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Eastern Technical Conference​​​​​​​​​

Friday, October 23, 2016

12pm to 1pm: Registration – Please stop in and tell us you’re here! 

1pm

– Bob Seaman –

How Can We Improve Our Packaging Line Efficiency?

The presentation will provide insight as to how to set up a packaging line with respect to sizing equipment and the other factors that will determine how efficiently the packaging line can and will run.

2pm

– Alastair Pringle –
Packaging Quality: the final frontier

Packaging is the final step of the beer production process; however, it is also where the best intentions of earlier efforts can be undone.   For the brewer to be successful a number of quality control points need to be controlled before and during packaging to avoid issues such as off-flavors, exploding bottles, glass shards, regulatory compliance, and shelf life.  This presentation will review how the major issues attributable to packaging can be avoided

3pm

– Jon Larson –
Bottle Design: Bottle Design, Developments, & Light-Weighting Advancements

The presentation walks through the design process of bottle selection from the initial meeting with the client to discuss the design and concepts to the design release as a final product. The manufacture and design of plastic bottles is discussed.

4pm – District Philadelphia Briefing

4:30pm – Happy Hour – Wyndham Hotel –

6:30pm

– Welcome Reception –

Join us for dinner, drinks, and more socializing

The Irish Pōl

114 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19106

The Irish Pōl features a state-of-the-art 40-tap system, full kitchen with a phenomenal chef, shiny bathrooms, happy hour, friendly knuckleheads behind the bar, and, downstairs...The Barrel Room devoted to bourbons and other spirits.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

8am to 9am: More Registration plus coffee and pastries!

9am

– John Bryce –

The Food Safety Modernization Act – Comply or Die

In January of 2011, the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law. FSMA is the most sweeping reform in food safety in over 70 years. It is designed and aimed at preventing contamination rather than responding to it. This is the basis of why understanding as well as a practice in food safety is not only important; it is now required by law. FSMA's final rules and compliance deadlines were published in Sept 2015. In April 2015, MBAA launched HACCP training for brewery operations to help the brewing industry understand the requirements for GBPs, HACCP, FSMA, and how they all fit together.

   10am

– Levi Duncan and Josh Skinner –

Biofine Clear fining trials and findings at Champion Brewing

The purpose of the Biofine Clear trials was to optimize the use and application of the product.  Little information was available on the subject so Levi Duncan and Josh Skinner began trials at both Champion Brewing Company’s Missile Factory with its 60 bbl fermenters and Champion’s brew pub with its 6 bbl fermenters.  Process modifications as a product of our research optimized our yield, reducing cellar loss and producing a clear finished product without the use of traditional beer filtration.  Many methods of application are in use currently.  Our trials covered two unsuccessful methods and finally settled on a modification of the “Coronado Method” which is the major focus of the paper.  We will discuss in depth our application process and our results over time.

11am

– George F. Murphy –

Keg Quality: Your Beer Depends on It!

Virtually all brewers including those who sell the majority of their product on premise or in package incorporate kegs in their business to some degree. With that in mind, attention to the quality of kegs and their handling is an integral component to quality product service. This presentation will address those aspects related to keg quality brewers can actively control including: cooperage and clean/fill equipment selection, keg quality program implementation, best practices, “fill ready”/fill verification, and useful data that can be collected.

1:30pm

– Dave Scheuerman –

Aluminum Canned Craft Beer

A review will be presented covering aluminum packaging of craft beers, including the advantages, nomenclature, can and end manufacture, sales order requirements, a typical canned beer packaging line, engineering considerations, and line personnel training. Samples of the can and end manufacturing sequence will be shown.

