Latest News and Upcoming Events

May 2012 - Fresh beer, Fresh Ideas 

Catch this presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego  May 2 -5, 2012 

Fresh beer tastes better and customers can drink more of it.   Fresh beer is neither achieved by accident, nor by focusing only on a single part of the brewing process.  Breweries can produce the freshest beer by controlling a number of freshness points in the brewing process.  This talk will highlight practical ways to control freshness in the craft brewery

October, 2011 - Constructing Beer Quality 

See this presentation at the 2011 Master Brewers Association of the Americas Annual conference.

Beer quality can be defined in many ways that appear complex.  New breweries are confronted with the daunting task of of having to design a program to meet the quality criteria of regulatory agencies, consumers and retailers.  To address this problem a step-by-step process for developing a brewery quality program was outlined in this talk. 

If you would like to know more contact us for a copy of the talk.

June 24th,  2011-  From Contract Partnerships by Jenn Litz

'As we reported yesterday, Schlafly is pushing up against
capacity at its Bottleworks production facility in St. Louis, with no
land or space to build on. So they've worked out a deal with some
long-time brewing friends - Kent Taylor
et al. of Blackstone Brewery - to brew about 4,000 barrels over the next
12 months at their new production facility in Nashville, with partners
Stephanie Weins and Dave Miller. That represents a bit less than 10% of
Kent's brewing and packaging capacity, and 40% of their current cellar
capacity. The Schlafly bottles that come out of there around this time
next year might say, "Brewed and bottled by Schlafly, Nashville, Tenn."
He wants his customers to know where their beer comes from, and so do
they.

For this setup is almost more like a partnership than your traditional
contract brew model. The terms were written to be mutually beneficial
and complementary: Kent and Co. funded and built the brewery (albeit
with a lot of input from longtime friend Dan, even before the idea of a
partnership). But they'll get the added value of access to Schlafly's
experienced QA team in the deal, which includes Alastair Pringle and
other A-B alumni who have consulted for Schlafly and "will be spending a
lot of time in Nashville, start to hire their own staff to be based
there," according to Dan.  Schlafly also has bulk purchasing contracts
for the Nashville operation to tap'.
 

March 2011 - The Macro to Micro Career Path by Greg Kitsosk

In this article Greg features several people who have moved from larger breweries to the craft brewing industry.  The article features Mitch Steele who is now at Stone Brewing, Grant Wood of Boston Beer Co., Larry Sidor of Deschutes Brewing Co, and Florian Kuplent of Urban Chestnut Brewing Co.

The article says this about Pringle-Scott LLC;

'Among the few picked up by Schlafly is Alastair Pringle who spent 25 years with AB as director of scientific research and founded his own consulting company after his position was eliminated.  Pringle helps Schlafly in the field of quality assurance making sure that the beer it contract brews in Stevens Point and Latrobe, Pa., is identical to that brewed in St. Louis.

"At a lot of the big breweries the critical points of the process are automated," Pringle observes.  At craft breweries you're more dependent on people."

On the matter of compensation he reflects that "Anheuser Busch liked to pay high wages to people they thought were valuable."  But with the craft breweries, "compensation comes in the creativity, the fun, and the enthusiasm for the job."

"There are a lot more opportunites down the road than in a company that's stagnant.  It's nicer to be on an escalator that's going up."  

Oct 2010 - Joe Lazzara of JL Process Design becomes an affiliate if Pringle-Scott

We are pleased to announce that Joe will be an affiliate.  We look forward to using the synergies he brings to help us develop the best practical solutions for your business.   

Jun 2010 - A Fresh Look at Beer Flavor Stability

Catch this at the Master Brewers Association of the Americas at the Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence RI

• Get a practical view of controlling freshness that makes a difference to your product's acceptance in the marketplace.
• Learn the importance of controlling oxygen in the brewhouse and in finishing.
• Understand how to improve SO2 during fermentation.
• Improve your understanding of  TPO and ingress through the package materials. 

