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Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Everything Old Is New Again: Non-Stop Fermentation

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fermenter-conical
I just stumbled upon this interesting article from May in Phys.Org entitled More sustainable way to brew beer: Non-stop fermentation saves resources. It details efforts by researchers at the Technische Universität München to develop “a fermentation process that takes place in stages over a number of interconnected tanks. The tank system can be operated continuously over a period of several months, which leads to an energy reduction. The new method also promises significant resource efficiency gains.”

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They talk about the advantages of such a system. “With this new process, yeast and other sedimented substances can be fractionized and re-used if required, and “unlike the conventional system[s], the brewers can fill and empty the tanks continuously from the top part of the tanks. The bottom connection of the tank can hence be used to discharge yeast cells and other particles.”

Lead researcher, Konrad Müller-Auffermann explains how “Continuous operation makes the fermentation plant more efficient. ‘This new method reduces the incidence of energy peaks, so that breweries will be able to save on electricity. In addition, less beer will be lost — and breweries can save water and cleaning detergents.'”

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So far, so good. It sounds interesting, but here’s where they lost me. “Brewers have been juggling with the dream of turning the classical batch fermentation into a continuous process for over 100 years. In all this time, however, no one has managed to develop a widely applied industrial concept.”

Um, maybe somebody with more technical expertise can explain this to me, but New Zealanders (and possibly the Australians) have been using what they call “continuous fermentation” since 1953, and at least one brewery is still using it today. I did a sidebar about Continuous Fermentation for All About Beer magazine in 2008.

One of New Zealand’s most interesting contributions to brewing sciences is the process known as continuous fermentation. This process was patented in 1953 by Morton Coutts, whose family had been involved in brewing since the 19th century. His father founded the Waitemata Brewery, which eventually become DB Breweries.

Essentially, Coutts created a “wort stabilization process” that made the wort more consistent and clear, and then separated the main functions of the yeast into two stages. In the first, yeast grew, and in the second, it fermented. By splitting these two functions, Coutts created a “continuous flow,” so brewers could continually add raw materials to the first stage, and draw off a steady supply of finished beer from the second thus allowing the brewery to run constantly.

It also shortened the brewing process by as much as several weeks. Recognizing the economic advantages to continuous fermentation, Lion and DB worked together jointly to develop a practical way to use the method in a commercial brewery, opening the world’s first continuous fermentation brewery in 1957 in Palmerston North, a town in the south central part of the North Island.

Continuous fermentation works best in a brewery making only one style of beer, because it’s difficult to stop the process and start up again with a new beer. As a result, Lion largely abandoned continuous fermentation in the 1980s in order to brew a wider variety of styles, while DB continues to use the method, as do several other large breweries around the world, such as Guinness.

The University of Aukland’s Business History Project has a good overview on Morton Coutts, father of continuous fermentation. You can also read more at Alcohol Fuels and Ken & Dot’s Allsorts.

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So nothing against the German effort at non-stop fermentation. It looks interesting and innovative. But it doesn’t seem all that different from continuous fermentation that was invented sixty years ago. Maybe there’s a subtle or technical difference I’m missing, but they don’t even mention being aware of it when they insist people have been trying to figure out this problem for over a century, which seems a little strange. So while they’re understandably excited about their discovery, I wish they’d acknowledge Coutts. Or am I missing something?

Per Capita Beer Consumption By State

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fish-drinking
Business Insider/Thrillist had an item not to long ago about per capita beer consumption by state, though they unceremoniously titled it The States That Guzzle The Most Beer. The data is based on information from the Beer Institute’s “Shipments of Malt Beverages and Per Capita Consumption by State 2012.” Business Insider made the statement that “the more unassuming states tended to out-booze their brethren, proving once again that you should always look out for the quiet ones silently pounding ales in the corner.” But whenever you look at per capita data, it always favors the less-populated states, and so doesn’t seem like a particularly accurate or meaningful measure of anything. It’s fun to see, but I don’t think you can draw too many grand conclusions from it. Here, for example, is the top ten.

  1. North Dakota
  2. New Hampshire
  3. Montana
  4. South Dakota
  5. Wisconsin
  6. Nevada
  7. Vermont
  8. Nebraska
  9. Texas
  10. Maine

Not surprisingly, Utah drinks the least, per capita, but the fact that New York and New Jersey are in the bottom five should tell you everything you need to know about how meaningless consumption by per capita can be. California, the most populous state, and with twice the number of breweries as any other state, ranks 44th, very near the bottom. Here’s the bottom five.

  1. Maryland
  2. New York
  3. New Jersey
  4. Connecticut
  5. Utah

Hello Kitty, Hello Beer!

