Could 5G and edge computing help craft a better tasting beer?

It might seem an unusual question, but it’s one that Dell Technologies is seeking to answer through a unique partnership with Exhibit ‘A’ Brewing Company, a small-batch brewery based in Framingham, Mass.

Beer brewing is a complicated and highly sophisticated process: Getting beer taste and texture just right requires delicately balancing temperature and pressure throughout boiling, fermenting and finishing. Should anything be off by just a bit (and for too long), flavors could be inconsistent or just plain bad, resulting in whole batches being thrown out.

While it’s a process thousands of years old, Dell and Exhibit A are experimenting with how advanced technologies such as intelligent sensors, 5G devices and edge computing can enhance the creation of one of world’s most beloved beverages.

“Everything you do at the edge has direct input to your business, immediately,” said Pierluca Chiodelli, Dell’s VP for engineering technology edge computing offers, strategy and execution.

Particularly in a small brewery with a constrained budget and lean staff, real-time data enables real-time insights that can modify behavior, predict and secure operations, he said. “Those data need to be acted on at the moment that they’ve been created in the place they’ve been created.”

Craft beer is burgeoning, but budget-constrained, industry

Craft breweries are known for their unique flavors and limited-edition runs. And demand for craft beer is higher than ever: Retail dollar sales of craft was $28.4 billion in 2022 and craft now accounts for 24.6% of the $115 billion U.S. beer market. Furthermore, the global craft beer market is projected to more than double from $102.59 billion in 2021 to $210.78 billion in 2028.

But at the same time as they continue to grow in popularity, craft brewers are expected to produce quality beer with much smaller budgets compared to the Budweiser and Coors brewery giants, or even mid-sized players like Harpoon or Samuel Adams.

“It’s not an easy job, it’s very laborious,” said Exhibit A’s co-founder and head brewer Matthew Steinberg. “People think ‘Oh brewing, it’s super fun all day.’ The reality is, it’s not.”

The 6,000-barrel brewery churns out 20 to 25 different beers throughout the year — with batches ranging from 1,200 to 2,400 gallons — that it sells mostly along the east coast. Most work is done manually by its roughly 20 full-time and part-time employees, Steinberg explained.

Understandably, “it’s frustrating when things don’t work right,” he said. “As a small brewery, we’re not spending tens of thousands of dollars on equipment.”

So how did the small brewery in the metrowest area of Boston come to partner with Dell? As Chiodelli explained, Dell — which has several offices in Massachusetts — held a marketing event at the brewery, and while taking a tour with his colleagues, he started to ask questions.

“It was very evident that there were main use cases that could be automated, normalized, streamlined,” he said.

[caption id="attachment_129412" align="alignnone" width="624"] Dell worked with Telit to create a dashboard that enables 24-7 temperature and pressure monitoring.[/caption]

5G and edge computing for real-time monitoring

One of the biggest challenges that Exhibit A faces is maintaining consistent flavors across its tanks; inconsistencies result when temperatures or pressure are incorrect during fermentation.

Dell partnered with the 5G Open Innovation Lab to enable automated fermentation monitoring via Dell Edge Gateway with 5G radio and ruggedized hardware. Communication device company Telit then built a dashboard to enable continual, 24-7 temperature and pressure monitoring.

Employees can access that dashboard anywhere via 5G connection to see what temperature and pressures are at any given time, and whether fermenters are in spec or out of spec, Steinberg explained. Additionally, they are alerted if temperature or pressure goes out of range.

The 6-and-a-half-year-old brewery has 15 fermenters, three of which are hooked up to these sensors. Depending on the stage of production, fermenter temperature should be anywhere between 30 and 70 degrees — during maturation, the ideal is 32 to 35 degrees; during fermentation, 68 to 72 degrees, Steinberg explained.

Now with sensors and 5G capabilities, for example, if fermenter 15 is supposed to be at 68 degrees and suddenly drops to 63 degrees, an alert goes out that “gives us the info we need to understand that there are some inconsistencies and temperature fluctuations,” he said.

From there, they can go through the troubleshooting process — cooling down, warming up, or a mixture of the two.

Previously, because the brewery was having issues with temperature fluctuations, Steinberg would have to stay late into the night or arrive early in the morning to keep an eye on things, undoubtedly “a laborious way to have quality assurance,” he said.

“Temperature and pressure were literally on analog on one digital readout inside the brewery,” said Steinberg, who will speak about the project at Dell Technologies World later this month. “There was no way to see that information offsite.”

As Steinberg noted, being able to at least monitor — if not immediately fix the problem — is a big step forward.

“Just knowing what is happening in the fermenter from offsite is a very valuable tool,” he said.

Dell adds smart cameras and sensors to help canning process

Moving forward, Dell and Exhibit A plan to tackle issues in the brewery’s canning line.

As Steinberg explained, “there’s a lot of breakage and loss on our canning line,” whether that’s a downed can, a dented can or an otherwise non-sellable one. The brewery’s canning line processes 72 cans a minute, and if just one can goes down, the operator must halt production, work backwards and identify and fix the problem.

“It’s really a scramble if you’re not on top of it,” Steinberg said. “If a can goes down, all of a sudden there are 60 cans behind it with nowhere to go.”

To mitigate this, Dell plans to integrate smart cameras and sensors that will record how the line looks when it is operating optimally, then perform anomaly detection. When a can falls over or is otherwise identified as damaged, the system will detect it and alert the operator.

All told, Steinberg said, automatic detection can help save beer, label and packaging costs as well as worker time.

“We can automatically check the quality,” Chiodelli agreed. “When the process stops, we need to find out why it stops. Right now that is pretty manual.”

How 5G and edge computing is helping the craft brewery industry

Further down the line, Exhibit A may look into connecting sensors to additional fermenters or applying pressure sensors to the brewery’s four finishing tanks (a stage in the process where carbonation and temperature are tightly tied together and must be accurate), Steinberg explained.

The bottom line is there are many possible scenarios, he said, and the partnership is prompting important discussions about processes, challenges, risks and technologies.

“The advantage of this whole project is having all these conversations and discovering these pain points,” Steinberg said.

Ideally, Chiodelli noted, the types of processes implemented at Exhibit A could be replicated elsewhere, and at a larger scale.

“There are all these small-to-medium sized businesses that have the need to transform and modernize,” he said. “If we can do that with the budget that they have, show them tangible outcomes, tangible savings, it’s a win-win.”

Steinberg agreed, saying the partnership could help the wider craft brewery community.

“I’m excited to see what this can do to improve our beer, and to improve our industry overall,” he said.

At the end of the day, though, as he humbly put it with a laugh: “It’s still just beer. When something isn’t perfect in the beer, the world keeps spinning.”