Quality control has always sat at the heart of brewing, but many of the methods used to assure it have changed surprisingly little over the centuries. Today, a new generation of analytical tools is giving brewers faster insight into what is happening inside their beer, often long before problems become visible. An ongoing collaboration between Figura and Greene King Brewery shows how particle analysis can provide that visibility throughout production, ultimately ensuring the quality of beer reaching the customer.
From congress conversation to brewery deployment
Figura began working with Greene King Brewery after meeting at Brewers Congress 2023. An early priority was to address micro-contamination detection, a persistent challenge for all brewers. Microbiological plating remains the industry standard for detecting contamination, but although widely trusted, it is slow. Filtration, incubation and microscopic analysis can take up to ten days to return a result, limiting how many samples can be tested and how quickly breweries can respond.
Working with Greene King Brewery, Figura conducted a comparative study between conventional microbiology and its particle-based 24-hour Figura Micro Method. The results showed contamination could be confirmed within 24 hours, while maintaining comparable sensitivity. The system has demonstrated detection even at very low levels of contamination, including fewer than 10 cells per 500ml sample, enabling earlier visibility of potential spoilage.
Building a fingerprint of quality
At the heart of Figura’s technology is a microfluidic flow cell that measures the size and concentration of particles in a beer sample. A small sample of beer is mixed with a salt solution and passed through a flow cell. A current is applied to sensors in the flow cell, and as particles pass through the cell, they disrupt the current in different ways depending on their size and structure.
From this signal, the system builds a “particle fingerprint” – a baseline profile of how a beer looks under normal conditions. Each product has its own fingerprint, shaped by its proteins, polyphenols, carbohydrates, and other structural components. When contamination is present, even at very low levels, that structure shifts as the contaminant particles metabolise. The change is detectable before spoilage becomes visible in finished beer.
Faster data, smarter decisions
Results are automatically uploaded to a cloud-based platform and compared against historical datasets and product baselines, enabling near real-time monitoring of quality trends.
The key advantage is speed. Issues that would previously emerge days later through microbiology can now be identified within hours. This significantly shortens the response window, allowing corrective action while beer is still within the supply chain. It also changes the sampling model itself, giving Greene King Brewery a more continuous view of production rather than isolated data points.
Improving insight across the kegging line
The work has since moved deeper into production, particularly across Greene King Brewery’s kegging line.
Beer leaving the final tank is packaged through multiple keg head fillers, typically filling up to 24 kegs at a time. Variability between filler and washer heads has long been recognised as a potential source of inconsistency, but it has been difficult to isolate using conventional testing.
By increasing sampling frequency with the Figura Analyser, the Brewery was able to test up to 12 consecutive kegs from a single batch. Each sample was compared against the established product fingerprint, producing a higher-resolution view of process variation.
This enabled engineers to identify patterns linked to specific filler or washer heads. In several cases, equipment performance has been optimised through targeted adjustments to maintenance and cleaning schedules, enhancing overall line control.
Figura is currently developing a portable version of its analyser that could be used in venues, allowing a brewer to compare beer quality against its original fingerprint and help technicians identify dispense issues.
A shift toward continuous quality intelligence
What emerges from the Greene King Brewery and Figura partnership is a shift in how quality is monitored across brewing operations. Rather than relying on periodic laboratory testing, Greene King is beginning to build a more continuous picture of product behaviour from production through to packaging and, increasingly, dispense.
For the Suffolk brewer, this means earlier detection and tighter control over consistency, and ultimately a better pint served across the bar. For Figura, it demonstrates how particle analysis is moving beyond validation work into routine operational use.
As technologies like this become embedded in everyday brewery practice, quality control is shifting from periodic checks to continuous understanding. For brewers, this opens the door to tighter control, greater consistency, and better quality where it matters most: in the customer’s glass.
