New brewing Method Means Faster Beer, Less Waste

thatshortkid writes "A brewmaster in Germany has invented a cylinder that fuses yeast to the sides, allowing the yeast to do its fermentation job faster. A process that normally takes 10 days now takes a few hours. Also, yeast that normally has to be changed out after three brews can now last up to six months to a year."

Re:Hopefully this equals

[gl4ss]

but.. if you don't count the taxes beer _IS_ pretty damn cheap already, compared to other drinks(milk, juice, stuff like that).

i'd wonder more about what kind of new beers will come because of this, because obviously it allows the process to be changed.

Re:Taste?

[thatshortkid]

well, in TFA the inventor stated that the beer "still tasted fine" after using the same yeast after a year's use, so I'm assuming that the first batch tasted fine too.

not entirely new

[NaturePhotog]

Professor Graham Stewart, a brewing expert at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and the head of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling, told CNN that Heiliger's concept was not entirely new.
He says it is a type of "continuous fermentation," which has been used for about 50 years in wine-making and 15 years in beer-making.
...and believes the idea could work well on a small scale.

Makes me wonder if the idea doesn't scale well. That said, IAAB (I am a brewer; I worked in a brewpub and brew on premises for several years and home brew), and I wonder if it might not still be a boon (boont? mmm...amber...) to smaller breweries, brewpubs, and especially brew on premises. Most brewpubs go through much smaller amounts of any given beer than they brew, and this might be away to "brew on demand" or the like, and give a fresher product.

For brew on premises customers, instead of brew, wait two weeks, come back and bottle, it could be brew in the morning, bottle in the afternoon, and might appeal to more people that way. I recall a fair number of people who were put off by two week wait.

And all that said, it seems like there will still be call for the more traditional brewing process, as different beers, etc. use different fermenting processes (lager = cooler, bottom-fermenting yeast; barleywine = two fermentations, one with wine yeast; lambic = 'spontaneous' fermentation)

Re:Hopefully this equals

[Paster Of Muppets]

Yes, but watch out for the water! I live in the UK, and was born "up North", where the water is "soft". My father used to make a lot of his home-brewed beer, and apparantly it tasted quite nice. We later moved "down South", he got his brewing kit out again, and made a batch. This time, it tasted like crap because the water where we then lived is "hard". He had to chuck the whole batch away.

Me? I hate beer, will never touch the stuff. Now, if I could only make a home-made Baileys set...

Re:Hopefully this equals

[lewiscr]

Most Home Brew stores stock water additives for this purpose. If not, you can find them online. It's not an easy task to adjust your water though, which is why I swipe the bottled water from work.

Once you've got a 5 gallon jug, you can fill it up pretty cheap with good quality water at most US supermarkets. The supermarket down the street has reverse-osmosi filtered water for 25 cents per gallon.

Re:Hopefully this equals

[NaturePhotog]

The original IPA (India Pale Ale) was brewed in an area of England with hard water, so some recipes for IPAs add gypsum, etc. to the water when preparing the wort, to simulate the original water. You wouldn't want it for most beers, but IPAs are hoppy enough that you wouldn't notice water changes as much.

And Coors is proof that good water doesn't necessarily make good beer.

Re:Hopefully this equals

[Bush Pig]

You just have to brew beer styles that work with your local water, although, in my experience, the effect of the water on the final product is overstated. If you have hard water, you just brew a Burton-on Trent style pale ale. With softer water, you could try your hand at a Bohemian style Pilsner. However, I live in Adelaide, which has probably the hardest water in the world, and I just make what I feel like. It all turns out OK.

Re:Hopefully this equals

[BeaverCleaver]

Sorry to reply to myself, but to help the Northern-Hemisphere centric readership, Adelaide, South Australia gets their water from the Murray river. The end of the Murray river, which has been raped for thousands of miles of its length for irrigation and hydropower (not to mention the ever-increasing salinity of any runoff). What used to be the most bitchin' river in Australia now actually has NEGATIVE flow at times, that much has been taken out of it. The poor buggers in Adelaide have to drink that salty crap daily. The big Hydro/irrigation project of the '50s may not have been the bright idea it seemed.

Re:Taste?

[Nutria]

Tasting fine and tasting good aren't the same thing.

Yes, they are. From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):

1. Finished; brought to perfection; refined; hence, free from impurity; excellent; superior; elegant; worthy of admiration; accomplished; beautiful.

Now, "ok" and "good" are definitely different...