Several key compounds for the final beer flavour (higher alcohols, esters, vicinal diketones) are produced during the alcoholic fermentation phase. The paper demonstrates the possibility of obtaining various desired final aroma profiles and reducing the total process time using dynamic optimisation of three control variables: temperature, top pressure and initial yeast concentration in the fermentation tank. The optimisation is based on a sequential quadratic programming algorithm, on a dynamic model of the alcoholic fermentation and on an aroma production model. The robustness of the optimal control profile with respect to model uncertainty is discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.