Company At A Glance
Business Type
Craft Brewery
SR&ED Category
Experimental Development
Team Size
13
Scope
Pilot Brewing, Fermentation Control, Flavour Stability
Province
British Columbia
The Challenge
The brewery was developing a new line of experimental beers using non-standard ingredients, flavour additions, and modified brewing techniques. Small trial batches produced promising flavour profiles, but the results did not scale consistently into larger production runs. Some batches developed flavour drift, inconsistent carbonation, haze instability, fermentation delays, or changes in aroma intensity after packaging.
To improve repeatability, the team began developing a custom pilot-brewing and infusion setup that allowed them to test flavour additions, temperature changes, timing, and fermentation behaviour before committing to full-scale production.
What We Documented
01
Uncertainty
Uncertainty
The uncertainty was whether the brewery could create a repeatable brewing process for new flavour profiles where ingredient behaviour, fermentation activity, aroma retention, and stability after packaging were not predictable from standard brewing references.
02
Iterations
Iterations
The team tested different ingredient addition points, fermentation temperatures, yeast handling methods, infusion timing, carbonation levels, and pilot-batch equipment configurations. Some trials produced strong flavour in small batches but lost aroma after scaling. Other trials improved stability but changed the intended flavour profile or created haze and carbonation issues.
03
Knowledge Gained
Knowledge Gained
The brewery gained new process knowledge about how specific ingredients, timing, fermentation conditions, and pilot-equipment adjustments affected flavour stability, carbonation, haze, and repeatability between small and larger batches.
Results
Why This Qualified
- Required experimentation beyond standard recipe development
- Small-batch results did not predict full-scale brewing behaviour
- Flavour, aroma, haze, carbonation, and fermentation response changed unpredictably
- Custom pilot-brewing adjustments were tested to improve repeatability
- New knowledge was gained about scaling new flavour profiles into consistent production batches
