What is Ingredient Traceability
All breweries should have the proven ability to identify and trace all raw materials from suppliers through all stages of production to the point of despatch and where appropriate, delivery to known Distributors and Customers. Traceability needs to be tested both ways, from raw material input to finished product and delivery, but also from the Historical traceability viewpoint when identifying ingredients in a failed product or product recall situation. The problem faced by breweries is that the process is currently highly manual, and paper based. The lack of standardisation in the documentation provided by the supplier of the ingredients means that there is no simple way of tracing an ingredient using a common identifier, and so breweries must come up with their own system for this.
The Ingredient Traceability feature of iSpaniel solves this problem by tying together the asset tracing process with the brewing process by keeping an electronic record of which ingredients and equipment were used for each batch of a product. The batch of product can then be easily traced to an asset through the iSpaniel portal, whether still in the brewery or at a customer address. At present, iSpaniel only deals with traceability for products in kegs and casks which have an iSpaniel tag attached. Therefore we are unable to provide traceability for canned and bottled products as this time.
The Ingredient Traceability feature is a premium feature for iSpaniel that is licensed separately to the standard asset tracking. If you are interested in this feature, please discuss a trail with your account manager.
For instructions on how to use Ingredient Traceability, please review the Ingredient Traceability User Guide.
High Level Overview
The following steps describe the workflow of the Ingredient Traceability feature.
Ingredient Serialisation
One of the problems when it comes to tracing ingredients is that there is not standardisation amongst suppliers when it comes to serialisation of batches of ingredients or equipment used in the brewing process. If your supplier provides a unique serial number for each batch of ingredients then this can be used in iSpaniel. If not then you must come up with your own and record this on the supplier paperwork and also the brew sheet. This need not be complicated and a recommended approach is to use details of the ingredient, and the date it was delivered. For example, if this is a batch of Maris Otter barley from Haywoods which was delivered on the 5th January 2018, you would write on the brewing paperwork:
- Haywoods-MarisOtter-20180105
The same principle would apply for brewing equipment and these would be serialised too, but as they do not change as frequently, this would not need a date in the serialisation. For example:
- Fermenting-Vessel-02
Enter Ingredient and Equipment Types
When Ingredient Traceability is first enabled, you must enter the types of ingredients and equipment that you use in your brewing process. For example, malt, hops, yeast, hose, fermentation vessel, mash tun, etc.
Enter Ingredients
Before we can add details of the ingredients to a gyle, we must enter the ingredient details (type, supplier, delivery date & serial number) into iSpaniel. It is recommended that this is a back office task that is carried out after the supplier paperwork has annotated with an ingredient serial number, and before it is filed away.
Adding a Gyle
When the brew production template is filled out the details can be entered into iSpaniel. This records all of the information about the gyle such as gyle number, brew date, brewer, and the ingredients and equipment used in the brew.
Filling and Delivery
The filling and delivery process is the same as before, and details can be found in our Getting Started section.
Tracing an Ingredient
Once there are assets filled with a gyle configured for traceability, it is possible to trace individual ingredients, or equipment to the assets that contain them. It is also possible to search based on the brewer, in case this is a reason for the product recall. The Trace screen allows you to enter an ingredient or equipment serial number, or the brewers name, to display all of the assets that apply, whether at a customer premises, or in house. The asset will be displayed in the trace results, until it has been collected using iSpaniel.