Two brews, one empty tank
The whiteboard in the brewhouse says FV3 is free on Thursday. The head brewer booked a brew for Thursday. Then the lager in FV3 needed another week of conditioning, the brite tank was full because the canning slot moved, and Thursday's wort had nowhere to go. You either delay the brew or crash a beer that was not ready.
The board is a snapshot. It shows what is in each vessel and a rough date, written in a hurry and rubbed out by a sleeve.
The chain nobody can see on a board
A fermenter is free only when the beer in it has moved on, and it moves on only when a brite tank or a packaging slot is ready for it. Each beer has its own timings: a pale ale might be ready in a couple of weeks, a lager takes much longer. Cleaning and CIP take time between fills. Change any link and every date after it moves.
- Fermentation and conditioning times differ by recipe.
- Tank sizes limit which brews can go where, and double brews need a big vessel.
- Brite tanks and packaging slots gate when a fermenter empties.
- Mobile canning dates are booked weeks ahead and do not flex.
- The board has no memory, so nobody sees the knock-on.
The cost of a bad tank plan
Brews get pushed back, which pushes back sales you promised to the trade. Beer is packaged early or late to free a vessel. The head brewer spends evenings redoing the plan in their head. Growth is harder too, because you cannot tell whether another fermenter would help or whether the bottleneck is really the brite tanks.
The trade feels it last. A pub that was promised the seasonal for a certain weekend gets it a week late, or gets a different beer, and your sales team spends the week apologising for a planning problem that started on a whiteboard.
The vessel schedule we build
- Every vessel set up with its capacity and type: fermenters, unitanks, brites, conditioning tanks.
- Each recipe holds its typical fermentation, conditioning and cleaning times, which you can adjust per batch.
- Planned brews are dragged onto a timeline and the tool shows which vessels will be free and big enough.
- Packaging slots, in-house or mobile canning, are on the same timeline, so a brite cannot be planned full on a canning day with nowhere to go.
- When a batch runs long, you update one date and the knock-on to later brews is highlighted at once.
- A tablet view in the brewhouse replaces the whiteboard, showing today and the next few weeks.
- If your brewery software already has a tank view, we build on its data and add only the planning it lacks.
| Question | Whiteboard | Vessel schedule |
|---|---|---|
| What is in FV3? | Yes | Yes |
| When will FV3 be free? | A guess | Calculated from the batch |
| Can we brew a double on the 12th? | Ask the head brewer | Shown directly |
| What moves if the lager runs long? | Nobody knows | Highlighted |
| Is the bottleneck fermenters or brites? | Argued about | Visible over months |
Planning brews with confidence
The head brewer sets brew dates knowing a tank will be free. Sales can see when a beer will be packaged. When something runs long, the whole team sees what moves and decides together. After a few months you have a record of how full each vessel really was, which is what you need before buying another one.
Recognise this?
- The tank plan lives on a whiteboard or in one person's head.
- Brews have been delayed because a vessel was not free.
- Beer gets packaged early to make room.
- Canning dates and tank plans are kept in different places.
- You are not sure whether you need more fermenters or more brites.