2:30pm

– Karl J. Siebert –

Oxygen in Brewing and Packaging

Oxygen plays a number of important roles in brewing. Oxidative reactions occur during mashing; some of these form precursors of stale flavor compounds. Kettle boiling drives out oxygen (and other dissolved gasses). Wort cooling is needed to increase oxygen solubility so that aeration (or oyygenation) then provides adequate amounts of oxygen for yeast. Fermentation quickly consumes all the wort oxygen and this provides enough energy for yeast to double and then double again well after the oxygen is gone. Although much more energy is derived from oxidative than fermentative metabolism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (and S. pastorianus) ferments even in the presence of oxygen as long as sugars are readily available (Crabtree effect). The conditions during fermentation lead to chemical reduction of many compounds. Among these is sulfate, which is reduced to ultimately form sulfur-containing amino acids. One of the intermediates is sulfite, which can diffuse out of the yeast cells. Sulfite is both a powerful antioxidant and combines with stale flavor aldehydes to form untasteable complexes. This reaction is reversible, so as sulfite is consumed, some stale flavor aldehydes are released from the complexes while more are produced from the remaining precursors. Brewers are careful to purge lines and equipment with CO₂ or deaerated water to minimize oxygen pickup after fermentation. However, care must be taken because the solubility of oxygen in liquid CO₂ is actually greater than that of oxygen in water. ‘Aging’ of liquid CO₂ before use reduces the oxygen content. Packaging is typically a source of oxygen that is minimized as much as possible. Bottle crown liners behave as semi-permeable membranes, allowing O₂ and N₂ to enter the package even though it is under pressure. Cans, with a longer, more torturous path (through the double seam), suffer much less O₂ ingress than bottles.

3:30pm

– Joe Hertrich –

Round Table Discussion

5pm to 7pm – Happy Hour – Wyndham Hotel –

- Conference End -

Thank you for your kind attention!

Biographical Information about our Speakers

Bob Seaman

After eight years of Instrumentation and Controls work in the Nuclear Power industry and several years of homebrewing as a hobby, Bob decided to change careers and become a professional brewer.  In the fall of 1994 Bob attended the ten-week Craft Brewer’s Apprenticeship program at the American Brewer’s Guild located in Davis, CA.  Bob served his apprenticeship at Mountain Valley Brewpub in Suffern, New York under Jay Misson.  Bob joined The Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, PA in May of 1995 as a Brewing Supervisor.  In January of 1996 he attended Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago Illinois and completed the Long Course in Brewing Science and Technology.  After graduating from Siebel Institute in March of 1996 he went on to hold numerous positions within The Lion Brewery which included Assistant Brewmaster, Plant Engineer, Packaging Manager and Director of Packaging and Engineering.  In 2004, after ten year at The Lion Brewery Bob joined SAB/Miller for three years where he held positions of Packaging Team Leader and Packaging Reliability Engineer.  While working at SAB/Miller Bob was asked to author a chapter in the MBAA’s ‘Beer Packaging’ second edition titled ‘Packaging Line Design, Control and Instrumentation’. In September of 2007 Bob joined Yuengling Brewing Company as the Plant Manager of both of their Pennsylvania facilities and is responsible for operations and capital projects to date. 

Bob holds Associates degree in Electronics Technology from Lincoln Technical Institute in Allentown, Pennsylvania an Associate’s degree in Nuclear Engineering Technology from Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania and a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration with specialization in Project Management from Colorado Technical University.  He presently resides in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania with his wife Julie and sons Christopher, Thomas, James and Andrew.    

Alastair Pringle

Alastair holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Bath, UK.  He founded Pringle-Scott LLC after working at Anheuser-Busch Inc for 25 years, where he held a number of senior technical positions including Senior Director of Brewing Research.  As well as principal consultant he is Associate Instructor in Microbiology at Maryville University and is a member of the Board of Examiners at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling.

Jon Larson

Jon Larson joined Krones in 1996.  His first 10 years were spent in the Engineering Department.  His primary role was to manage the design and construction of customized packaging equipment.  In 2006 Jon joined the Sales Department, responsible for PET Technologies.  These technologies encompass PET package blow molding machines and the division for PET Recycling.  His knowledge and expertise lies in the US PET beverage and recycling markets for the region of North America.

John Bryce

John Bryce is a brewer, entrepreneur, and lover of all things technical brewing. He built his first brewery (Blacksburg Brewing Co.) on a shoestring budget in 2002 and his career continued at several Virginia breweries, including Capitol City, Old Dominion, and Starr Hill. John Bryce graduated from Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei (VLB) in 2008. He has also worked as an independent consultant to help craft breweries launch and/or optimize operations. In 2014 he (and three other guys with day jobs) built The Lupulin Exchange to help brewers navigate the secondary hop market. John Bryce served as Technical Chair of MBAA District Mid Atlantic for many years and is currently the Technical Outreach Director of MBAA.

