A Guide to NA Beer Production with Ben Jordan of ABV Technology
During this overview, we plan to discuss some key items that all should be considered when deciding to create a non-alcoholic option for your taproom and/or production.
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» » Beverage ConditioningBeverage Conditioning
Beverage conditioning covers a wide spectrum of processes in the fermentation and packaging of beer including fermentation monitoring, carbonation and nitrogenating, controlling dissolved oxygen and much more.
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How Decanters Increase High-Quality Beer Production
It’s a complex process to transform grains into refreshing, delicious beer. During production, a brewery’s step-by-step hot and cold processes influence the quality. Flottweg’s highly-efficient beer centrifuges meet the specific requirements of breweries while optimizing the entire process for maximum yields with the utmost level of quality.
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Better Carbonation with xFlow Technology
Written by Dr. Murthy Tata for QuantiPerm. QuantiPerm’s automated xFlow carbonation and deoxygenation systems offer versatility and reliability for higher quality beer.
In the old days, beer was fermented in open vessels, and then transferred into wooden casks. We like to imagine that maybe long ago, a brewer one day made a mistake and accidentally bunged a still-fermenting barrel—and was pleasantly surprised when it served up a spritzy beer. Was that how carbonated beer was born?
Today, most beer is served at a level between 2.5 and 2.75 volumes of carbonation. Anything less runs the risk of being derided as “flat beer.” Cask beers on the other hand have less carbonation.
Traditionally, air pumped into casks during dispense introduces nitrogen. Nitrogen microbubbles give cask beers their silky smooth texture.
How Four Top Breweries Restrict, Reduce and Measure Unwanted Oxygen During Canning and Bottling
“Most craft beer drinkers are more familiar with oxidation than most brewers would like,” states Brooke Gushen, packaging supervisor at New Belgium Brewing in Ft. Collins.
“All beer oxidizes and ages at some point,” she continues. “But there’s a lot brewers can do to prevent oxygen from being introduced. Packaging is a point in the process where you typically see the most pickup because it’s a small volume of beer, and those cans, seconds before they’re filled, are exposed to ambient air.”
Dissolved oxygen (DO). When trapped inside canned or bottled beer it shows its age and fury by accelerating the natural aging process of the beer and thereby staling it before its time. With the majority — or at least the plurality — of oxygen potentially entering the finished product more rapidly during packaging than at any point upstream, every packaging brewery should take measured action to restrict, reduce and measure the amount of DO (and its accomplices, total package oxygen [TPO] and shaken DO) that goes home with the couple who just bought your four pack.
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Four of the Best Ways to Deaerate Your Brewing Water, Depending on Your Budget
If you worked as a brewer at Sierra Nevada Brewing circa 2005, you would have had the luxury of deaerating the brewing water with an expensive deaerating column to reduce the amount of dreaded dissolved oxygen (DO) in your cold side processes.
Scott Jennings, innovation brewmaster at Sierra Nevada, worked there at the time. He says, “The benefits of a column system for water deaeration is that such a system removes oxygen from the water to a very high degree ( <5 ppb oxygen ), the water is sterilized in the process, and the water can be carbonated afterwards if that is desired.”
Today, the column remains a gold standard of deaeration equipment and still lingers out of most brewers’ budgets. While the majority of independent American breweries either opt for somewhat less cap-intensive systems or bootstrap with boiled water and carbon dioxide (CO2), many small brewers don’t deaerate their brewing water at all.
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Veteran Brewers Weigh In: Brew Shelf-Stable Beer By Eliminating Dissolved Oxygen During Tank Transfer
Denise Jones learned early in her beer career that oxygen is the destroyer of finished beer.
“No one wants a beer that tastes like wet newspaper or cardboard. As well, oxidized hop flavors and aromas are reminiscent of wet dog and old cheese,” says the 30-year international brewing veteran who earned a degree from the American Brewers Guild.
Without the Internet or a dissolved oxygen (DO) meter to consult in the 1990s, Jones attended conferences and visited trusted friends’ breweries to learn how to minimize oxygen pickup at every step of the cold side of the brew, where it can cause the most harm to a beer’s longevity. What she discovered was that even without the benefit of pricey gadgets, she could pretty effectively keep oxygen from entering her lines and tanks — at least before and during transfer — if she carefully practiced two P’s: purging and pressurizing.
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Streamline your brewery cold service operations to minimize oxidative damage to your beer
We’ve all encountered stale-tasting beer at some point, unmistakably distinguished by a cardboard, wet newspaper, or even vinous, sherry or vinegar flavor. And while we might have assumed the beer had long passed its sell-by date or a poorly fitted seal had allowed air to creep into the package, it’s possible that the beer actually left the brewery containing too much oxygen.
Oxygen — while imperative to yeast growth at the beginning of fermentation — becomes a scourge to beer if introduced on the cold side. Though it’s pretty much impossible to keep out all excess oxygen during brewing, brewers work diligently to minimize it, lest it spoil the beer, reduce flavor stability, darken the color or make it undesirably cloudy.
The Brewers Publication’s text Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers notes, “Current industry maximum acceptable levels of oxygen are always less than .05 ppm, usually less than .03 ppm, and the goal for many brewers is .01 ppm.”
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