Being served a dodgy pint of beer will be a thing of the past, if Jolyon Tidmarsh has anything to do with it. Mr Tidmarsh, who runs Smartcellar from a base at Milton Park, near Didcot, has spent the past two years developing Thermobuoy, a beer quality control product. .

Now he is talking to the serious players in the brewing industry, including the brewers or brand-owners, the technical service providers and the retailers.

He said: "We're at the point where we are about to make the breakthrough, I can feel it."

If you did not know his background, you may call such words misplaced optimism. An applied physicist by training, Mr Tidmarsh set up the innovation house Futuretec with fellow engineer Mike Lawton, in 2003.

They run a family of highly innovative technology-based companies and so impressed the former managing director of Milton Park, John Bateman, that they currently occupy rent-free offices.

Mr Tidmarsh said: "He gave us fantastic business support and introduced us to our business angel."

And what does MEPC, the company that owns Milton Park get in return? They own shares in the company like a lottery ticket'.

The Thermobuoy is placed inside the font from which beer is dispensed, and makes a variety of measurements as the beer flows through it, before storing them in its memory.

Mr Tidmarsh explained: "We extract it to our database, process the data and serve it to our various clients.

"There are lots of people in the value chain who are interested in different aspects of the product offering, so the idea is that we sell different sorts of data to different sorts of customer."

One of the things Thermobuoy measures is the temperature at which beer is dispensed. Beer is brewed to be served with a 2C window, but often does not achieve that, because the cooling systems in place are not always appropriate.

Another thing it measures is whether the lines which carry the beer from the barrels to the tap are being cleaned often enough.

Mr Tidmarsh said: "The brewers all recommend that you clean your lines every week or 10 days.

"Unfortunately, this costs the tenant or retailer money, because all the beer left in your lines has to be thrown away.

"We have a trial site where they claim to clean their lines every week, but they are actually doing it once every two months."

This shows what a useful tool Thermobuoy can be, particularly for an industry desperate to reverse the decrease in beer sales.

Smartcellar was the first company that the partners set up, marketing an automatic keg-changer, which Mr Lawton invented.

They developed Thermobuoy after a potential client said he was more interested in something that would measure beer temperature.

A year later, it was ready to sell.

Mr Tidmarsh said: "We sold 10 units to Scottish Courage. They loved the product so much, they bought another 35."

During their first year the company turned over £102,000, but this year sales have increased four-fold.

Although an engineer by training, Mr Tidmarsh has long wanted to run his own company.

Circumstances

He said: "Like a lot of people, I've spent a lot of hours in the pub, mulling things over with my mates, but not having the spark of inspiration, or the coming together of all the circumstances that make you actually get off your bottom and get on with it."

That all changed when he and Mr Lawton were made redundant from Bookham Technology and talked about what skills they had, and what they could do with them.

Mr Tidmarsh said: "He showed me a design he had for an automatic keg-changer and it all kind of went from there really."

The partners have set up two companies under the auspices of Futuretec so far, and also offer consultancy services.

The other company, Regenatec, markets Smartveg technology that allows diesel-powered vehicles to run on vegetable oil.

Mr Tidmarsh likens them to bubbles, which will eventually float off on their own as they become successful. He eventually plans to take more of a backseat role at Smartcellar.

He explained: "It will become a business that needs to be run by grey suits and, well, I wear socks and sandals, shorts and dirty jumpers with baby dribble on them."

He also prefers the company of other engineers and the informal way that they work. But the work ethic is strong, however laid-back the place may look.

Mr Tidmarsh said: "We all commit to monthly targets and the company business plan. Because we're all shareholders, we've got a vested interest to make sure it actually happens, so we trust each other to get on with it.

"The hardest thing about setting up a business is making that initial plunge and getting yourself up and running. Once you've done that, churning out the next idea isn't so difficult. So we aim keep the team together for the next bubble."

By that time, Thermobuoy may well be ensuring your next pint is perfect.