When packaging your drinks in Breww, you can choose if you'd like to release this stock for sale immediately or hold it until a later date. This is ideal for bottle/cask conditioning, but can also be used in any situation where you would like to package the beer (rather than leave it in the vessel), but don't want to immediately allow it to be sold or delivered to customers.
Note, for barrel ageing we recommend setting up the barrels as "Vessels" and leaving the batch open with the stock in the barrels, instead of using this feature. We plan to add special features to aid with barrel ageing in the future.
When packaging, you should see an option like this:
If you choose to release the stock immediately, then you don't need to enter a date or delay reason. You can also choose between either automatic or manual release. In both cases, you select the release date, and for automatic releases Breww will release the stock early in the morning of the date chosen.
For manual releases, the date is used to help with your stock forecasting and if you allow pre-ordering stock that's planned to be ready for the future, but it will still be up to you to release the stock for sale manually.
If you would like to require all packagings to use a delayed release (preventing the "release immediately" option), you can enable the Require delayed packaging release setting in your Production settings. When this is enabled, the packaging form will default to a manual delayed release and you will not be able to select "release immediately".
You can check your outstanding (and historical) releases at Production -> View -> Delayed packaging releases. Clicking through to a specific release will give you a screen with a breakdown of the release information.
Automatic releases can be manually released "early" with the Release stock for sale button if needed.
If you choose to reject the stock, this stock will be removed from Breww, all containers will be emptied and "Spoiled beer" records will be kept for you, in accordance with HMRC's requirements. These can be viewed from within the Beer duty section of Breww. There is no "undo button" for rejecting stock, so please make sure you are not going to change your mind before using rejecting the stock.
Post-packaging approvals and delayed releases
If your brewery uses post-packaging approvals, you can configure Breww to prevent delayed releases from being released until the relevant post-packaging approval has been completed. This ensures that stock does not become available for sale until your quality checks have been signed off.
This behaviour is controlled by the Post-packaging approval delayed release control setting in your Production settings. There are three options:
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No restrictions — delayed releases can be released at any time, regardless of post-packaging approval status.
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Prevent releasing if outstanding post-packaging approval (default) — if the delayed release is linked to a batch or planned packaging with an outstanding post-packaging approval, the release will be blocked. Both manual releases and automatic scheduled releases will be held back until the approval is completed.
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Prevent releasing and auto-release upon approval — works the same as above, but when the post-packaging approval is approved, any pending delayed releases that are no longer blocked will be automatically released for sale. You will see a confirmation message showing how many delayed releases were auto-released.
The auto-release feature is particularly useful for conditioning workflows. For example, you can package stock with a delayed release, complete your post-packaging quality checks at your own pace, and when the approval is signed off, the stock is automatically released for sale without any further manual steps.
Revoking stock already available for sale
If you've already released stock for sale, and subsequently need to put this on hold, you can do so by going to the original batch, into the Actions tab and using the Retract stock from sale into delayed release button, as highlighted below:
FAQs
Can I release only part of the delayed packaging release or stock that has been retracted?
Stock that has been put on hold via a delayed packaging release or by revoking the stock will be associated with the specific 'Packaging action'; for example, you may have packaged 40 50L kegs and set this as a delayed packaging release. It is not possible in this scenario to 'part-release' this stock so that 20 are released for sale, and 20 remain on hold - the entire packaging action quantity would need to be released in this scenario.
