Entirely New Brewing Process

[TheHopfather]

Interesting article about a new brewing process developed in Italy. No crushing the grain, no boiling, 100% efficiency - I wonder if this method will take off?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...nternal&utm_medium=homepage&utm_source=grid_1

 

[Tribe Fan]

That is really interesting, great post.

 

[bobeer]

Interesting... I'd love a no mill, no sparge, no boil, brew day.

 

[SGTSparty]

Interesting to be sure. That said, are the temperatures high enough to kill off anything that may be in the wort? Sorry if thats a dumb question but IDK what temp is required to kill things brewers are concerned. I never really worried about it because i was going to boil it for an hour so it wasn't an issue.

 

[mongoose33]

Interesting to be sure. That said, are the temperatures high enough to kill off anything that may be in the wort? Sorry if thats a dumb question but IDK what temp is required to kill things brewers are concerned. I never really worried about it because i was going to boil it for an hour so it wasn't an issue.

Perhaps the cavitation kills the nasties?

 

[TheHopfather]

You just need to pasteurize the wort in order to kill off any bugs. Pasteurization takes place at 50–60 °C (122–140 °F) over a brief period of time (how much exactly I'm not 100% sure of). According to the linked article the cavitation process takes place at 78 °C, so yes, I'd say the process will kill off any bugs in the wort.

 

[mongoose33]

What they didn't say was how they generated the cavitation--or I missed it. Was it from rapidly-changing pressure, sort of like what happens when a diver from deep depths rises too quickly to the surface?

It wasn't clear as to why the sparge process is unnecessary. Somehow you have to separate the spent grain from the wort. Maybe it just drains? And if the pieces of the spent grain are 100 um, isn't that likely to lead to a stuck "sparge"?

It sounds like they've solved these problems, just wondering how they did it.

 

[TheHopfather]

You can read the actual paper here - http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06629

I haven't read that yet, I imagine they go into more detail in the paper itself rather than the article discussing the paper. Perhaps your answers are in there?

 

[mongoose33]

You can read the actual paper here - http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06629

I haven't read that yet, I imagine they go into more detail in the paper itself rather than the article discussing the paper. Perhaps your answers are in there?

I've read it, and most of it is understandable, but I couldn't figure out how they're separating the spent grain from the wort. At one point it looks like there's a filter being used, but it's in conjunction w/ a carbon filter to remove chlorine--which I'd think would happen before mashing, not after. Could be wrong on that.

BTW, there's a nice drawing of the equipment in there.

 

[btbnl]

"Cavitation is famously damaging. The pressures and temperatures it produces eat away at the hardest steel. Just how this would influence costs isn’t clear but must surely be factored in somehow."

Hmmmmm.

 

[jddevinn]

Interesting.

Sparging isn't required because of the way the grains are torn apart and the sugars converted. I'm sure they still have to drain.

 

[laredo7mm]

It is interesting, but I guess I am missing the point of their experiment. I understand that they say it is more efficient than traditional brewing, but even in their paper they say that the energy usage for a large brewery is 8% of the cost to produce beer. For smaller breweries, that number will be higher. Their system uses 24kWh to produce the beer, and a traditional system uses 32kWh to produce the same amount of beer. So they have a 25% energy saving over a traditional method. 25% of 8% means they are saving 2% of the total cost to make the beer.

Additionally, they use a 50L Braumeister for their "control" system and their experimental numbers from the Braumeister ranged between 55% and 85% extraction efficiency. They never mention how fine of a crush they did on the grains for the traditional system, or how they filtered out their finely crushed grains from the cavitation system. What if they would have compared the new process to a BIAB method where the grains were crushed to flour? Are the extraction efficiencies high because of cavitation or because the grains are pulverized to flour?

Them doing the scarification rest at a really low temperature was most interesting to me. I thought the optimum temp for Beta amylase was between 60°C and 65°C and they are saying they ran as low as 37°C and still got 86% extraction efficiency.

 

[jja]

I've read it, and most of it is understandable, but I couldn't figure out how they're separating the spent grain from the wort. At one point it looks like there's a filter being used, but it's in conjunction w/ a carbon filter to remove chlorine--which I'd think would happen before mashing, not after. Could be wrong on that.

At first I thought they didn't separate the malt and let it drop out in the fermenter since it's pulverized to <100um, but then I see that malt removal is mentioned a couple of times as occurring before hop addition. There is a variant process mentioned involving milling and separation via a cylindrical steel screen, but I too suspect there is some filtration involved. Although as you say the filter discussed seems to be for treatment of the brewing liquor.

They say they fermented in the standard method, but there are two paragraphs on p.8 that talk about other work using cavitation in primary fermentation to speed and increase ethanol production.

Very interesting overall. They mention lower capital and operating costs, which may provide some hope for us homebrewers, but don't give a hard cost number. And the equipment they developed has a 230L volume (5-10 times typical homebrew size).

 

[dryhopgulch]

I also saw this article and wondered if astringency will be imparted in the wort. Any thoughts on how saccharification still takes place? (Cavitation effectively flashes the wort well above mash-out temps)

 

[akthor]

If it works I can't imagine the big boys not using it if its a cheaper process.