or Ferment mode.
We Treat Yeast like the Vital Ingredient It Is
Yeast plays arguably the most important role in the production of beer or, more importantly, quality beer. Therefore, it must be regarded and monitored in a significant way. But all too often, it isn’t. Its dynamic nature leads brewers and brewery management software developers to throw up their hands instead of attempting to track it. This creates a major blind spot that hurts a brewery’s operation.
At Beer30, we understand the challenges of tracking yeast costs and performance. In order to help you save time, increase profits, and brew more beer, our team developed the best brewery management software devoted to fermented beverages to help brewers overcome these monotonous challenges.
Do you want to know more about how we can help you track and manage yeast inventory and utilization at your brewery? We’d love to discuss it with you. Schedule a FREE demo today!
Brandon Hernández is a contributing writer for The 5th Ingredient who provides freelance marketing services to companies in the beer industry. You can reach Brandon via email.
People often ask us - 'how did Beer30 come to be?'
'Where did you get the idea?'
The answer is pretty simple.
Our team members have 15+ years of experience working at, consulting for, and providing services for breweries!
We know what it’s like to have to rely on paper logs. We know it’s essential to track each and every ingredient and all Cost of Goods Sold.
And most importantly, we know how valuable this data is for your daily business operations.
Brewers were in need of a software that intuitively tracked their brewery production - as well as inventory management, brew log & fermentation data, finished goods inventory, accounting integration, and sales & distribution.
So that’s how we started - by designing a brewery management software that started with our experiences but has grown with feedback from all of our customers.
1. Brewing Software made with the brewer in mind
This is the center of everything. It is essential for you, the brewer and your love of crafting a quality, consistent, and profitable product, each and every time.
We understand what it takes to work in a brewery and to build something from the ground up. When we developed our software, we focused on the areas that mattered to you, the brewer - as you are brewing and planning the beers.
Our software is centered around your processes in the brewhouse from fermentation to packaging.
And since we know that no two breweries are exactly the same, all process inputs are entirely customizable by the brewer!
Beer30 ensures that the processes you use to create a quality product, every time are logical, and easy to use.
We started with the actual brewery process (the base system) and then built out the system from there.
2. A seamless experience from grain-to-glass
Many brewery software systems promise a seamless experience from start-to-finish… from grain-to-glass… but we actually deliver.
Beer30 is modular in design, this means you can start with the base system and then build out and expand into what you need as your business grows -- or you can start with all the bells and whistles to support your current model/brewery size.
This modular approach means it is critical that each component when added on, continues to ensure everything works as a whole. It is important to us that you can easily transfer from the brewery process, to lot traceability, to sales traceability, to sensory and quality, and back again - without becoming frustrated with any step along the way.
You shouldn’t need to grab the spreadsheets out again in frustration that things are not coming together when driving software. We know how important it is for your management reports to sit side by side with your brewery processing information to ensure that all data you need to track your performance is housed together.
Additionally, we want you to have everything you need at your fingertips - whether you are working from a tablet, desktop, or from your phone!
3. Quick ROI - Save time and money with Beer30
Time -- the one thing none of us seem to have enough of on a daily basis.
That - and, cash, in many cases!
While we can’t extend the day beyond 24 hours, we can assist you to maximize those 24 hours via improved processing - saving you both time and money.
This could be as simple as connecting your accounting software to your brewery software (we currently connect to both Xero and QBO). Or it might be something more complex like allowing you to quickly prepare your USA Brewers Report of Operations or AUS/NZ excise tax reports within a click of two buttons for start and end date!
As a cloud-based system, your team can quickly access what they need, wherever they might be, to help with the decision-making processes in real time. We are device and platform agnostic, so you don’t need anything special to work with our software.
4. Get up and Running on the Same Day
As data advocates, we firmly believe that quality data input leads to exceptional results. When designing our brewery software, Beer30, we focused on creating a system that is easy, reliable, and fast to set up—so you can start analyzing your brewing processes almost immediately.
