Automation on tap
How do you introduce smart, connected technology into a 14th century building without compromising its character? That was the challenge at Orm’s Brewhouse in Cumbria, where WAGO has helped introduce modern automation, sensors, remote monitoring and energy management while retaining the brewery’s existing equipment.
The open control system has also created new opportunities for energy optimisation, including using surplus on-site solar generation to heat the brewery’s hot liquor tank.
What happens when automation technology meets stone built production premises dating from the Middle Ages? The answer is a craft beer of exceptional quality, made by a brewery which is set for a sustainable future. But achieving this outcome required a carefully calibrated approach to implementing automation technology, which is where the modular products from WAGO came into play.
Soul vision
The brewery in question, Orm’s Brewhouse, operates out of 14th century farm buildings on the Ormside Hall Estate in rural Cumbria. A five-barrel (5BBL) craft brewery founded in 2025, Orm’s Brewhouse has embraced the challenge of preserving the buildings’ traditional character. Director Ian Purves insists that the brewery has to respect the ‘soul’ of the place where the beer is made. But as Ian says, “We were working against the building, not with it.”
When Orm’s Brewhouse was founded, the ancient building was equipped with refurbished vessels, pumps and extraction pumps. The control panel offered little more than basic start/stop functionality: it provided for no recipe management, no automated dosing, no alarms and no meaningful process feedback. Critical brewing stages relied heavily on manual intervention.
This created the risk of inconsistent beer quality, wasted water and ingredients, unnecessary energy use and limited scope to scale production with confidence. As brewer Chris Stanley says, everything was a manual process, from monitoring thermometers to guessing volumes of mash. “You were so busy fighting the equipment that you lost sight of the craft,” he says.
Ian and Chris knew that automation could solve the problems which the ancient building put in their way. Done the right way, automation would:
- Improve accuracy and repeatability without removing brewer control
- Reduce risk and stress on brew day, while providing visibility into what the process is actually doing
- Keep the system flexible, open and future proof
The automation system which would provide these benefits needed to be open and modular, so that the brewery could retain existing systems. This decision to, as Ian Purves describes it, “build on what we started with”, was in tune with the ethos of WAGO’s engineers.
WAGO’s application engineering team began with a site visit, working closely with the brewers to understand the process and the constraints of the historic estate. Together, they decided that the brewery had three main requirements of the automation system:
- Automated temperature control
- Visualisation of the processes
- Harnessing process data to enable continuous improvement and quality control
The WAGO solution combined new hardware with a software system which both controls the process and provides graphs, numeric read-outs and other visualisations which can be viewed both on-site and remotely.
At the heart of the upgrade was the replacement of the legacy controller with a WAGO PFC100 programmable logic controller (PLC 750-8112), which handles OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus, Ethernet IP and many other protocols.
To bring insight into the brewing process, IO-Link smart temperature and other sensors from Endress+Hauser were integrated via a WAGO IO-Link Master module (750-1657). Together, the PLC and IO-Link Master provide a complete data chain from the temperature and flow sensors all the way to the cloud.
This meant that the most important parts of the brewing process were automated:
- Automated hot liquor tank (HLT) temperature control, compensating for ambient conditions
- Precise water dosing using flow sensors
- Safety cut-offs and alarms to protect equipment and prevent unplanned downtime
The control software was engineered from the ground up around Orm’s actual brewing process, rather than forcing it to fit a generic template. Alongside the automation equipment, a new web panel 400 10.1 inch display provides clear visibility of each brewing stage. Chris says: “The first time that I saw the flow meter hit the target and the pump just automatically stop, I realised just how precise we could make the whole brewing process.”
Data-driven brewing
The upgraded system supports recipe entry and storage, visualisation of water dosing during mashing and automated prompts for key additions during the boil. Temperature control during fermentation, often spanning several days, is now fully automated, including a controlled step-down chilling process at the end of fermentation to protect yeast health.
Remote connectivity configured by the Orm’s Brewhouse team allows WAGO engineers to provide support and troubleshooting without the need for site visits.
Chris Stanley concludes: “Efficiency isn’t just about saving time or ingredients — it’s what allows a small brewery like ours to grow. With WAGO’s automation in place, we finally have the visibility and control we need to trust the process from start to finish.”
Confidence and consistency
Since the upgrade, Orm’s Brewhouse has gained a far higher level of confidence in its brewing process. Improved temperature control has significantly increased consistency, automation has reduced waste and manual intervention, and brew days are shorter and less stressful.
Energy efficiency has also improved. Automated pump shutdowns, timed HLT heating and better process visibility have reduced unnecessary runtime, lowering both energy consumption and operating costs.
The brewery already operates a large on-site solar installation and has written code to enable surplus solar generation to be diverted into heating the HLT. Electricity worth around £0.08 per kWh when exported from solar sources can instead offset heat that would otherwise cost around £0.24 per kWh to buy from the brewery’s energy supplier. This capability is only possible because the open control system has been designed from the outset to enable extension over time.
WAGO seamlessly integrated IO-Link sensors from third-party suppliers alongside existing equipment, protecting the brewery’s prior investment while enabling modern, data-driven brewery automation. WAGO’s application engineering team worked directly with the brewers, combining their deep automation expertise with Chris and Ian’s hands-on understanding of the brewing process, to produce a robust, future-ready system that the brewing team can trust.
Focused application
As John Mackey, Head of Automation Sales at WAGO UK and Ireland, says, “For WAGO, what makes this a moment of success is seeing the focused application of automation to help the company deliver on its goal of creating a really high quality beer. Together we have married the craft and artisan element of the brewing process with modern automation for data harvesting and quality control, which is ultimately what is going to enable Orm’s Brewhouse to develop as a business.”
