Philadelphia Brewing & Opertech Bio Announce Collaboration

PHILADELPHIA, PA February 23, 2015

–Opertech Bio, Inc., a company that has pioneered a new, highly efficient, cost effective approach to sensory evaluation, and Philadelphia Brewing Co. (PBC), the operator of the oldest and largest brewing facility in Philadelphia, today announced a collaboration that will utilize Opertech Bio’s taste evaluation technology to investigate taste properties of new flavor formulations and identify more efficient approaches to quality control.

“Offering consumers great tasting beers is what our industry is all about,” said Bill Barton, PBC’s Chief Executive Officer. “We believe Opertech’s taste evaluation technology could prove to be an invaluable tool to the beer industry and we are proud to be the first brewer to investigate the benefits of this novel approach to measuring taste.”

“The companies will utilize Opertech’s taste evaluation technology called Microtiter Operant Gustometer, or MOG,” said R. Kyle Palmer, Opertech’s Chief Science Officer and inventor of the technology. "MOG technology is the first automated high throughput system for rapid characterization of taste sensory properties. Before MOG, taste testing required many people, large amounts of test samples, and days to weeks for evaluation of only a few samples — all adding up to extensive expenditures in resources and dollars. MOG accomplishes the task on hundreds of samples in an afternoon, using far fewer subjects and much smaller sample amounts; all at a fraction of the cost and with greater accuracy and consistency than previously possible,” he added.