Introduction

The brewing industry has always straddled the fence between innovation and legacy; artisanal craftsmanship and replicated scale. But today’s brewery producers are facing challenges that go far beyond the limits of their brewhouse. Rising raw material prices, unpredictable consumer demand, high pressure to meet sustainability goals, and increasing expectations to maintain consistency of quality mean that breweries simply cannot afford inefficiencies. Enter digital twins—not to replace the experienced brewer, but as a reliable adjunct.

A brewery digital twin creates a platform for manufacturers to simulate and visualize their complete production line from raw ingredient inbound to packaging. There is real value in identifying a potential fermentation issue several hours before it impacts a batch, or testing new recipes in a virtual space without the cost of wasting hops, malt, or energy. Digital twins promise this level of potential in beer manufacturing.

Hexa Coder is focused on tailoring digital twins for actual brewery environments. Through the integration of IoT, predictive analytical tools, and interactive dashboards, Hexa can provide brewers with insight into what is taking place and have an idea of what is going to take place. 

Brewings: The Importance of Digital Twins

For breweries, that level of foresight is entirely invaluable. When comparing a brewery digital twin versus a standard SCADA system (or basic dashboard with a few production stats), a brewery digital twin becomes a living, breathing mirror of your plant floor. Every single sensor reading -- temperature, pressure, pH, dissolved oxygen, etc. -- goes directly into the twin, and the twin continuously runs simulations so you can see not just what is happening, but what is likely to happen next.

This predictive ability allows brewers to go from reactive firefighting to proactive decision-making. Instead of discovering that a valve jammed between the end of production and end of shift, the twin identifies anomalies early and recommends corrective actions. Rather than making assumptions about a scaled process change or recipe alteration from pilot batch to full production, brewers can virtually trial it with zero waste.

Hexa Coder makes this practical by building brewery specific dashboards that combine process spectrum simulation with interactive 3D visualization. This allows engineers and brewers engaging 3D representations of their tanks, valves, pipelines, and bottling lines without sifting through data streams. You can troubleshoot faster, train quicker and shop more accurately.

More yield, repetitive flavours, and less downtime are the result – the digital twin provides breweries with control and clarity which is what every brewer wants.

Grand Scale Brewing Twins in Operation

Pineios Brewery (Greece) – Intelligent Scaling

Pineios Brewery is a mid-sized Greek brewery grappling with the age-old question of how to handle demand, growth, and capacity without the serious capital investment required to purchase new fermenters, packaging machinery, etc. The answer came when their existing packaging supplier, alongside their integrated digital solutions provider Index, worked to build and deploy a brewery-focused digital twin; in their case, a digital reproduction of the operation on the brewing and packaging line. The twin mapped the brewing and packaging lines at a very granular level, showing Pineio's ways to capitalize on opportunities in the brewing and packaging process from mistakes, unnecessary bottlenecks that only presented themselves at full throttle during peak runs, etc. By capturing sensor data and simulating throughputs, capacity was increased by 12% without the need for additional brewing or packaging equipment. But the practical analysis did not stop there, the digital twin-level operation also provided ways to standardize recipes from batch-to-batch so that quality was guaranteed across both the flagship lager and the seasonal craft line that regularly changed heads of flavoring hops from batch-to-batch. For a regional brewery competing to establish its brand against global players, the intelligent scaling was a major differentiator for their brewing performance.

Heineken – Energy Twin Brewing Efficiency

As one of the largest consumer products companies globally, Heineken's scale means that even the slightest improvements in performance and efficiency have a global impact. Heineken agreed to work with a number of industrial engineers to design a digital energy twin to record how and where a brewery consumed utilities. It was discovered that as much as 70% waste consumption of utilities could be traced to temperature control systems, which existed on most larger heating and cooling systems.With this knowledge in hand, Heineken was able to optimize heat recovery, tweak cycle times, and manage energy demand more effectively. The result was not just lower utility bills; it produced massive CO₂ savings, too, thereby supporting Heineken's lofty sustainability objectives. The twin basically provided a framework for how to convert invisible waste into visible opportunities while giving engineers authentic levers for reducing the environmental impact of brewing in a manner that neither impacted beer quality nor introduced time delays in production processes.