Apr 2010 - Fermentation Control

Catch this at the Craft Brewers Conference on April 10th.

Alastair Pringle reveals the secrets of one of the least understood, but arguably the most important, parts of the brewing process.

·        Learn how to spot the most important factors controlling fermentation-related flavors.

·         Discover how these factors can be simply controlled.

·         Increase your ability to trouble-shoot fermentation problems.

Chicago entertains -

Alastair Pringle considered the critical contol points for flavor formation both desired and less so.  He put the all the biochemistry over in a succinct manner and concluded there were just eleven critical control points to get right and just six process measures to keep tracking.  He made fermentation seem so straight forward!  A first class presentation which everyone could learn from, even old duffers like Jackson and Putman sitting in the front row!

From  Brewer and Distiller International June 2010, vol 6

Jan 2010 - Fuel Ethanol and all that

Read the latest information on ethanol production from corn, industry concerns, and the status of the next generation biofuels in this article authored by Alastair Pringle.  You can find it in the January issue of Brewer and Distiller International (v6 p18).  If you cannot access this publication, email us and we will send you a copy.

Jan 2010 - Denison University OH 

Alastair Pringle asks  "How Are You Creative?" at the Entrepreneurial Endeavors Workshop at Dension University, Granville OH.  He will be answering these questions:

• How important is innovation today?
• What are some of the barriers to innovation?
• How can creativity and innovation be enhanced through:  
  • Personal creativity
  • Understanding thinking patterns
  • Use of a process and tool box

This presentation will be held on January 12th at the Burton D. Morgan Center.  

Oct 2009 - Saint Louis IFT Meeting

Alastair Pringle will be presenting 'Enabling Your Company's Technical Future' at the STL-IFT meeting in October.  The meeting will be held at the Coronado Building at 3733 Lindell Boulevard, Saint Louis on Tuesday October 27th.

Sept 09 - Biofuels training at the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center.

Alastair Pringle is participating in a 4 week training class on Biofuels at the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) on Southern Illinois University's Edwardsville (SIUE) campus.  This training was made possible through the St. Patrick Center of St. Louis and the Go Network, which were awarded a grant from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and The Wal-Mart Foundation called Project GO! Green.  

This hands-on experience in both the plant and lab will enable us to better help our clients in the biofuels industry improve their starch conversion and fermentation operations. 

July 2009 - Review of 'Enabling the Technical Future' by the BDI  

38 papers came from universities and research establishments, suppliers supplied nine, and there were eight billed as from brewers: A-B, Polar, Fosters, Budvar, Heineken, Asahi, Kirin, and Miller-Coors. Theoretical more than practical perhaps?  Alastair Pringle (recently with Anheuser-Busch) tackled that very subject suggesting that researchers are all too happy to pop down their rabbit holes to examine minutiae and perhaps lose sight of the bigger picture.  Research should enable the technical future for the industry rather than be an end in its own right.  A solution focus was essential and robust, practical answers should be the outcome.  Will lab researchers be business-savvy knowledge brokers capable of directing problem solving efforts, he asked. He also described A-B's knowledge base where what the composite company has accumulated over years is available world-wide to personnel in an easily searchable format. This needs a will to contribute to it and an expert in the field to run it.  Sounds like and imppressive tool; it will be interesting to see whether it survives the InBev approach of doing business.

Brewer & Distiller International v5, July 2009

May 2009 - Alastair Pringle gave a talk entitled "Enabing the Technical Future of Today's Brewery".

This talk was given at the European Brewery Convention, which is the technological and scientific arm of the Brewers of Europe. It was presented as part of a Media, Management, and Industry issues session given in Hamburg, Germany. 

This talk dealt with the need to change the structure of the brewery laboratory to meet the challenges of the brewing industry.  The following key points were made:

• Success will be judged on how fast it can generate simple, cost effective solutions
• Treating brewing processes as black boxes can produce solutions faster
• Lab personnel need to become business-savvy knowledge-brokers, who can direct efforts, communicate solutions, and educate the whole company.