
A novel brewing process via controlled hydrodynamic cavitation - 1_listerine_pls
http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06629
======
theptip
Some points that are interesting to me, and warrant further investigation:

1) Milling of malts is no longer required. As a microbrewery operator, now I
don't need to come in the day before to run the mill for a planned brew.
Massive win on scheduling and convenience.

2) "Concerning mashing and sparging, the new equipment allows to eliminate
sparging altogether since the pulverization of cavitating malts ... prevents
practically any starch to remain trapped into the grains". Again, from a
microbrewery operator's perspective, another few hours of labour saved per
brew, since I don't have to run a few sparges over my grain.

3) Since cavitation apparently sanitizes the wort, we don't need to do a boil.
This saves another 1.5 hours on a brew, removes the need for a boil vessel,
and some other equipment in my brewery (steam boiler to heat the boil vessel,
a bunch of plumbing for said steam).

4) related to 3, the hops can be isomerized without boiling. I've had great
success with low-boil techniques like the hop stand, so I'd assume that CHC
beer would capture a lot more of the volatile aromatics from hops. This could
lead to some great IPAs.

I'd love to figure out what the MVP is for this rig, and whether it could be
replicated at homebrew scale, as it seems to simplify the process massively.

~~~
hyperbovine
Plus just general water savings. Between sparging, boil off and cleanup I've
felt pretty bad about brewing in drought-stricken California in the last few
years. Also, I'm strictly an amateur brewer, but I thought that the boil had
other useful features? (For example, eliminating chlorine.) Do you filter the
water ahead of time?

~~~
theptip
Where I am the water is very soft, and only lightly chlorinated, so I do not
filter. (I do add minerals to improve the mash efficiency and yeast health
though). If your water has lots of Chlorine (not Chloramine) then the boil
will drive this off, but you might be better off starting with Reverse Osmosis
water to get a clean slate, and then adding all the minerals you need.

Another important reason for the boil is driving off DMS (which causes a
cooked corn off-flavour).

The paper covers both of these, I think:

"Due to the strong liquid degassing properties as a result of hydrodynamic
cavitation processes (Clark, Dewhurst, Payne, & Ellwood, 2001; Gogate &
Pandit, 2011; Iben, Wolf, Freudigmann, Fröhlich, & Heller, 2015; Senthil
Kumar, Siva Kumar, & Pandit, 2000), undesired volatile aromatic compounds are
safely expelled after few minutes of cavitation"

Sounds like this would apply to the volatile chlorine as well, but I'm not
certain about that.

Also sounds like this should be more rigorously tested, as I don't see
anything by way of data to back up this claim; perhaps the cited papers
explain more.

------
ChuckMcM
Ok, so there has to be a comedy plot in there where two guys trying to make
beer with hydrodynamic cavitation end up discovering a viable cold fusion
reaction but keep drinking the experiment results :-)

That said, I found their off hand mention of using it as an alternate to high
temperature pasteurization as much more intriguing. Mostly because I detest
the "cooked" taste of ultra-pasteurized cream but have been finding it harder
and harder to find cream that hasn't been over pasteurized in this way. Find
me some cream that is "cold pasteurized" and tastes like cream, I'll be really
happy.

~~~
failrate
You have accidentally recreated the plot to Young Einstein.

------
couchand
I'm highly skeptical of the claim that such a system can plausibly "preserv[e]
beer’s organoleptic qualities". The claim is repeated in the conclusion in a
Trumpian fashion: "We anticipate that the new CHC brewing process affords beer
of taste, flavor, body and color comparable with state-of-the-art craft beers,
while offering further advantages, beyond the discussed ones, that will be the
subject of a forthcoming study."

Somehow, though, that's the only mention of the flavor profile of the beer
produced. They do describe measuring some key properties with a BeerLab, but
those numbers hardly tell a complete story.

Given the horrid state the mash ends up in, and the fact that it isn't removed
until the water has reached 78C, I'd expect plenty of tannins to be swept
along in the race to efficiency.

I'd also briefly like to complain about the sad charts in this paper. What
order are those bars in? Where are they drawing the conclusions in the text
from? Why are the data points collected so inconsistent?

