Inish Mini for On-Site Rapid Detection of Bacteria in Beer Directly from the Tap

Project Information

INISH MINI-BAR

Grant agreement ID: 755731

DOI

10.3030/755731

Project closed

EC signature date 22 December 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 December 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 1 602 413,75

EU contribution

€ 1 121 689,63

Coordinated by

CELLIX LIMITED
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INISH MINI-BAR (Inish Mini for On-Site Rapid Detection of Bacteria in Beer Directly from the Tap)

Reporting period: 2018-01-01 to 2018-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Cellix's goal is to launch the Inish Mini-Bar (Fig. 1); a new low-cost, portable, rapid diagnostic device for fast and reliable detection of yeast and bacteria in beer directly from the tap enabling easy continuous monitoring of beer for contamination. At present, breweries have very little control over the quality of draught beer delivered to their customers. They often rely on the cleaning regimes of bar-owners and beer-line cleaning companies. The gold standard testing method is a laboratory-based agar plate method which is extremely time-consuming taking 3-5 days before results are known. Cellix's Inish Mini-Bar (Fig. 2) offers results on-site, in the bar, in ~60 seconds. Data now show that revenues of beer sales and profits for breweries are directly correlated to the quality of beer delivered to the customer with revenues affected by as much as 10%. Therefore, quality control of beer at the tap is now a high priority for breweries.

Inish Mini-Bar addresses key aspects of the EU's "Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials" societal challenges; particularly relating to reduced water consumption. One of the key environmental benefits of using Inish Mini-Bar is the reduction in water consumption as a result of cleaning lines only when necessary as opposed to routinely. As an example, an average sized bar with 10 taps, each requiring up to 10L to clean each line 2x per month = 2,400L per year. We expect the Inish Mini-Bar to reduce the frequency of line cleaning by ~20% resulting in a saving of millions of litres of water in one territory alone resulting in an enormously positive effect on this precious resource.

There were three specific objectives for this project:
i. Miniaturization of the existing Inish Analyzer resulting in the Inish Mini prototype. This was achieved in full.
ii. Validation of the Inish Mini for rapid detection of yeast and bacteria in beer directly from the tap resulting in the Inish Mini-Bar device. This was achieved; results show that compared to the gold-standard agar plate method, the Inish Mini-Bar is ~80% accurate and ~80% repeatable (as per customers' specifications). Thus, the Inish Mini-Bar is an excellent alternative to the lab-based agar plate method (3-5 days) providing rapid diagnostic results on-site in ~90 seconds.
iii. Commercialisation of Inish Mini-Bar resulting in adoption by our first customer. We have started our first on-site trial with the Inish Mini-Bar with a beer-line cleaning company (Fig. 3). The Inish Mini-Bar performed extremely well with excellent feedback from potential customers. Further on-site trials are planned for 2019 with more potential customers indicating their intention to purchase.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Customer Engagement:
Product Specification: In consultation with breweries and beer-line cleaning companies, we developed customers’ specifications for the final Inish Mini-Bar device. The most important needs identified were:
• Rapid detection of bacteria and yeast in beer directly from the tap.
• Simple, robust and easy-to-use.
• Portable.
• Low-cost device; ~€1,000 - €2,000 per instrument and low-cost test ~€1.

Product Benchmarking (Fig. 4, 5): Results illustrated that the Inish Mini-Bar compares extremely well when benchmarked against the gold standard agar plate method. We conducted validation and benchmarking studies where we demonstrated that the Inish Mini-Bar can detect in the relevant concentration range (10,000 - 100,000 cells/mL) for yeast and bacteria with errors of ~10% and 6.36% and CVs of ~10% and ~20%, respectively. This places the Inish Mini-Bar within the customer specifications requested for both accuracy and repeatability.

