Brewing Laboratory Automation. A Review with Special Emphasis on the Use of Microcomputers. K. J. Siebert, The Stroh Brewery Company, Detroit, MI 48226. J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 40:0009, 1982.

Most laboratory procedures contain the same seven stages; various automation approaches address different combinations of these. Automation of major instruments or the use of programmable calculators, computers, continuous flow analyzers, or programmable analyzers can improve efficiency in one or more of the steps of a procedure. The usefulness of each of these techniques in a brewing laboratory is discussed. General-purpose microcomputers provide a particularly attractive approach to automation because they can be applied to many different procedures and to most of the stages of an analysis.

Keywords: Analysis, Computer, Data evaluation, Data storage and retrieval, Programmable calculator, Report generation