Bottle Conditioning – Undiscovered Territory for New Creations
Until around 20 years ago, secondary fermentation in the bottle was widespread among most breweries producing Southern German-style wheat beer. However, since then, the majority of them have abandoned traditional bottle conditioning in favor of secondary fermentation in tanks. There are multiple reasons behind the move away from bottle conditioning aside from the need to simplify and standardize the production process. It was primarily the desire to avoid yeast autolysis and to achieve uniform and stable levels of turbidity which were the motivation for seeking alternatives to bottle conditioning.