~~~
DavidWanjiru
Wait, are we now using Trump's name to make an adjective in the same way we've
used Orwell's and Kafka's?

~~~
Pitarou
trump (2) verb

attempt to convince an audience by repeating an assertion many times

~~~
toddchambery
I'll add: "bombastic, unsupported claims"

------
1_listerine_pls
An MITech-review article:

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602464/this-technology-
is...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602464/this-technology-is-about-to-
revolutionize-beer-
making/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post)

~~~
SSLy
>amber nectar

Yeah, they don't know shit about beer.

------
djkrudy
My main concern is, like others below, the opaque beer. I've always known that
to be the undesirable effect of "pulverizing" I think of it as maybe twice
ground beef can be cooked more evenly than a steak, but the crust and raw
elements are what make a steak better. That's an unscientific way to say it,
but as a homebrewer I know that efficiency is NOT quality. "Cold brewing" or
brewing with CHC may have advantages in releasing/ preserving flavor in hops,
but the study doesn't support this claim. I don't care if I get 30% efficiency
based on original alphas to extracted alphas if something else is lost. (Like
taste, sensory effect or mouth feel) I'm thinking this may be more comparable
to "dry hopping", which can be used to give hop forward bitterness instead of
the dregs that hops boiled for an hour provide. (Like the difference between
the aromatic taste of fresh salsa versus the nearly coppery taste of cooked
all day tomato sauce. I love fresh salsa, but you can't replace that "dregs"
almost umami flavor brought out in Marinara. Compare Bell's Two Hearted to 3F
Zombie Dust. IBU's don't tell the whole story. I'm not discounting these
methods, but I don't think that the research is comprehensive enough or takes
into account taste enough to talk about completely converting a brewery to
these methods.

------
Animats
Reminds me of "Extracts from the club diary".[1]

[1]
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/coffee.html](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/coffee.html)

------
gravypod
They talk about the use of ultrasonic vibrations in the use of creating
cavitation in fluid. Why would that not work in this case? Why did they opt
for a centrifugal pump?

------
nagarch
Good to see this.. how much it cost to implement?

------
mikekchar
I really only skimmed this very quickly, but it seems as though they are using
a RIMS system for their cavitation based approach and an infusion mash (or
maybe step controlled??? I'm not familiar with the Braumeister setup and their
website is ridiculously slow) for their traditional approach. RIMS is already
known by homebrewers to be dramatically more efficient than most other
approaches. As interesting as it looks, I'm taking this with a huge grain of
malt.

~~~
mikekchar
Sorry to reply to my own post, but since I finished reading the paper I can
answer most of my implied questions :-)

The main difference between this setup and a RIMS is that they _don 't_ mill
the malt when they allow the grain to be circulated. The cavitation pulverises
the malt. This is actually a massive benefit because dry milling malt is a
major cause of infection in a brewery.

The other benefit is that they are able to mash at a much lower temperature
and still get decent extraction. Even down to 48C (118F) allows them to get
91% efficiency in one case. This is on par with RIMS (most reports I've heard
is that people can manage mid 90s efficiency), but of course rims has to
maintain a temperature of about 65C (150F).

Side note: Their reported temperatures for mashing without recirculating the
grains is a bit crazy -- in the mid 70's C -- all much over 160F. They are
going to be deactivating enzymes at those temps and that probably accounts for
their decreased efficiency. I really can't understand what they were thinking.

There is _some_ mention of protein make up, but my main worry about mashing at
such a low temperature is the break down of larger proteins. They have a
picture of frothy beer with a caption about foam stability, but the proof of
the pudding is in the eating. Also, that picture shows a _very_ hazy beer.

The other thing they talk about is isomerising the hops _without_ boiling.
That's pretty cool and would definitely reduce power usage. But again... that
picture of nearly opaque beer haunts me.

Finally they talk about cavitating the fermenting beer in order to remove CO2.
That seems reasonable, but I would worry somewhat about how the yeast drops in
that condition.

To be honest, I wish they had stuck to mashing in this paper. It's strange to
see a paper cram as much as this one does in one place. Normally you want to
stretch it out over as many publications as possible ;-)

The last thing I'm curious about is how they produce the cavitation. I really
couldn't understand their description at all. Is it just a matter of the
design of chamber in which they pump the wort? That would be extremely cool,
but I'd like to see a better description. A mash system that depends only on
pumps would be ridiculously nice to have.

~~~
Dagwoodie
Is this something a layman hobbyist can get into or try?

~~~
glibgil
I'll just google the "Braumeister model 50 L brewer" mentioned in the paper
and here you go [http://shop.speidels-braumeister.de/en](http://shop.speidels-
braumeister.de/en)

~~~
mkesper
They use it only for comparing their method to the traditional brewing
process.

