Great Divide Brewing Company is a pioneering American craft brewery based in Denver, Colorado. We have been speaking with the team behind Great Divide Brewing Company about the most important aspects of running a successful brewery. Read the article and see the full interview with Great Divide here.
Great Divide Brewing Company is a pioneering American craft brewery based in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1994, they brew all sorts of exciting beer styles and have become one of the most decorated breweries in America. Great Divide is recognized for brewing some of the world’s most balanced yet assertive and flavorful beers. These beers have landed an impressive amount of acclaim, earning 18 Great American Beer Festival medals, 5 World Beer Cup awards, and 14 spots on BeerAdvocate‘s “Top Rated Beers: Colorado”.
Speaking with Operational Manager, Jeff Martin, the secret behind running a successful brewery is all about being consistent “(..) batch to batch, year to year, so when you go and grab a Titan IPA, you know that it’s going to taste like a Titan IPA every time you pick it up from the grocery store.”
According to Jeff, this is where the BeerFoss has been really helpful. “It gives us the data to dive in along the entire process to make sure that we are consistent.” he says “One of the abilities we were really missing in-house was the ability to track ABV and now we have a very robust, quick, easy system that allows us, not only to look at the whole fermentation curve but also making sure that our finished product also is finishing right where it is expected to.” He continues ”Being able to do things quickly but accurately is vital. Being given data and quick feedback is much easier than having to take time or days to get that data analyzed and sampled (somewhere else) and sometimes you miss out on the opportunity to make corrections when and if you have that data at your disposal.”
A new beer every week
Since 1994, Great Divide has brewed all sorts of exciting beer styles, constantly trying to create new fun recipes. “It’s a new beer every single week,” says Tim Batog, who is R&D Innovation Brewer at Great Divide. “We take every single day samples and out of that, I can tell if something is going to go wrong earlier, to correct the processes earlier. It has probably saved us three or four of the beers since receiving the FOSS,” he says. “Creating new recipes every week is a lot of dialing-in processes. A lot of new recipes don’t behave the same way as other recipes do and tracking that part is incredibly helpful.”
“With FOSS you have an answer, a real digital answer. It takes the guesswork out of it, which has been my favorite part about it and that’s huge for the company and myself.” Tim Batog concludes.