Radeberger Gruppe – Managing Production Across Sites

Radeberger Gruppe, Germany's largest privately owned brewer, operates in 14 different locations, each with distinct production and supply chain variables. When manage-individual jobs began to overwhelm their workforce and materially increase the manufacture of finished goods at one site while negatively impacting the turnover of finished goods at another, Radeberger decided to take action. Radeberger implemented a supply chain digital twin or an aggregate of the real-time brewing, logistics, and inventory data from their entire footprint, all 14 locations. Coordination was made possible, as managers were now able to simulate the use of distribution, know when a fluctuation was about to demand a shift, and dynamically adjust production schedules. The consequences were better use of stock, lower downtime, and scheduling smooth deliveries across the large German beer market. Most optimally, the system increased customer service, in that retailers and distributors received fresher beer, quicker, and with better timing problems.

Behind the Scenes: How Simulation Software Fuels Digital Twins

When we talk about digital twins, we are not just talking about data collection—we are talking about data interpretation using advanced simulation software. Most traditional simulation software, whether thermal models or heat transfer simulation software, or software to model structural stress, either do not exist outside of the lab or academic research. Further, they act alone, producing unique models that do not change despite ongoing changes in the "real world" happening every second of every day in a brewery. Digital twins eliminate this distinction by integrating simulation models with real-time data capture to create models that are constantly evolving and automatically updating digital twins of brewing processes.

In brewing specifically, this approach allows visualizing and optimizing each stage of production. Having consideration for a mash tun, with simulation of this vessel you could examine alternative grain compositions, and water temperatures without running the risk of having a bad batch. With regard to wort cooling, heat exchange modeling that helps identify product loss was significant in saving both energy and cost. If optimizing fermentation, which using simulation became much more involved where actual pH, temperature, and yeast excellents, could be monitored in real-time and where the model would predict the appropriate time to shift to the next fermentation stage. Each brew leads involve subtle shifts in variables that contribute to stable formulations of carbonation curves, and foam stability,all of which can be simulated and optimized. There are even more examples where, with simulation technology, formulated beers and temperature profiles will lead to a consistent sensory experience!

Visualization is another piece of the puzzle. Once complex processes that were viewed through static spreadsheets and SCADA dashboards are now being simulated in 3D immersive models with intuitive interfaces as digital twins. The brewmaster can walk the plant floor with their tablet, look at the digital twin and see the exact tank conditions that are happening and could also simulate "what-if" scenarios--like if the fermentation temperature dropped 2°C, what the impact would be on the alcoholic yield.

Hexa Coder has even further enhanced these capabilities by making immersive tools--WebGL dashboards, immersive interactive overlays, and simulation testing environments, that allow users to feel like they are running their own pilot plant in real time.  This experience allows for decision making that is more tangible, less intuitive-driven, and most importantly more profitable. To summarize, simulation software is the engine of digital twins that take the chaos of raw brewery data and make it into clear, visual, and actionable insights that drive consistency and growth.

Key Benefits of Digital Twins for Predictive Maintenance and Beyond

Early Detection of Anomaly

Digital twins are like a system that follows everything operator-controlled, and reports on anomalies prior to failure (in other words, they see all the small changes—lower fermentation pressure, the steady drop in cooling rates, unanticipated shifting of pH, etc.—and indicate an issue immediately). The brewer does not wait to hear alarms or decides to check on it; the brewer is given advance notice to address the issue before the product's quality and integrity (not to mention equipment reliability) is compromised.

Maximized Uptime

According to most brewers, unplanned breakdowns of equipment are the biggest cost in beer manufacturing. Digital twins help brew houses to plan necessary supervisory maintenance during forecasted down periods, which allows continuous operation. This allows the brewery to predict next needs of equipment, plan maintenance, while allowing continued operations (no significant dips in production)--and the opportunity to maximize available tanks and increase throughput easily. This creates a more efficient and reliable cycle of production, quantification of distribution, and satisfaction of customer demand.

A Factual Leaner Cost of Maintenance

Without the digital twin, regular scheduled maintenance on machines would mean conventional maintenance based on predictable maintenance needs can move forward only when the maintenance is required. The ownership of seeing the details of wear and performance occurring in real time allows for abnormal "use" of a piece or process to be engaged. When a stoppage of events because replacement for a part didn't work or stop any down time, an organization would only have issues when the parts went unrepaired, leaving a scenario to spend money on needed repairs. Breweries can use digital twin technology to either replace or repair even parts based on the actual activity they see happening. It reduces unnecessary time to repair something for labor, and allows maintenance more time for house keeping and lets operations stay more agile.

Maximized Uptime

Unplanned breakdowns are potentially the most costly problems facing beer production facilities. Digital twins provide breweries with the opportunity to schedule maintenance around planned downtimes and perform predictive maintenance while operations continue. Digital twins also allow breweries to identify what equipment will require servicing, and pinpoint locations that minimize interruptions, optimization of tank access, and increase throughput. This cycle allows for leaner, more reliable production cycle and provides consistency to customers.

