The Manufacturing Intelligence System For Breweries and Distilleries
PLAATO Insights turns scattered production data into faster decision at the hands of the operators, from fermentation monitoring to root cause analysis
Density is the clock of the fermenter. It tells you where a batch actually is in the process, whether it’s tracking to plan, and when it’s really finished, not when the schedule says it should be. It’s also the dataset most breweries are missing: fermenters are commonly instrumented for temperature and pressure, but inline density meters are rare, so that clock usually isn’t running at all.
The PLAATO Fermentation Sensor closes that gap, measuring density and temperature continuously and automatically, straight into PLAATO Insights. You see real-time gravity and temperature against setpoint for every tank, not just at the last manual round. If a fermenter drifts off target, you know when it happens, not hours later.
The PLAATO Fermentation Sensor mounts straight onto the tank through a standard 1.5″ tri-clamp, no bypass loop, no manual sampling. Adapters are available for DIN and other port types, so it fits tanks that weren’t originally specced for it. A T-connector lets a sample valve share that same port, so you don’t need to add a second one.
The probe is 304 stainless steel, and the housing is IP67 waterproof with the lid on. It stays in place through CIP at temperatures up to 80°C, so there’s nothing to remove or reinstall between batches.
Technical specifications
The rotating arm in a mash mixer might start needing slightly more amperage over time to keep spinning at the same speed. Or it might draw a short, sharp spike instead. Both mean the same thing underneath: friction has increased, so it takes more current to do the same work. One points to gradual wear and tear. The other points to something acute, like a blockage.
PLAATO Insights catches changes like this and tells the operator, early enough to fix it before it gets worse, or to book maintenance before it causes a hiccup in production. It isn’t limited to watching amperage and vibration either. It monitors every parameter a piece of equipment already logs automatically: amperage, vibration, rotating speed, throughput, and more, across every motor, pump, tank, machine, and asset in the brewery. Most people can keep track of about six variables at a time. PLAATO Insights keeps track of thousands.
The same drift-detection approach applies to utilities instead of production equipment: for example cooling systems, CO2 recovery units, and air compressors. Usage gets tracked the same way, how much water, CO2, and compressed air a batch actually takes, not just what the meter reads once a month or year.
Energy-specific tracking uses the same method as equipment maintenance: one baseline per system, with alerts on fixed thresholds and on deviation from the baseline. On cooling, that can be amperage-to-setpoint drift: the unit needs more current, or longer, to hit the same setpoint, which flags a fouled condenser or an aging compressor before it fails or shows up on the bill. On CO2 recovery, it can be kWh per unit recovered, or pressure trending on the recovery line, since a slow pressure decay from a leak or a sticking valve usually shows up there before it moves the ratio. On air compressors, it can be kWh against delivered air and off-hours pressure decay: a pressure drop overnight or over a weekend, when nothing should be drawing air, is almost always a leak.
The data is there. It’s just scattered. Brewing watches real-time numbers on its own HMIs. The cellar team does the same on theirs. Quality logs results in spreadsheets, often complicated ones, or their own LIMS. Packaging watches whatever the line’s screen shows. Production managers look at the ERP, which usually holds little real production data at all. Every team can see its own slice in real time. Nobody sees the whole brewery at once.
For a handful of people, that’s rarely a real problem, everyone just walks over and asks. Once a brewery grows past that size, the same fragmentation turns into genuine information silos, and any question that spans more than one team takes far more effort to answer than it should.
PLAATO Insights brings all of it into one live view: HMI data from brewing and the cellar, quality results from spreadsheets and LIMS, production data from the ERP, packaging line status, and anything logged manually, updated together in real time. Put it on a screen on the floor, and brewing, cellar, packaging, quality, and management are all looking at the same picture instead of five different ones.
Batch OFL-1362 hasn’t passed diacetyl testing. Can you compare it against all other batches of the same recipe and point out the deviation compared to the average?
Batch OFL-1362 deviates from the average of this recipe on fermentation temperature: held at 72.3°F during early fermentation, against a recipe average of 68.5°F.
View the fermentation temperature dataPLAATO Copilot can make mistakes. Check important information.