Beer Goes a Little Greener

[rwh]

Most beer drinkers probably don't care a jot about the environmental impact of their favourite tipple. But they will soon be able to reduce their carbon footprint nonetheless, thanks to a technique that slashes both the energy required to brew beer and the amount of waste produced in the process.

The idea, called PDX, comes from Pursuit Dynamics of Huntingdon, UK. It adds a seemingly drastic step to conventional brewing: it blasts steam at supersonic speeds into the vat of brewing liquor to heat, agitate and atomise it. "The steam rips the liquid apart completely to form tiny, atomised droplets," says Jens Thorup, PD's technical director. "The droplets create a massive surface area that speeds up brewing reactions."

This stage of beer-making - when hops are added to liquid containing malted cereal grains - is called the "wort boil", and it's when 60 per cent of the energy required to make beer is expended. In a two-year trial at the Coors brewery in Burton upon Trent, Derbyshire, PDX cut wort-boil energy consumption by 40 per cent. And with reactions taking place in steam rather than fluid, less solid waste was "burnt" onto surfaces, reducing the need to later purge vessels with caustic chemicals.

Brewers Shepherd Neame of the UK and Carlsberg of Denmark are now set to adopt PDX, too. "There are certainly savings to be had, and in most cases they are substantial," says Richard Sharpe, technical director of BRI, a brewing research lab in Nutfield, Surrey. "When brewing's finance chiefs get a sniff of the savings this will take off."

[Cortez The Killer]

But what will it do to the taste???

[Kevnlis]

But what will it do to the taste???

Since when do megaswill breweries care about taste?