While the features in Breww are the same for both beer and cider production, cideries may want to configure their setup to better reflect their specific processes.
Drink Types
To begin, you'll need to set up your drink types, ensuring they have the appropriate duty settings for cider. For more guidance on this, please see our guide: Managing drink types.
Drinks Structure
If you produce cider by blending multiple batches into a range of final brands, it’s important to determine how your drinks should be categorised in Breww. When creating your ciders, you will want to consider defining them as one of the following:
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Standard drinks
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Derived in vessel drinks
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Derived at packaging drinks
For cider makers, most drinks will likely fall under either Standard or Derived in vessel.
Standard Drinks
Standard drinks represent the initial form of your cider — for many, this will be Juice.
In Breww:
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Create a 'Drink type' for Juice.
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Create a standard drink called Juice.
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Assign a recipe that includes only the ingredients used at this stage, such as your apple varieties.
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If you package and sell this juice, you can also create finished products for it.
All production in Breww must pass through a brewing system, so you’ll be able to:
- Start a batch of Juice.
- Pass it through your brewing system.
- Transfer it into a primary vessel.
- Rack it as needed.
Derived in Vessel Drinks
Derived in vessel drinks are ideal when you make additions or changes to your standard drink while it is still in a vessel. This will likely be the approach used for many of your ciders.
For full details, see our guide: Alias, Derived and Guest Beers.
Example Flow:
Here’s a suggested model for cider production in Breww:
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Juice – Standard drink.
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Base cider – Derived in vessel drink (e.g. derived from your juice, with a recipe assigned of ingredient additions such as sugar).
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Mixed base – Derived in vessel drink (derived from base cider, which can be created when blending multiple 'Base cider' batches).
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Final cider brands – Derived in vessel drinks with additions (derived from mixed base and/or base cider, with a recipe with final additions e.g. fruit purees).
Example Process:
- Create a batch of Juice and hold it in a vessel.
- Turn the Juice into the derived in vessel drink **'Base cider'. **
- You can continue creating Juice and converting batches to Base cider as needed.
- You may have multiple 'base ciders' in vessel of different apple varieties; you can enter the apple varierty on the batch reference of the base cider. You will be able to blend these batches in vessel, and change these into your derived in vessel drink Mixed base. Breww will automatically record the merged batch numbers in the batch reference field for traceability on the Mixed base batch.
- When committing a vessel to a final cider brand (e.g. Raspberry Cider), convert the Mixed base into the derived in vessel drink Raspberry Cider, with a recipe assigned that includes the raspberry purée stock item.
- You can then rack from this batch into your final packaged products.
Derived at packaging
If you have any additions that are added directly at the point you package your cider, which are not added to the vessel, and are instead added directly to the container, then this will be the option to select for the drink.
Summary
This approach allows you to begin with a base drink like Juice and transform it into a variety of drink 'forms' along the way, depending on the stage in the process, with the correct ingredients being attributed at the correct time, and therefore costs being accurately accounted for and passed on— all while keeping clear traceability.
