Food & Beverage Asia June/July 2020

62 FIRST LOOKS
Siemens
Cloud-based app for microbreweries
When the yeast consumes the sugar to
produce alcohol, that is when the flavour is
developed. It is when beer becomes beer.
Australian craft brewers are passionate
about brewing, not industrial operational
technology.
In this market, Deacam, an Australia original
equipment manufacturer (OEM) which
provides automated brewing equipment
and solutions to microbreweries, was
looking to differentiate itself. Leonie Wong,
responsible for vertical sales for food and
beverage for Siemens Australia, and Rex
Chen, Solutions Architect for Siemens, met
with Deacam and their customers – the
microbreweries.
Wong explained, “The beer must go
through a temperature behaviour over
several weeks. For a brewery, it is critical
to ensure that they can replicate that
temperature behaviour time and time
again, because that is what creates a
consistent flavour.”
Once it was understood that data around
fermentation is a priority, MindSphere
was identified to start creating a solution
tailored to the requirements and budged
of craft brewers.
In the previous systems of temperature
capture that the brewers were using, the
drift in the temperature range was too
large. With MindSphere, the temperature
data is digitised at the point of capture
and added to application. What the team
found was that this allows the brewers to
track and control the fermentation vessel
temperature.
The solution also provides historical data,
so brewers can identify a temperature
profile across historical batches, allowing
Callum Reeves, Co-founder and Co-owner of KAIJU! Beer, with Leonie Wong of Siemens looking at the screen with
the data allowing the brewers to more precisely track and control the fermentation
them to locate and replicate their “perfect
batch” in the future. The application
contextualises the data, to allow brewers
to know what is going on and make better
decisions. This also means that when new
equipment and tanks are added, it is a
plug-and-play process, making it easier
to expand operations.
“Deacam placed a lot of trust in us, giving
us open access to their customers, KAIJU!
Beer and others,” Wong said. “To have that
triangular conversation – with Siemens,
the OEM, as well as the end-user, the
brewery itself – that is a valuable thing.”
With the feedback Deacam received from
their customers, the Siemens team was
able to make a complete MindSphere
application for the fermentation
process called Fermecraft. Deacam now
standardised their full control cabinet
design using Siemens. Meanwhile, the
application is still evolving and expanding
to include features beyond fermentation.
She continued, “Over the last nine or
10 years, we have seen the Australian
craft brewing sector grow from about
12 breweries to approximately 600, and
there are a number of OEMs that supply
this market. We are seeing this kind of
tailor-made approach to new business and
innovation as a new opportunity.”
For Wong, asking the right questions is
what made the project successful. At times,
both Deacam as well as the breweries
themselves were not sure what they
wanted and trying to define an accurate
user requirement specification came down
to the team’s ability to just sit down faceto-face
with all the stakeholders and ask
quality questions.
Chen concluded, “We are moving towards
an agile based project execution, where
the idea is really about trying something
quickly, something that is affordable and
painless, to make sure that there is value
and the customer is getting what they
want, and then scaling from there.
“Even for larger customers, we need to
think in a way that is nimble.” ■
FOOD & BEVERAGE ASIA JUNE / JULY 2020