Talks and writing on where the money actually leaves a craft plant.

Process efficiency and optimization for brewing and distilling, with the economic and the environmental case treated as the same case — because a liter of water not heated is a cost not paid and an emission not made. Practical guidance and worked examples from real plants, with the arithmetic shown and nothing to sell from the podium.

Formats

Conference session

30 to 60 minutes, with questions

Guild conferences, craft brewers' and distillers' conferences, trade shows, and sustainability tracks at industry events. One argument, carried by numbers, with the slides written to be readable from the back of a hotel ballroom.

Workshop or training

Half a day to three days

Hands-on, with the room working its own numbers rather than watching someone else's. Suited to guild programs, regional groups, and in-house training for brewers, distillers, cellar and packaging crews.

Guest lecture

Brewing, food science, engineering programs

For fermentation science, food engineering and industrial-engineering courses: the industrial reality behind unit operations students have only seen on a P&ID, and how a plant is actually measured.

Writing

Trade, guild and peer-reviewed

Trade and industry publications, guild newsletters and technical bulletins, plain-language explainers for producers, and peer-reviewed work where a result deserves the scrutiny.

Topics

Subjects with numbers behind them.

Each of these comes from work on real plants, presented with the figures and the uncertainty rather than as a rule of thumb. They can be combined, cut down to a single session, or built out into a workshop.

Where the money actually goes. Why water and sewer are often the largest line on a craft utility bill, and why almost nobody expects that.
Measuring intensity without a metering budget. What twelve months of bills and a production number will and will not tell you, and the three meters worth buying first.
The spread is operational, not capital. The most efficient breweries in a size band use less than half the water per hectoliter of the median, buying the same equipment from the same vendors.
Cleaning, CIP and the water balance. Where the unaccounted share of supply usually hides, and how to find it without shutting down.
Heat recovery and the still or kettle. Condenser cooling as the largest single lever in a distillery, and why a pot still chosen for character is a defensible decision run without heat recovery is not.
Demand charges and scheduling. The free lever: staggering the mash pump, the glycol chiller and the walk-in compressor so they do not set a peak together.
CO₂ recapture, honestly costed. A brewery buys back almost exactly the gas it vents; the capex is real and the payback depends on scale.
Building an emissions inventory you can defend. Scope 1 and 2 from data you already have, what belongs in Scope 3, and how to answer a retailer's questionnaire without a consultant on retainer.
Incentive programs. What utility and government efficiency programs will actually pay for, and how to write an application that gets approved.

Practicalities

What an organizer needs to know.

Lead time. Four to six weeks for a conference session; longer for a workshop that uses the audience's own data, since that data has to be gathered first.
Fees. Quoted per engagement, with travel at cost. Guild programs, non-profit events and student groups are negotiable, and often free where the travel is not the obstacle.
No vendor pitch. Talks name equipment categories, not brands, and there is no commercial relationship with any manufacturer to disclose because there is none to have.
Real plants, anonymized. Examples come from client work with figures used only where the client has agreed, identified by size band and process rather than by name.
Slides and notes afterwards. Attendees get the arithmetic, not a screenshot of it — the worked examples in a form they can put their own numbers into.

For writing commissions: a topic, an audience, a word count and a deadline is enough to start. For peer-reviewed work, expect a conversation about what the data can actually support before any commitment — a claim that will not survive review should not be submitted to one.

Invitations

Tell us the audience and the slot, and we will tell you what would be worth their time.

Who is in the room — brewers, owners, engineers, students — how long you have, and whether they arrive with their own numbers. The talk is built around that rather than pulled off a shelf.

Send an invitation Read the written work