Why Ferment? - Page 2

**jpc** · 01-25-2012, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shaft333

My guess is that fermentation is cheaper. Ingredients don't require too much processing.
Treatment, handling etc is tried and true. Nothing special about shipping and logistics.

Synthesizing the compounds that make up a beer might not be easier, quicker, or cheaper than fermentation.

Again, "cheaper" than what? I know of no alternatives to fermentation. What other ways are there to produce EtOH?

**szucconi** · 02-09-2012, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shaft333

My guess is that fermentation is cheaper. Ingredients don't require too much processing.
Treatment, handling etc is tried and true. Nothing special about shipping and logistics.

Synthesizing the compounds that make up a beer might not be easier, quicker, or cheaper than fermentation.

This is nail on the head. It requires only time to ferment and yeast do the work. Its the same idea as nano tech stuff. It would be very expensive to make booze any other way.

Curtis2010 · 02-10-2012, 05:21 PM

Assuming that fermentation is the only technically/financially practical way to produce alcohol then you could use a highly alcohol tolerant yeast to produce a high alcohol content wort, distill the alcohol out, and then use this to infuse into the end "beer" product. This would eliminate the delay associated with fermentation, thus greatly reducing the volume of fermentation tanks needed and dramatically reducing the duration of the production cycle (time is money as the saying goes).

wailingguitar · 02-10-2012, 06:11 PM

YouTube

spazzy · 02-10-2012, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curtis2010

Assuming that fermentation is the only technically/financially practical way to produce alcohol then you could use a highly alcohol tolerant yeast to produce a high alcohol content wort, distill the alcohol out, and then use this to infuse into the end "beer" product. This would eliminate the delay associated with fermentation, thus greatly reducing the volume of fermentation tanks needed and dramatically reducing the duration of the production cycle (time is money as the saying goes).

Or don't even use yeast at all, E. coli is the fastest multiplying organism on the planet, some genetically modified strains (ie for making biofuel etoh) can pump out serious amounts of the stuff

**JonM** · 02-10-2012, 08:36 PM

Even if this synthetic beer could be made, no one would buy it.

I'm sure that people in a lab somewhere can make a synthetic food source that contains protein and vitamins and stuff. If the developers of that synthetic food said, "hey, we discovered a combination of chemicals that makes this synthetic food source taste exactly like cheeseburgers!" would the average cheeseburger-eating American buy it? Heck no.

**The_Dog_42** · 03-06-2012, 04:25 PM

Malt used in the brewhouse is very difficult to grow properly and produces a lower yield than many other crops. If you could put the ethanol into beer from another source, a much, much cheaper grain could be used to create the alcohol, reducing overhead. Also, without having to maintain the capital equipment needed in fermentation, you'd save on brewery space, water cost (of cleaning), labor from sanitizing, etc. Finally you'd save on energy cost because you wouldn't care about any by-products of hot fermentation...only alcohol. So ethanol can be made considerably cheaper.

Charles Bamforth wrote a few lectures in the modern scholars series of books. The lectures were collectively titled "Brewmaster's Art" and he goes into some detail on this. (For those who don't know, Dr. Bamforth is the chair of the Food Sciences dept at UC Davis. He is the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing, has worked in industry at companies like AB and Bass and now teaches at the premier brewing school in the country.)

In "Brewmaster's Art" he mentions that you cannot replicate the flavor of beer by taking things out of a bucket and combining them. There are hundreds of chemical reactions that occur during each phase of the brewing process. Each reactions lends something to the overall taste and there are many compounds in such small quantities that concentrations and make-up haven't been identified.

On a side note, in another book of his called "Beer is Proof God Loves Us" he even mentions that it is now possible to buy the enzymes responsible for converting startch to sugar, so the malting process isn't even "necessary." But the malting process does more than create alpha and beta amalayse. It produces a wide range of flavors and compounds, each of which contribute to flavor. So you can't even do something as simple as buy enzymes and raw un-malted barley to make a proper beer.

**BBL_Brewer** · 03-06-2012, 04:29 PM

Making unfermented beer would be like making tofu and calling it chicken.

**passedpawn** · 03-06-2012, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonM

Even if this synthetic beer could be made, no one would buy it.

I'm sure that people in a lab somewhere can make a synthetic food source that contains protein and vitamins and stuff. If the developers of that synthetic food said, "hey, we discovered a combination of chemicals that makes this synthetic food source taste exactly like cheeseburgers!" would the average cheeseburger-eating American buy it? Heck no.

Right, just like if you replaced the sugar in soda with some lab chemical (i.e., apartame). Who would buy that?

My wife drinks a mess of this Crystal Light stuff. I'd bet there isn't any recognizable foodstuff in there, but she loves it.

**Yuri_Rage** · 03-06-2012, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curtis2010

After all, you can buy chemicals/extracts used to train and "calibrate" the taste-buds of beer judges, so I expect you could use many of these same chemicals to approximate the desired overall taste characteristics (esp given their much less complex nature relative to a good craft brew).

Have you ever seen the exorbitant price of those kits? It's WAY cheaper to naturally produce an off-flavored beer than to purchase one of those kits and add the off-flavor later.