That’s why we offer a quickstart onboarding process. After just one 60-minute startup session, you’ll be up and running with Beer30. And the best part? It’s completely free!
We understand the importance of having your entire team proficient with the brewery software. It’s not enough for just one person to know how to use the system—everyone should be able to navigate it effectively. This ensures your brewery can fully leverage the software’s capabilities from the start.
A fast, successful onboarding experience helps your team embrace the new system quickly, allowing you to access meaningful data sooner. This is one of the most frequent points of positive feedback we receive—how quickly new users can get up and running with Beer30.
Many brewers stick with outdated systems for too long, often recalling the difficulties of transitioning to them in the first place. There’s also the fear that learning new software will be time-consuming, leading to resistance and a fallback to spreadsheets. However, our clients who have made the switch to Beer30 quickly realized their fears were unfounded and were impressed by the fast results.
5. 24-7 Support you can Count on
Of course at the end of the day with any brewery software system it is the ongoing support, upgrades, and reliability that people want on a daily basis.
This is where we believe we excel over the competition -- you work weekends & holidays… so do we!
Our promise of a seamless experience extends to our attitude to customer support.
You work beyond the normal 9-5, and so do we!
With customers all over the world, our support regime follows the sun.
We know many of you work crazy hours and so if you have questions at those times, we understand how important it is to be able to access experts when you need them.
We also regularly communicate to our current customers updates via our software, email, WhatsApp group chat, and Facebook group the “Beer30 Legends” to keep you aware of what we are working on and where we are headed, but more importantly, to listen to what you are working on and where you are headed.
The 5th Ingredient team is 100% focused on our customers.
Find out for yourself
We all know - brewers are often juggling ten different problems at any one time.
You need to track so much. Brewery software can help you be more efficient, enabling you to #BrewMoreBeer and ultimately #BrewBetterBeer.
If you’ve been reading all these (very kind!) words from our customers and resonating with their problems - get in touch.
Here at The 5th Ingredient we are incredibly excited to announce our launch of Bucha30 - the first brewery management software specifically designed for kombucha brewers.
That’s right - you can stop using that generic brewery management software or maker, and start using a program that is tailored to fit your distinct needs as a kombucha brewer.
And we know it will meet your needs - because we designed it alongside someone just like you.
Dr Hops Kombucha Beer is a pioneer in the high alcohol content kombucha industry. Their mission is to craft health-conscious, eco-friendly, vegan alcoholic beverages and pride themselves on being completely transparent about their process and ingredients.
To ensure their beverages meet the highest standards, they sometimes do things ‘the hard way’ rather than the simplest way - to avoid having to compromise on their standards.
Our The 5th Ingredient CEO, Pulkit K. Agrawal, says Bucha30 has unique features that set it apart from other software packages.
‘A lot of kombucha brewers have been using standard brewery management systems to track their accounting and inventory,’ he says.
‘But Bucha30 goes into much more detail. Being able to track what’s happening inside the mother tank - and the associated cost of harvesting the SCOBY is a real game changer.’
But we don’t expect you to just take our word for it!
We sat down with Dr Hops Co-Founder & Brewmaster, Tommy Weaver, for a debrief, to hear what he has to say about Bucha30 - and how it has helped him.
What’s Happening in your Mother Tank?
Bucha30 has a feature that allows the kombucha brewer to track the quality of the mother tank and understand the health, genealogy, and costs of your SCOBY.
Tommy says this was a real game changer for his business.
‘Having the history of that continuous brew right there, being tracked at all times is invaluable. I can see every action that’s been done with it and the information is easy to read.’
‘When you have a continuous brew it’s easy to let it go for a couple of weeks. But when you have this software tracking its quality, you can see the data and it encourages you to take action.’
‘And it links with inventory and accounting, as I can see the associated cost of harvesting the SCOBY and repitching the SCOBY.’
