Breweries Editing and Proofreading Services

A brewery outgrows its kit and sends its flagship to a contract brewer with better capacity. What arrives back is recognisably the same beer and not the same beer, and the argument that follows is conducted between two people who both believe they brewed it correctly — because the recipe that was handed over listed ingredients and quantities and almost nothing about how they were used.

We edit what breweries produce — brewing specifications and recipe documentation for contract and collaboration brewing, standard operating procedures and cellar instructions, quality and packaging specifications, trade and distributor sell sheets, label and can copy within the constraints that apply to it, taproom material and staff training notes, supplier and hop contract correspondence, and investor and expansion documents. Our editors work on documents that have to produce the same beer twice.

The brewing specification is the document that carries a beer between people and premises, and its failure is a recipe that lists what goes in and not what happens. Two brewers with the same ingredient list will make different beer, and everything that separates them is process. We work through these so every target is given with its tolerance and the point of measurement, since an original gravity of 12.4 °P means little without whether it is measured in the kettle or the fermenter and how much either way is acceptable; so the water treatment is specified as an ion profile with the salts and the source water it assumes, because the same additions to different water produce different beer; so timings are stated against a defined start point, given that "60 minute addition" depends on whether the clock starts at boil or at first wort; so the fermentation schedule is written as a temperature-and-time profile with the ramp points tied to gravity rather than to days; so the yeast is named by strain with generation, pitch rate and the condition it should be in; so the dry hop is specified with timing relative to gravity, contact time, temperature and how the hops are removed; and so the things that must not be varied are listed separately from the things that may. Specifications written this way survive being handed to somebody else.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including recipes, specifications and commercial agreements. We are editors rather than brewers or regulatory advisers, and we offer no view on recipes, process or labelling compliance. What we can do is make the specification say what a second brewer needs to know.