Moving from brewing into quality management

Quality management is brewing seen through records

A brewer asks whether this batch is right. A quality manager asks whether the plant can prove that every batch is right and what happens when one is not. The job covers the lab, the sensory panel, specifications, supplier approval, complaints, audits and the food safety system.

That shift in view is the whole career change. You stop owning one tank and start owning the rules every tank is judged by. In a small brewery the quality manager may also run the lab. In a large plant they may lead a team of analysts and report to the plant head, separate from production, so they can stop a release without being overruled.

The systems you will need to learn

Expect to work with some of these, depending on the size of the brewery and its customers:

• HACCP, hazard analysis and critical control points, the base of most food safety systems.
• ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 22000 or FSSC 22000 for food safety.
• FSSAI licensing and labelling rules in India, alongside state excise requirements.
• Standard methods from the ASBC or EBC for the lab.

You do not need all of them on day one. Learn HACCP first. Most breweries start there. It maps directly onto what you already do: knowing where beer can be contaminated, oxidised or mislabelled and controlling those points.

Statistics replaces instinct

A brewer can tell a tank is a bit hot from the jacket reading. A quality manager needs to know whether bitterness has been drifting upward over the last 30 batches. That needs basic statistics: mean, standard deviation and control charts.

A control chart plots a measurement batch by batch with limits usually set at three standard deviations either side of the average. A point outside the limits, or a run of points trending one way, says something has changed. It is the simplest tool in quality work and the one that most changes how a brewery runs. If you can build one in a spreadsheet, you are ahead of many applicants. Our guide on brewery quality control careers covers the lab side in more detail.

What carries over from the brewhouse

More than you might think. You know which steps are risky because you have done them. You know that a heat exchanger gasket is a classic hiding place for bacteria, that a slow transfer picks up oxygen and that a slightly high fermentation temperature shows up as esters. You can taste diacetyl, which is the buttery off-flavour that a quality manager needs to catch before it reaches a customer.

Brewers who move into quality also carry credibility. When you tell a cellar team to change a cleaning step, they listen more readily if they know you have done the job yourself.

The hard part is saying no

The toughest change is not technical. It is holding a batch when sales want it out of the door. A quality manager has to be able to say "this does not ship" to people more senior than them and back it with data. That needs a clear specification, written before the argument starts. It also needs a record of every test.

Practise now by writing specifications for your own beers: original gravity, final gravity, alcohol, bitterness, colour, pH, dissolved oxygen and the sensory profile, each with a target and a range. Once they exist, decisions stop being opinions.

How to make the move

The easiest route is internal. Volunteer for the sensory panel. Offer to run the weekly micro plating. Ask to sit in on a supplier audit or a customer complaint review. After a few months you will have real quality experience to put on your CV.

Formal training helps, especially an internal auditor course in ISO 9001 or a HACCP certificate. Some brewers also move sideways into consulting work after a few years in quality, since audits and systems are in demand.

Your first step: take your brewery's last 20 batches of one beer, put the final gravity of each into a spreadsheet and draw the control chart. What it shows you will tell you where to start.

Common questions

Do I need a science degree to move into brewery quality management?

It helps but is not always required. Brewing experience plus training in HACCP, auditing and basic statistics is a common route, especially when the move is internal.

Which quality system should a brewer learn first?

HACCP. Most breweries build their food safety system on it. It maps closely onto the risks a brewer already understands.

What is a control chart?

A chart of one measurement batch by batch, with limits usually three standard deviations either side of the average. It shows when a process has changed.

Is quality management a step away from brewing?

It is a different view of the same process. You trade owning one batch for owning the standard every batch is judged against.