Out of Citra in June
Last autumn you contracted hops for the year based on the beers you were brewing then. In spring the new IPA took off and ate through one variety much faster. Another variety sits in the freezer because the beer that used it was dropped. Now you are hunting the spot market in June for a hop everyone wants, at whatever price it costs, and changing the recipe if you cannot find it.
Malt is less dramatic but just as annoying. A pallet of a specialty malt runs out mid-brew week and the base malt order was placed on memory.
Why ingredient planning drifts
Contracts, deliveries and usage live in different places. Contracts are in PDFs or emails from merchants. Deliveries arrive on delivery notes. Usage is on brew sheets. Nobody joins the recipe to the brew plan to the contract to say how much of each variety you will actually need by month.
- Hop contracts are in PDFs, not a list you can sum.
- Brew plans change monthly but contracts do not.
- Usage per brew is on paper or not recorded by lot.
- Stock is counted in the freezer by eye.
- Recipe changes are not tied back to ingredient need.
What it costs
Spot purchases at a premium, recipe changes that customers notice, hops ageing in the freezer and losing aroma, and cash tied up in stock nobody plans to use. Worst of all is the recipe you have to pause because a key variety is gone, just as it was selling well.
The planning conversation with your hop merchant each year is also harder. Without a record of what you actually used, contracting for next year is a best guess, and the same drift repeats.
An ingredients register tied to the brew plan
- Every hop and malt contract is entered with variety, amount, crop year, delivery schedule and merchant.
- Deliveries are booked in against the contract with lot numbers, from the delivery note or a photo of it.
- Recipes hold the amount of each ingredient per brew length.
- Your brew plan, whether in a spreadsheet, Breww or our vessel schedule, is read to project usage month by month.
- Usage is drawn down when a brew is logged, by lot, which also gives you traceability.
- A forward view shows, for each variety, stock plus contracted deliveries against projected need, and highlights the month where it goes short or the amount left over.
- A short monthly freezer and malt store count corrects the figures.
| Question | Before | With the register |
|---|---|---|
| How much Mosaic do we hold? | Look in the freezer | Stock by lot |
| Is it contracted for the rest of the year? | Find the PDF | Contract balance shown |
| When will we run out? | Unknown | Month highlighted |
| What is surplus? | Found at year end | Visible now |
| Which brews used this lot? | Paper search | Listed |
Planning with the numbers in front of you
You can see months ahead that a variety will run short, while there is still time to talk to your merchant or adjust the brew plan. Surplus hops are spotted early so they can go into a special or be sold on. Next year's contracting starts from real usage. Nobody has to guess the freezer's contents.
Recipe decisions get easier as well. If a new beer would use a variety you are already short of, you see it before the first brew rather than after the third, and can pick a hop you have on contract instead.
Recognise any of this?
- You have bought hops on the spot market because you ran short.
- Hops from last year's contract are still in the freezer.
- Contracts are PDFs nobody has summed.
- Brew plan changes are not checked against ingredients.
- Usage by lot is not recorded.