Longer Component Life Expectancy

The brewery produces components (i.e., pumps, heat exchangers, etc.) that go through a number of stress and temperature cycles—but all components exhibit some type of wear. Digital twins allow for the establishment of predictive life expectancies—by using simulations to account for all factors impacting performance in the components operation. By understanding the simulation they were able to adjust to the effect patterns on performance and altered usage to achieve maximum longevity of the part. Achieving this trend avoided delays in expenditures of premature component(s) replacement and provided measurable returns on heavily invested machinery.

Get Better Quality & Consistent Batches

Consistency is the name of the game in brewing success. A minor shift in process can have a huge impact on the taste profile of your beer. For instance, a marginally longer mash rest or unevenly carbonated beer alters what the beer can be. Digital twins keep a record of and then model every step in the brewing process so critical parameters are consistently fulfilled out to your brand standards. Being able to detect those events early, while being in step with the process, means that your brand is guaranteed the same flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel with every batch. A consistent flavor profile instills consumer confidence in your brands and ultimately loyalty from consumers.

Energy & Efficiency in the brewing process

Breweries are energy intensive, particularly when it comes to the cooking, cooling and packaging portions of the beer making process. Digital twins are able to model the usage of utilities in real time and show when there is waste and give recommendations on optimizing the flow of energy usage. After analyzing heating cycles, cooling demands, and packaging throughput, breweries are able to reduce waste and energy costs. This will not only improve profitability, but also relate closely with sustainability goals - already being highlighted as a priority in the industry.

Across Tomorrow's Brewery: Holistic Digital Twin Applications

Digital twins go far beyond and immediate maintenance, as they provide new insights at a new layer:

• Cooking Simulation: Preview how new ingredients or recipes will perform without wasting limited wort or hops.
• Bottleneck Detection: Twin field operations at scale for identifying efficiencies with packaging or loading tasking activity.
• Supply Chain Simulation: Have suppliers delivery, storage & demand forecasts mapped out in a coordinated virtual system.

These applications create smarter, holistically connected breweries—where every process is simulated and optimized from taking in grains to dispensing kegs.

Hexa Coder: Your Digital Twin Brewing Partner

While large breweries typically build out systems internally, there are many craft and mid-sized breweries that could use a partner to help them leap ahead without huge financial commitments. This is where Hexa Coder excels. They are drawing on their experience in industrial digital twins (mainly in manufacturing, aviation, and logistics) and equipping brewing with tools developed for this work.

Key Features:

Agile Sensor and Data Integration - Hexa Coder connects to SCADA, PLCs, and brewery controls creating a real-time digital twin while avoiding cloud sprawl and IT obstacles.

User-friendly 3D Visualisation - Their dashboards (WebGL) let the brewer "see" inside tanks, lines, fermentors, as well as valve actions. This enables complicated data to be visualised, and ultimately actioned.

Simulation + AI - Hexa combines traditional process models with real-time data feeds on the platform. Add AI analytics, then the twin will begin to recommend actions to be taken e.g. changes in coolant flow; predicting pump fatigue, etc..

Flexible solutions - Start with one fermentor or CIP line, then expand as desired to cover all aspects of the plant. All of this insight is contained in Hexa's digital twin framework, which can be configured in a modular, secure manner.

Proven project methodology - Hexa Coder can facilitate your brewery in adopting a digital twin technology from discovery sessions, pilot builds and eventually to full capability, while documenting the return on investment (ROI) clearly throughout the project.

Creating Your Digital Twin: Step-by-Step

Define your Objectives  

 You should start by defining what your brewery wants to achieve? Less spoilage, improved batch consistency, reduced energy use, increased throughput etc. Clear objectives will help determine the twin architecture and ensure that each feature is addressing real operational pain points and not just a tech experiment. 

Identify Core Assets

Map out your critical production assets—fermentation tanks, boilers, pumps, control systems, and sensors. This list of assets will form the basis of your digital twin. With reliable data sources connected, you can be sure the model is reflecting real-life conditions, enabling powerful monitoring, predictive analysis and decision-making.

Pilot Integration

Don't do it across the whole plant, start small with a pilot—perhaps a brewing line or a fermentation tank. Prototype, analyze operator feedback, adjust and build release confidence, and validate accuracy on the first integration. This launch and learn approach reduces disruption, increases confidence, and gives you proof-of-value early on.

