Beer-making hops on environmental bandwagon

William Atkins
Tuesday, 25 December 2007 01:00

Science - Health

A new United Kingdom process for making beer reduces the amount of energy needed to produce beer and also diminishes the amount of waste products made during the process.

The process is called PDX, which is derived from the company’s name: Pursuit Dynamics. The company is headquartered in Huntington, UK.

Here’s how it works. During the process of making your favorite brew, the PDX process shoots supersonic jets of steam (at speeds faster than the speed of sound) into a container of ingredients used to make the beer. The steam jets are used to aggressively vibrate the ingredients on an atomic scale, which rapidly heats up the mixture. The action helps to speed up the time it takes to make beer; and, thus, reduce the amount of expended energy and the amount of produced waste byproducts.

At this stage the hops are added to the malted cereal grain solution. Beer makers call this stage “wort boil.” This action is the important stage to the beer making process. It is also important because 60 percent of the energy expended occurs at this time.

Researchers at the Coors Brewery plant in Burton-upon-Trent (Derbyshire) have studied the PDX process for two years. In this period they were able to reduce the amount of energy used during the wort boil by up to 40 percent. Many of the caustic chemicals used in the process were no longer needed because of the new environmentally “green” process.

Other beer manufacturers are now investigating the possibilities of using the PDS process for their processes. Maybe they, too, will “hop” on the environmental bandwagon. Cheers to those who do!