Inish Mini-Bar Product Development: Miniaturisation, Integration and Automation
Cellix successfully miniaturised our 1st generation Inish Analyzer resulting in the smaller Inish Mini-Bar. We improved and miniaturized 3 main components of the Inish Analyzer: Microfluidic Subsystem, Microfluidic Chip and Electronics. A lot of work focused on the device firmware and software architecture. Main functionalities developed included the API library enabling communication of back-end firmware and client GUI software; and several implementations of the GUI interface. The resulting beta prototype PCB, integrated into the Inish Mini-Bar, led to the successful validation and benchmarking tests for detection of yeast and bacteria in beer.

Inish Mini-Bar Dissemination and Exploitation
Throughout this project, the Inish Mini-Bar was developed in collaboration with one of the top breweries worldwide. We also engaged with other potential customers (breweries, beer-line cleaners), stakeholders and potential licensing partners (i.e. brewery equipment providers). We continuously disseminated and exploited the Inish Mini-Bar on our website (https://www.wearecellix.com/inishminibar) and with the production of promotional material and activities such as:
• YouTube Explainer animation (https://youtu.be/8a4jNevImTs)
• Blog articles relevant to the brewery industry (https://www.wearecellix.com/blog)
• Quarterly email campaigns to our subscribers.
• Technical supporting documentation: white papers, trouble-shooting guides, technical notes (https://www.wearecellix.com/technicalliterature)
• Infographics (used on our Twitter feed and company LinkedIn profile)
• Branded print material (e.g. flyers, beer mats, trade show stands)
• Google Adword campaigns, combined with improved SEO with keywords specific to the Inish Mini-Bar

Finally, in addition to one-to-one meetings, web-conferencing calls with potential customers, partners and stakeholders; we also attended trade shows/exhibitions, conferences and a workshop where we had speaker presentations on the Inish Mini-Bar and displayed the Inish Mini-Bar at our booth:
• European Brewing Congress, Slovenia; May 2017.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA; June 2017.
• Cyto 2017, USA; June 2017. Inish Mini-Bar on display at our booth.
• Drinktec 2017, Germany; September 2017.
• MBAA 2017, USA; October 2017: Inish Mini-Bar on display at our booth.
• MicroTAS 2017, USA; October 2017: Inish Mini-Bar was on display at our booth and presentation at the Industrial Stage Exhibition: “INISH MINI-BAR: How microfluidics is impacting Quality Control in the Brewery Industry”.
• BevExpo 2018, Coventry, UK; January 2018.
• Cyto 2018, Czech Republic, April 2018. Inish Mini-Bar on display at our booth.
• Brewing Summit 2018, USA; August 2018. Inish Mini-Bar on display at our booth (Fig. 6).
• BioEurope, Denmark, November 2019
• MicroTAS 2018 (Fig. 7), Taiwan; November 2018: Inish Mini-Bar on display at our booth and presentation at the Industrial Stage Exhibition (Fig. 8).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In 2016, prior to the start of the INISH MINI-BAR project, Cellix filed 3 patent applications relating the Inish Analyzer. Following a review of the state of the art and continued development of the microfluidic impedance chip, electronics and set-up for cell and particle detection; Cellix filed a further 4 patent applications during this reporting period to strengthen our IP position and dominate this area.

The impact of a successful INISH MINI-BAR product results in great economic benefits for breweries: in addition to saving beer from being wasted during line-cleaning; they are also saving significant man-hours resulting from a rapid detection system vs. a time-consuming line-cleaning method.

Figure 3 Inish Mini-Bar on-site testing field trial

Figure 2 Inish Mini-Bar for rapid testing of bacteria and yeast in beer in ~60 seconds

Figure 1 Inish Mini-Bar

Figure 7 MicroTAS 2018: Cellix's exhibition stand with Inish Mini-Bar on display

Figure 6 Brewing Summit 2018: Cellix's exhibition stand with Inish Mini-Bar on display

Figure 4 Inish Mini-Bar Vs Agar plating, benchmarking trial.

Figure 8 MicroTAS 2018: Vivienne Williams, Cellix's CEO presenting the Inish Mini-Bar

Figure 5 Inish Mini-Bar vs Agar plating; benchmarking trial summary, 40 samples