Model Fidelity

Accuracy is the key to effectiveness. Implement simulation modules that not only accurately reflect brewing conditions—temperature discrepancies, flow rates, yeast activity, carbonization processes, etc.--but model their process behavior too. The better the fidelity of your model, the more reliant you can be on it's recommendations to make us better operators.

Ingest Real-time Data

Digital twins feed off live data. The model should harvest telemetry from the sensors and plant control systems that will provide real time visibility in the model. This allows operators to see the real status of operations at that moment in time and cross reference within the twin worlds at their will.

Launch Dashboard

Introduce Hexa Coders visualization dashboards that transforms complicated data in to intuitive formats; providing operators will real-time process visuals, alerts and recommendations in a graphical format that provides more actionable speed and cognitive awareness.

Analyze & Optimize

Beyond predicting equipment maintenance, the twin will utilize AI to provide simulation of operational scenarios. Your brewers will be able to change process parameters in testing—like mash times or cooler cycle durations—virtually before applying those changes on the floor, while achieving desired results and minimizing risk.

Governance & Scaling

Governance, as you know, is now paramount, especially as you expand on this experience. Implement your version control, access rights, and data authorization accordingly to safeguard your systems. Take your time to expand your twin—from a single tank, to brewing halls—while keeping consistent reliability.

Measure ROI

There is more to success than technology; it is measured results. Regardless of how smart the technology is, how successful you are will relate to your data insights. Be sure to measure everything. Spoilage reductions, machine downtime, energy savings, and bigger throughputs. Use your ROI data to continue to gain buy-in from your organizational leaders to broaden your digital twin across an increased scope of your brewing operations.

Hexa Coder's Role

Hexa Coder is committed to supporting breweries throughout each such process; not just with building your digital twin, but with the potential to assist you with planning, piloting, and/or scaling. With their experience, build a true impact differentiator, successfully integrate, and realize long-term value.

Brewing Forward: A Future with Digital Twins

The world of digital twins in brewing is just beginning. Today’s use cases focus on optimizing throughput in production, reducing downtime, and controlling consistency and quality, but there is a world of advances yet to be made beginning in the brewhouse and extending out into the industry.

Kegs and Logistics Twins

Envision kegs with IoT sensors that deliver live data to their digital twins. Data is captured around fill, pressure, CO₂ retention and freshness, plus their twins also exist in the logistics world with twin locations and delivery routes, the potential for predicting route delays and the environments where the beer is stored and ready for delivery. It is saving time, energy and material waste for the brewer, while delivering fresher pints to bars, and superior to store selective number linked kegs. Smart keg management provides backend benefits in recalls support, regulatory compliance and other outcomes to optimize kegs.

Marketplace Twins

Brewing isn’t just about making beer. It is anticipating demand from the consumer for the final product. This is where marketplace twins aid in the investigation of the local supply versus demand by simulating variables over time with a digital feed to predict potential spikes in demand from either festivals, sporting events or seasonality. Some breweries are now even experimenting with virtual tasting rooms where candidates “experience” a new flavor set before the physical brew is available on the shelf, minimizing time on innovation developments, reducing opportunity for failed launches, and providing targeted marketing using predictive data/insights.

Sustainability Simulations

As sustainability becomes increasingly vital for competitiveness, breweries are under pressure to validate their green credentials. Digital twins can simulate sustainability strategies or projects in real-time - leaner packaging, tracking emissions, or modeling local sourcing, for example. A twin can handle some of the hard questions - What if we replace plastic packaging with biodegradable alternatives? How much carbon can we save by sourcing barley within 200 km? Beyond simply lowering impact, this bolsters brands’ reputations with eco-conscious consumers.

Breweries no longer just take beer to market, they take beer that is more intelligent, more sustainable and ready for tomorrow's potential. By making early investments in a twin-first strategy with Hexa Coder, breweries will not just brew better, they will brew an advantage as well.

Final Pour: Why Digital Twins are Very Important for Brewers

Digital twins are no longer the future, they will soon become the norm. By using twin technology, breweries can transition from being re-active suppliers to proactive operators that optimize, simulate and respond with precision.

Whether breweries have one brewing line or 14 brewhouses, twins can allow brewers to focus on flavour, lower cost, higher uptime, and greener operations. 

Breweries of all sizes can access highly sophisticated, scalable twin systems, that are developed when paired with experts and a deployment partner, like Hexa Coder, and not at the enterprise level of risk and overhead.

If you’re interested in digital twins application within your brewery, then Hexa Coder can assist you from the pilot phase all the way through the full implementation—helping you to brew better, brew smarter, and brew more sustainably.