Next Glass keeps acquiring beer-focused businesses, now brewery management software FermentAble

Next Glass will have another, please. The Wilmington, N.C.-based beer software and services umbrella company has been gobbling up digital beer and beverage alcohol businesses over the last few years — BeerAdvocate, Untappd, Untappd for Business, Hop Culture, Oznr (formerly CraftCellr) and Ollie Order. To complement this growing portfolio, Next Glass recently announced it will have at least one more, please, with the acquisition of Ventura, Calif.-based FermentAble, a brewery management software platform designed to simplify the production process.

FermentAble is an interesting acquisition, moving Next Glass inside the brewery with software options. Founded in 2015 by Darin Haener and Frank West, FermentAble is designed to replace whiteboards and spreadsheets, providing simple-to-use software to manage inventory, scheduling and all other aspects of the production side of running a brewery. As a former brewer, Haener understood the difficulty in keeping data updated and accurate, as well as the challenge generating TTB reports. From the press release:

“When it came time to generate TTB reports, the process typically involved a full day or more of rummaging through brew logs that had been through the ringer of an active brewing environment, not to mention illegible handwriting,” said Haener.

Also very cool here is that FermentAble will fold into Next Glass’ other properties. According to the press release, FermentAble’s platform will be integrated into Next Glass’s other technology platforms, furthering its mission to advance the beverage alcohol industry through innovation in technology, content, commerce and experiences.

“We are already hard at work combining FermentAble’s production management capabilities with Ollie and Oznr’s leading B2B and B2C offerings for brewers to create the industry’s first omnichannel brewery management solution,” said [Trace] Smith, [CEO of Next Glass]. “You’ll also see some cool, one-of-a-kind integrations with Untappd, Untappd for Business, and BeerAdvocate down the road.”

In addition to generating TTB reports, FermentAble’s technology automatically tracks real time raw material inventory and enables simple, intuitive brew log management. FermentAble’s goal is to save brewers time on paperwork to allow them to focus on their craft.

“Next Glass currently counts 4,000 brewers as active customers. The team has proven its ability to integrate similar offerings into the Next Glass product ecosystem and we believe FermentAble makes the holistic solution Next Glass offers to beverage producers globally even more compelling,” said Matt Stone, Managing Director at PSG. “Production management is an important addition to the Next Glass family and will be another pillar of continued strong growth for the company as the industry continues to emerge from the pandemic.”