Industrial Production of Beer

Industrial Production of Beer

Beer Production

Beer is a beverage containing alcohol, extract, and carbon dioxide. Beer is prepared from barley malt, raw hops or other hop products, brewing water, and top- or bottom-fermenting yeast. The alcohol must be produced exclusively from these ingredients, which are converted to fermentable products during the brewing process. The word beer comes from the Latin word ‘‘bibere’’ (to drink), which is the origin of the Old English word ‘‘be~or’’ (the brewed). The industrial production of beer process consist of various steps.

Milling

Beginning In the brew house, different types of malt (barley, corn, rice) are crushed together to break up the grain kernels in order to extract fermentable sugars to produce a milled product called grist.

Mash Conversion

The grist is then transferred into a mash tun and mixed with heated water in a process called mash conversion. The conversion process uses natural enzymes in the malt to break the malt’s starch down into sugars. Mashing allows the enzymes in the malt (primarily, α-amylase and β-amylase) to break down the starch in the grain into sugars, typically maltose to create a malty liquid called wort. The overall process will take up to 60-120 minutes.

Optimal rest temperatures for major mashing enzymes

 

Temp °C	Temp °F	Enzyme	Breaks down
40–45 °C	104.0–113.0 °F	β-Glucanase	β-Glucan
50–54 °C	122.0–129.2 °F	Protease	Protein
62–67 °C	143.6–152.6 °F	β-Amylase	Starch
71–72 °C	159.8–161.6 °F	α-Amylase	Starch

Lautering

The mash is then pumped into the lauter tun, where a sweet liquid (known as wort) is separated from the grain husks.

Boiling

The wort is then collected in a vessel called a kettle, where it is brought to a controlled boil before the hops are added. Hope are important as it gives characteristic flavour to the beer. Hops are a female flower of Humulus lupulus . Bitter and aroma imparting hops are used for brewing. They both differ in essential oil and alpha acid contents. Bitter hops are rich in alpha acid while aroma hops are rich in essential oils

Wort separation and cooling

After boiling, the wort is transferred into a whirlpool for the wort separation stage. During this stage, any malt or hop particles are removed to leave a liquid that is ready to be cooled, the WORT in a Plate Heat Exchanger from 100 °C to about 10 °C in an hour.

Fermentation

To start the fermentation, yeast is added during the filling of the vessel. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is used for beer manufacturing. Yeast converts the sugary wort into beer by producing alcohol, a wide range of flavors, and carbon dioxide. The cooled wort is transferred into a fermentation vessel to which the yeast has already added. If the beer being made is an ale, the wort will be maintained at a constant temperature of 20° C) for about two weeks. If the beer is a lager, the temperature will be maintained at (9-12°C) for about six weeks. Since fermentation produces a substantial amount of heat, the tanks must be cooled constantly to maintain the proper temperature. When fermentation has finished, the beer is cooled to about (0° C). This helps the remaining yeast settle to the bottom of the fermenter, along with other undesirable proteins that come out of solution at this lower temperature.

When the yeast first hits the wort, concentrations of glucose (C6H12O6) are very high, so through diffusion, glucose enters the yeast (in fact, it keeps entering the yeast as long as there is glucose in the solution). As each glucose molecule enters the yeast, it is broken down in a 10-step process called glycolysis. The product of glycolysis is two three-carbon sugars, called pyruvates, and some ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which supplies energy to the yeast and allows it to multiply. The two pyruvates are then converted by the yeast into carbon dioxide (CO2) and ethanol (CH3CH2OH, which is the alcohol in beer)

Maturation

After fermentation, the young “green” beer needs to be matured in order to allow both a full development of flavors and a smooth finish.

Filtration & carbonation

Now that most of the solids have settled to the bottom, the beer is slowly pumped from the fermenter and filtered to remove any remaining solids. From the filter, the beer goes into another tank, called a bright beer tank. This is its last stop before bottling or kegging. Here, the level of carbon dioxide is adjusted by bubbling a little extra CO2 into the beer through a porous stone. once completed, the beer is ready to be packaged

After filling the beer passed through pasteurizer before dispatch. 

Reference

Text Book of Microbiology : RC Dubey

Evan Evans (2011). The Oxford Companion to Beer. Oxford University Press. p. 236. ISBN 9780195367133. Archived from the original on 23 December 2019.

 Chris Boulton (20 May 2013). Encyclopaedia of Brewing. John Wiley & Sons. p. 111. ISBN 9781118598122. Archived from the original on 21 May 2016.