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Brewery Receiving and Production

Gate 4. The brewery tests what it receives, then owns the process. Test at the boundary and at a midpoint, so a failure found after packaging can be traced back to where it entered.

Accept the incoming material​

Receiving is an inspection. Before the material enters the process:

  • Check the paperwork against the load — batch ID, the malt or extract quality report, and the gluten certificate. No matching evidence, no acceptance.
  • Check condition and seals — damage, moisture, tamper evidence, and any temperature requirement.
  • Test the incoming malt or extract for gluten as brewery material-acceptance testing.

Once brewing begins, the brewery assumes liability for that material and everything made from it. Acceptance is the last clean moment to reject a problem before it becomes finished beer.

Prevent cross-contact in the brewhouse​

A brewery that also runs gluten grain is the highest-risk handoff in the chain, because the contamination source and the gluten-free product share the same equipment.

  • Run the gluten-free product on dedicated or validated-clean equipment: mill, mash tun, kettle, lines, hoses, and packaging.
  • Where equipment is shared, control the changeover with documented cleaning and a verification step (line clearance and, where warranted, a swab or rinse test). A scheduling gap does not replace either.
  • Control shared-air and shared-tool pathways. Milling dust in particular carries gluten grain across a facility.

Test a midpoint​

Test brewhouse cast wort. This is not the release test, but if the packaged product later fails, the cast-wort result localizes whether contamination entered before or during the brewhouse, which decides whether you open a supplier investigation or a sanitation investigation.

Bard's ran this step with outside teeth. The company's operating responsibility ledger lists, as a standing production step, sending wort out for an independent gluten-free certificate: third-party verification in the middle of the chain as well as at package release. The same ledger runs gluten testing at five points: grain acceptance at harvest, malt production, brewery malt acceptance, cast wort, and package QA.

Method: a qualitative gliadin screen (for example Neogen "Alert: Gliadin," ~3 ppm gliadin ≈ 6 ppm hordein) used on a positive/negative basis, with a quantitative method (for example "Veratox: Gliadin") to quantify any positive.

Production consistency​

A worked example from Bard's practice, useful for holding a product to itself batch to batch: ~28 lb/bbl extract to a 12.0°P wort (as recorded; the two don't reconcile: 28 lb/bbl of extract works out to about 10.4 °P, and a 12.0 °P wort takes about 32.5 lb/bbl); staged hopping to ~24 BU post-fermentation; primary near 11°C to ~3.0°P; lager ~20 days; CO₂ ~5.25 (as the spec sheet recorded it, whose basis, weight or volume percent, did not survive; hold your own batches to your own stated basis); pasteurized; 4.6–4.8% vol.

These numbers were adapted from barley-beer methods and test kits. Treat them as a consistency reference to validate for sorghum, and do not compare them against other beers as absolute values. See The Reliable Mash and Water, Minerals, and pH for the process detail.

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