Craft Brewery Process Optimization and Yeast Program Development

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Refined Fool Brewing Company (RFB) is a Sarnia based craft brewery with two retail locations in the city of Sarnia Ontario. RFB started as a group of local Sarnia residence brewing beer from their backyard and has evolved into a 24,000 L per month operation. RFB is focused on growing and expanding on the success that it has seen in the past few years. With growth, there are growing challenges and issues. Namely, when a brewery moves out of microbrewery status it now has to compete with larger brewhouses. This requires significant advancements in not only brewing techniques but to the Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) procedures to ensure the larger volumes meet the high-quality standards needed from the distributors. Therefore, RFB is collaborating with Lambton College's Bio-industrial Process Research Centre - Technology Access Centre (BPRC TAC) to improve and optimize two areas of their operation: An optimized production process and a controlled yeast program. Many craft breweries do not have the expertise to move from small batch production to large batch in an optimized way. This leads to many quality and consistency issues during expansion and relying mostly on sensory analysis of their finished product. Having the ability to collaborate with Lambton College to test and adapt our product and process throughout its fermentation, and as a finished product, will allow RFB to be at the forefront of the craft brewing industry, ensuring our product is of the highest quality and shelf stability. The success of this project would allow RFB to grow its market share in various distribution channels knowing that its product being sent out is of the highest quality and allow RFB to expand busineses beyond Sarnia to the rest of Ontario and potentially export markets as well.