Extension of capacity and optimised use of resources

Careful equipment selection and optimised process engineering allow higher capacities to be reached in brewing liquor production. Installation of modern equipment minimises waste water quantities and reduces operating costs.

Hops: Medicinal plant of the year 2007

Hops, the “Medicinal Plant of the Year 2007”, is the only ingredient, other than water, yeast and malt, permitted in brewing of beer in compliance with the German ‘Reinheitsgebot’ (Purity Law). The annual prize was awarded by ‘Studienkreis Entwicklungsgeschichte der Arzneipflanzenheilkunde’ (Study Group History of the Development of Medicinal Plant Botany) at Würzburg University.

As heterogeneous the sowing of the spring barley has started in Europe, as heterogeneous seems the harvest is going to be. The first preliminary results show values that vary a lot. Anyhow there is the talk of overage of brewing barley in Europe. Normally diseases and fusarium are not a big problem.

Simple recipe for effective energy savings

A good brewery draws on its prior experience to brew a beer using few ingredients, which is tasty and popular with customers. The Paderborner Brewery adopted a similar strategy when it optimized its compressed air production system in cooperation with Ingersoll Rand Air Solutions, a company based in Mühlheim, Germany. The optimization procedure was achieved with few modifications and was implemented without incurring high investment costs. The results surpassed expectations. Annual energy costs were reduced by approximately 55 000 EUR with an amortization period of just over one year.

In Europe, heterogeneous spring barley is growing up. Depending on the time of sowing and the falls of rain during the process of growing, different yields are expected. But to all intents and purposes the branch is expecting an average yield in quality and quantity. Diseases are kept in reasonable limits because of the lasting dryness.

The use of reduced iso-alpha-acids in brewing has become more widespread in past years, although their characteristics during beer ageing are not completely known. During our investigations, important differences in ageing characteristics were detected not only between the categories of reduced and non-reduced hop extracts, but also within the group of beers containing reduced hop products. Forced ageing in the absence of light had the strongest impact on beers hopped with CO2-extract, followed by iso-alpha-extracts. Rho, Tetra and Hexa showed a significantly better stability with the tendency to improve from Rho- over Tetra- to Hexahydro-isohumulone. The findings from sensory analysis could be confirmed by instrumental analysis of chemiluminescence behaviour..

The beer and beverage industry is using ever more barrier enhanced plastic bottles for the filling of its products. The quality of the products can be considerably affected by the permeation of oxygen into the bottle and carbon dioxide out of it. The quality control of the bottles with particular emphasis on the gas barrier is thus of great importance. However, the conventional gas permeation measuring method needs too much time. In order to respond effectively and quickly to barrier defects, bottle production or incoming goods inspection measuring time must be shortened, for example by 2 hours. A physical problem of a quick measurement of oxygen is the comparably long unsteady state of permeation due to desorption of oxygen into the bottle after filling..

Celiac disease is a condition, in which case the person’s body reacts to the prolamins of wheat, rye, barley, and oats. The only way to treat CD is a total lifelong avoidance of gluten consumption. In this study Tef (Eragrostis tef L.), which belongs to the family poaceae that is regarded as gluten free, was used as raw material. The objective of this study was to optimize the malting conditions to produce a gluten free malt of high quality for gluten free foods. Tef, with a thousand kernel weight of 0.3–0.4 g, needed special arrangements like small sieves etc. Tef has a remarkable agronomical advantage that the water requirement is probably the lowest of any major cereal.

The inspection of returned beverage crates as well as bottles in industrial automatic filling lines is mainly performed by imaging systems. These systems are not able to detect invisible damages or embrittlement. A powerful novel system based on the principle of mechanical vibration analysis for the detection of small and concealed damages is presented. The selection of individual crates is performed automatically by a pre-trained artificial neural network (ANN). Numerical finite element simulations form a basic insight into the vibration behaviour of the crates and help to plan a pilot setup. This leads to a final recognition rate of more than 99 % over all checked crates in a prototype for industrial use.

BrewingScience - Monatsschrift für Brauwissenschaft, 61 (May/Juni 2008), pp. 81-93

Practical experiences with a very large reverse osmosis plant for the treatment of brewing and industrial water

In 2003, the French brewery Brasseries Kronenbourg put one of the largest reverse osmosis plants for the treatment of brewing and industrial water in Europe into operation in Obernai. Since then, more than 6 million cubic meters of raw water have been treated with this plant. The practical experience gained during this time convinced Brasseries Kronenbourg that they had made the right investment decision not only from the technological and economic point of view but also with regard to the system being future-proof.

Quo vadis, beer stability?

Brewers will continue to require spring malting barleys. Adequate quantities of winter barley varieties suitable for brewing are not yet available. Tests described below showed that partial use of 6-rowed winter barley causes changes in taste as well as in taste stability and lowers beer stability. Higher quantities of silica gel for protein adsorption as well as PVPP for tannin adsorption have to be added. The objective is to adapt stabilization measures to the respective operational conditions.