Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Against the Grains Malt Ltd. (ATG) is a micro malt company in Petrolia, Ontario, servicing the micro-brewery, micro-distillery and home brew markets with locally grown and malted, premium quality products. With the continued expansion of the craft beer industry, there is a significant malt shortage occurring in Ontario. ATG currently has a 7500 lbs per month capacity for malting base malt, with the intent to double its capacity to 15,000 lbs per month with 2 germinator drums. In partnership with Lambton College, ATG is looking to add critical instrumentation and control systems to its new and existing facilities to optimize production and enhance efficiency.Currently, lack of consistent and reliable control and monitoring processes can result in disposing entire batches of malt, causing a huge profit loss and wasted work hours. To prevent such losses from happening, an automated system with remote monitoring capability must be installed so that malters have access and control ability to process parameters at all times. To that end, the main goal of this collaborative project is to create a small-scale specialty malt system for ATG to work more closely with craft breweries and enhance their production potential. Utilizing proper and advanced instrumentation and control systems with embedded advanced process control, monitoring and automation elements will make the malting process more efficient by minimizing labour and space while using less energy and water, making it easier, faster, safer and more accessible to operate.The success of this project will help ATG optimize their process and consequently, increase the amount of product produced, ultimately providing greater resources and availability to satisfy the growing demand for malted barley for craft beer making. We look forward to collaborating with Lambton College.