The thing with beer is that it is already carbonated during the secondary fermentation (Reifegärung), where the tanks are kept at a constant pressure. In the brewery where I worked, these tanks also leaked CO2, but not so much that it as worth collecting. The main fermentation (Hauptgärung) is when the most CO2 is produced. So much so that it is a health hazard if it were allowed to simply collect in the rooms.
What most breweries do with this CO2 is use it during filling: the clean bottle, can, or keg is filled with CO2 first to displace the air, then pressurised to keep the CO2 in the beer from escaping. The container is then filled, pressing out the CO2 and leaving behind only beer. To ensure only beer is in the bottle/can/keg, it then foams out just enough to make sure no air gets in during the second when the filling head is lifted and the cap/lid/bung is applied.
It was an interesting job, but I admit I like programming better.
The standard international unit for beer production is the Hectolitre, but the US still uses barrels, which in turn are different from the UK barrel
is very funny to see the US brewers presenting at international conferences and mixing grams with barrels and Fahrenheit and moles and watts in their graphs…
yes a barrel is a bit more than a hectolitre so 400,000 hectolitres would be enough to invest in a CO2 recovery unit, also they have to consider whether they have enough room for the equipment and the know-how to ensure quality
If they also make soft drinks it would be a good idea to look into it
Well, the brewery was founded in 1887, and was doing all this back when I was working for them in the 1990’s. The original Sudhaus and large parts of the original building were converted to a museum when the new facilities were opened. The main carbon dioxide storage looked like a huge balloon in the attic of what was the old malting house. To access it, you had to go through the former machine room (very steampunk-ey!).
And yes, they would make bottled soft drinks as well as beers on their filling lines. No cans, though, for environmental reasons.
Since I left the company, they have since opened a newer, smaller Sudhaus for their Maisel & Friends craft beers, designed with glass walls to the restaurant where the fleet maintenance shops used to be. And I have since moved to Munich, where the big 5 are even bigger and make Maisel look like a bit player.
Actually most lagers (at least lagers made outside germany) are carbonated using external food grade CO2 just before packaging, the carbonation produced during fermentation is nowhere near enough to maintain a good head. The natural carbonation produces very fine bubble, like the english real ales and has low impact in mouthfeel
Of course there are workarounds, like adding a bit of sugar and allowing the beer to condition in the bottle, but you have to be careful as they might explode
You see, that right there shows why Germans are so suspicious of non-German beers. We are taught to use only water, malt, hops and yeast. Anything else, and you can’t call it beer any more. It’s just an alcoholic beverage. Which has made craft brews in Germany kind of limited, I admit.
Thinking back to my apprenticeship, I think my Braumeister was proud of how Germans didn’t even allow any foreign, “fossil” carbon dioxide to come into contact with the beer, at least not until the pub uses its own CO2 to tap the keg.
It is interesting to see how beer is brewed outside of Germany, I admit. My only other experience was touring the Guinness brewery in Dublin, with how they stumbled upon using nitrogen instead of carbon dioxide, and so on. But I enjoy our discussion, and assume you are a brewer as well?
The “sugar” in question can be unfermented wort. And from what I understand for commercial bottle conditioned beers that’s the usual thing. Basically the same idea as making sparkling wine.
Most beers, including German beers are force carbed to some extent even when otherwise naturally conditioned. For consistency and control. The exceptions are bottle conditioned beers, and cask. Most associated with the Belgians and the British respectively.
The Germans didn’t invent beer. And many, many many styles with more than just hops, yeast, malt and water are far older and more traditional than modern German styles.
Even the Germans had to make exceptions for Gose and Hefeweizen
I sell a few German craft brands. One of them makes a decent Saison, but otherwise it’s nothing special.
I think what’s holding that up over there is more that you guys already have loads of smaller, regional, higher quality brands. Many of which would even qualify as “craft” or “independent” by our formal definitions over here. The craft beer movement kicked off in the US in an attempt to emulate that when we didn’t have it.
So you guys just haven’t needed it.
From what I gather the drivers for craft breweries in a lot of Europe right now are the unavailability of most American craft over there. Almost none of this stuff gets exported. And the rise of the free pub or free bar idea. Venues that aren’t owned by or contractually tied to a specific producer.
Those guys need to get beer somewhere, and conglomerates or regional monopolies can easily press them out.
By the way, today is Tag des Deutschen Bieres, commemorating the Bavarian purity law (Reinheitsgebot) which was first declared on 23 April 1516. But unlike most years, there are no events giving out free beer this year.
yes, the sugar can be unfermented wort and this is the usual method in some craft breweries
Industrial breweries are very keen in fermenting every last molecule of sugar from barley, that is why they use enzimes, high activity yeast and high temperatures, the beer comes out very attenuated and dry. Again, is just cheaper to add a few kilos of sucrose per Hl and let the yeast do its thing
Team FDA says that only CO2 “of a purity suitable for its intended use” is GRAS.
I’m not sure if there are any discrepancies between US and EU standards; but the European Industrial Gases Association makes their spec available; so it is clearly the more suitable choice for internet commenting purposes.
These breweries force carbonate. They’re almost exclusively producing highly filtered, pasteurized beer. Carbing through refermentation requires unpasteurized beer and live yeast. It’s generally cheaper to force carb compared to even cheap corn sugar. It takes a lot more time too.
Carbing beer this way is mostly a home brew thing. Excepting cask and bottle conditioned beers, which are a more expensive, higher end product catagory.
If the suggestion is that they could do this to get over a co2 shortage. You can’t do it in cans or screw caps, as there’s not enough overhead on the pressure they can hold. They’d have to stop pasteurizing, cut back on filtration. Which would massively shorten the shelf life. So they’d be dropping the highest volume package (cans), increasing price, and shortening shelf life. At more expense.
I suppose they could do that in a pinch but it’s not gonna be simple or successful.
Sort of. The concern isn’t attenuation for the most part. Because residual sugar doesn’t neccisarily impact profits. You can still sell the same volume of beer, regardless of attenuation. Distilleries focus on that because higher abv out of a mash maximizes the output of a distillation run.
American macro brews are that dry for stylistic reasons, but the world is loaded with mass market beers that have residual sugar. Though it’s a factor in light beers, as they’re typically fermented high then watered down. And reducing residual sugars and unfermentable carbohydrates is the entire concept. So there it does impact volume.
There’s two major reasons for the additives, enzymes and yeast nutrients.
The first is that these beers often contain a large proportion of rice or corn in their mash bill. Rice, corn and unmalted grain do not have the enzymes neccisary to convert their starch to fermentable sugar, or enough critical nutrients for the yeast. So without enough malt in the bill you have to add those things.
The other one is that it makes things fast. Together with high action yeasts and high fermentation temps you can ferment a batch of beer incredibly quick. Budweiser can purportedly push out a batch of beer in less than a week. Fast beer is cheap beer.
It’s not cheaper to add weeks of bottle conditioning to that.
