THE INTERNET OF BEER

Brewing is one of the oldest crafts in the world – the first beer recipes date from thousands of years BCE. But for beer makers, from home brewers to industrial producers, technology is an increasingly vital ingredient to making the perfect ale.

Brewing involves a handful of processes that haven’t changed for decades: malting, where the enzymes in grains such as barley are activated; mashing, where those grains get milled and soaked in hot water to break them down; filtering the grains from the liquid; boiling, where the liquid is heated up with additional flavourings; and the final stage, fermentation, where the beer takes on its individual flavour profile.

And the tech behind all that? That’s largely remain unchanged too.

However, as any beer lover will tell you, there has been a massive shift in brewing over the past couple of decades, with an explosion of craft breweries expanding the types, flavours and styles of beer that drinkers can enjoy. What made that change possible was a sea change in brewing technology, as beer tech firms started to think small.

The rise of the microbrewery

Once vendors began making cutdown versions of hardware that was traditionally the province of bigger operations,