Inventory Tracking of Base Sugars and Tea
Being able to specifically track your base system takes the hard work out of monitoring your sugar and tea levels.
It keeps your inventory up to date and your data on your recipes all in one place.
Tommy says the software gives them all the information they need to know about the core tea and core sugar for their base recipe.
‘Bucha30 also makes it really easy to go back and look at brews - and do analysis of flavors and taste and how it fermented out.’
‘It encourages us to constantly look at ways to increase quality and figure out what’s working - and what’s not.’
Tommy was having to keep all this data in binders and spreadsheets. But when he opened a second location, he realized this was taking up too much time - and leaving too much room for human error.
‘I can’t be in two places at once. I needed to see the data from both locations in one spot.’
Keeping it User Friendly
At the 5th Ingredient, our ethos is to create systems that are user friendly - and designed to meet our customers' needs in a way that makes sense to them.
Tommy says he looked at other accounting systems on the market - but they were overbuilt, overpriced, and weren’t customized for the kombucha brewer.
‘I looked at several brewery management software systems, but they provided a heap of information I didn’t need and were really expensive to onboard. We were a start up, so it didn’t make sense for us.’
‘I met Pulkit at a craft beer convention back in April 2018, and he was chatting about his idea for Beer30 and I thought - that’s exactly what I need.’
‘It tracks all the essential information and presents the data in a way that is easy to understand.’
‘Because we had all this data in our system, when we hired a CFO to take care of all our accounting and cost projections, there it was ready for them to dive in. It saved us countless hours of handing over and going through the information.’
A few months ago, Tommy and The 5th Ingredient team sat down and outlined a game plan to take the current Beer30 system, and revamp it to become their next vertical integration - Bucha30.
Tommy says the system has helped them see where they are making savings and where they are overspending.
‘Before Bucha30, we didn't have great data on our costs per brew - it just wasn’t easy to ascertain how much things were costing per unit. Now we can track this in a sophisticated way and compare it against our profit margins and other costs.’
Let’s Make Great Kombucha
Our The 5th Ingredient COO, Ryan Allis, says the partnership with Dr Hops was an integral part of creating a software that is completely focused on the kombucha brewer.
‘Bucha30 was definitely on our product roadmap, but Dr Hops showed us how much they really needed something like this,’ says Ryan.
‘Tommy really helped us to dig deeper. Trialing and testing the software at Dr Hops means we have done the hard work to ensure that Bucha30 meets the many and varied needs of the kombucha brewery, as well as anticipate potential issues before they arise,’ he said.
We believe in always being there for our customers. We don’t just hand you the system and walk away. The 5th Ingredient team is with you for each step.
‘One thing I know I’ll struggle to find anywhere else is the responsiveness of The 5th Ingredient team,’ says Tommy.
‘If I have a question and I’m sweating it out at 10 o’clock at night, stressing about a problem - they are there. I don’t know how much sleep they get! But the response time is generally 15 - 20 minutes.’
‘There really isn’t anything that can replace the value of this kind of service.’
To read more about Dr Hops Kombucha Beer and what they're about - visit their website.
To get in touch with us about Bucha30 - or to just have a chat! - contact us.
Bucha30 will make its public debut at the 7th Annual KombuchaKon, September 17th-18th, 2020. KombuchaKon is the largest conference and trade show for the craft kombucha industry, and is hosted by Kombucha Brewers International (KBI), the trade association for commercial kombucha brewers. This will be the first year that KBI will be bringing the conference to a virtual platform and features a special track dedicated to Hard Kombucha. Key presentations in the track include a statistical overview on the growth of the Hard Kombucha segment by SPINS, the impact of Hard Kombucha on the craft beer industry, how to brew Hard Kombucha by Boochcraft and a roundtable of experienced Hard Kombucha producers including Dr. Hops, Lazy Beach Brewing & Local Roots. For more information on Virtual KombuchaKon 2020 or to sign up to attend - visit their website.