Levi Duncan

Levi Duncan is Director of Brewing Operations at Champion Brewing Company.  He is also a teacher at Piedmont Virginia Community College, American Brewer’s Guild Graduate, and a Member of the MBAA Mid-Atlantic District who resides in Charlottesville, VA. 

Josh Skinner

Josh Skinner is Lead Brewer at Champion Brewing Company.  He holds a B.S. in Anthropology from Radford University along with a Diploma from Siebel Institute.  He is a Member of the MBAA Mid-Atlantic District and resident of Charlottesville, VA.

George F. Murphy

George Murphy started in the brewing industry in 1991.  He has held various positions at Regional Craft Breweries, Micro-Breweries, and Brewpubs; responsible for brewery and packaging operations, staff training, raw material acquisition/management, QA/QC, product development, facility maintenance, sales and marketing.  George has been involved in 14 brewery start up projects as well as numerous expansion projects involving all aspects of system design, equipment ordering, brewery installation, and commissioning.

Since 2006 he’s held technical support positons with several allied trade companies ranging from chemical supply to complete raw material supply. At the beginning of this year George joined MicroStar Logistics as Regional Quality Manager.

George has been an active member of the Master Brewers of the Americas Association since 2000, currently serving on District New England’s Technical Committee and as West New York’s Membership Chairman. 

David J. Scheuerman CFS

David J. Scheuerman has worked with customers in the food and beverage packaging industry for over 40 years, the last 17 years with Ball Corporation as a Technical Advisor in the Quality & Customer Technical Service, Metal Beverage Packaging Div., Americas. For the past several years he has assisted many craft breweries in installing aluminum can lines and training their production line personnel.

He was the New Products Manager at Reynolds Metals, Can Division for 14 years, helping to commercialize both carbonated and liquid nitrogen pressurized non-traditional beverages in aluminum containers

David received a B.S. in Biology from Capitol University, Columbus, Ohio in 1969 and a M.S. degree in Horticulture/Food Technology from the Ohio State University in 1975.

He was a past member of the MBAA, St. Louis Chapter; has presented at the Northern California, St. Louis, and Rocky Mountain Chapters of the MBAA; is recognized as a Certified Food Scientist in the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT); and is a member of the International Society of Beverage Technologists (ISBT), where he has chaired several Technical Committees and presented many papers. Last, David has been an amateur home brewer since the early 1970’s.

Karl J. Siebert

Karl Siebert received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Penn State in 1970. He then joined the Stroh Brewery Company in Detroit, where he spent 18 years and held positions from Research Associate to Director of Research. In 1990, he joined Cornell University as Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Food Science, where he has continued to work on beverages, particularly beer. He received two MBAA Presidential Awards, and with his colleague, Penny Lynn, received the Eric Kneen Memorial Award (for the best paper in JASBC in the prior year) three times. He received the ASBC Award of Distinction in 1999 and the MBAA Award of Merit in 2011. Dr. Siebert's current research interests involve foam and haze in beverages, perception of astringency and other flavors, and the application of chemometric methods in food science. He is active as a consultant in beverage technology and chemometrics.

Joe Hertrich

Joseph D. Hertrich is the retired Group Director, Brewing Raw Materials at Anheuser-Busch, Inc.  His responsibilities included the operation of the company’s malt plants, rice mills and hop farms, and the supervision of all facilities that produced and handled brewing raw materials for Anheuser-Busch products worldwide.

Prior to joining Anheuser-Busch, Mr. Hertrich held various positions in brewing with The Stroh Brewery Company, the Pabst Brewing Company, and the Christian Schmidt Brewing Company.  In retirement, he continues to consult, write, and speak on his observations over a 50 year career in the U.S. brewing industry.

Mr. Hertrich is a member of MBAA, ASBC, Brewers Association, and the Craft Maltsters Guild.  He is also a past member of the American Malting Barley Association and the Canadian Brewing and Malting Barley Research Institute.