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hello-kitty
Here’s a hilarious marketing development, one that would absolutely never fly in the land of the free and the home of the “think about the children” neo-prohibitionists. If you’ve been the parent of a young daughter, you’re probably already familiar with the marketing juggernaut that is Hello Kitty and her legion of cute minions from Sanrio. It’s hard to think of another character with as much licensed tie-in merchandising as Hello Kitty. She makes Disney look like amateurs. So really, it should come as no surprise then, that Sanrio has licensed Hello Kitty for a series of four fruit beers, brewed by the Taiwan Tsing Beer Co.. The four initial fruit beers include Peach, Passion Fruit, Banana and Lemon and come in 330 ml cans.

hello-kitty-beers

Bloomberg Businessweek referred to the announcement as Zen and the Art of Crass Marketing, which is surprising since I never really thought of the business press, or indeed the business world generally, as having high moral standards if there was a buck to be made. When you consider that it was big business that sank the country, and the world, into a global recession, then getting a bailout from us, while still collecting their bonuses, I have had time swallowing Bloomberg’s assertion that this is the line that business dare not cross, that this is the one going too far into crassness. If anything, this is pretty harmless and funny.

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The ABC News Report is slightly more balanced, and reveals that these “new fruit-flavored cans mark Hello Kitty’s second entry into the world of alcohol. Previously, Hello Kitty wines were licensed in Asia, Europe and the United States.”

Hello-Kitty-Pink-Beer

I can’t say any of them look particularly good, but one thing most news accounts overlooked is that the beer is actually only 2.3% a.b.v., making them session beers, and actually the opposite of the evil Bloomberg makes them out to be. Also, Kotaku, reviewing the beers, describes them as “closest to Chimay but with stronger fruit flavorings. The fruit isn’t a note or a sense in these beverages but instead the overpowering star of it all.” That’s hard to swallow, but then I haven’t actually tried them and it’s likely I won’t ever have the chance to, not that it will keep me up at night. Still, an odd and twisted development.

Beer Brands Infographic

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branding
Today’s infographic is an interesting one, created by Olivia Vander Tuig at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, during the Spring of this year, in collaboration with Annie-Locke Scherer and Madelyn Willey. The infographic compares the beer brands Pabst Blue Ribbon, Guinness, Miller High Life, and Heineken, and was made as a companion for a travel studio about branding and factory experience called Behind the Brand.

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Click here to see the infographic full size. You can also download a much larger version from dropbox.

Weigh In On The Craft Beer Bubble

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For our 80th Session, our host is Derek Harrison, who writes online at It’s Not Just the Alcohol Talking. His topic for this session asks bloggers to weigh in on the question that pundits and business analysts have been asking and answering frequently in recent months, Is Craft Beer a Bubble?

It’s a good time to be in the craft beer industry. The big brewers are watching their market share get chipped away by the purveyors of well-made lagers and ales. Craft breweries are popping up like weeds.

This growth begs the question: is craft beer a bubble? Many in the industry are starting to wonder when, and more importantly how, the growth is going to stop. Is craft beer going to reach equilibrium and stabilize, or is the bubble just going to keep growing until it bursts?

bubble-burst

So on Friday, October 4, let us know where you stand on the bursting bubble hypothesis. Is the bubble precarious and ready to pop any second or as solid as a glass ball?

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21st Amendment’s Rickshaw Run For Reading

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This is a fun one. I just heard from Shaun O’Sullivan at 21st Amendment Brewery that they’re sponsoring a team in the Rickshaw Run, which is a two-week, 2,000 mile journey across Northern India in what can best be described as a glorified lawnmower. O’Sullivan believes that “the sponsorship seed was planted last summer at Boneyard Beer in Bend, Oregon,” when this photo of him was taken.

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21-A co-owner Shaun O’Sullivan encouraging you to finish your beer … for India.

Several months back, a friend of the 21-A (and beer PR consultant) Renée, told Shaun that she was driving a motorized rickshaw across India, and he tells me “I couldn’t stop thinking how cool it would be to have the 21A logo on an Indian rickshaw.” So they decided to sponsor her team in the Rickshaw Run, which they affectionately refer to as the “Gangetic Blunder.” All the money they’re raising — as in 100% of it — goes directly to Room to Read, a San Francisco-based charity that promotes children’s literacy in India. Their team, the Reading Rickshaw, consists of four team members and you can follow their progress on a map, and also on the adventurists, which also has a live map along with a list of all the teams, including Reading Rickshaw (2) — which is Renée and Gabriel — and also Reading Rickshaw (1) — which is Thuy and Vatsal.

rickshaw-run
The four intrepid members of team Reading Rickshaw, with 21st Amendment logo.

21st Amendment will be sharing the Reading Rickshaws’ travel updates on twitter and the 21A blog, as these Bay Area adventurers make their way, slowly, through the land of Kingfisher beer. You can follow along using the links above, or better still, donate to the Room to Read.

Mapping Beervana

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portland
Today’s infographic was created by Portland Monthly for their Oregon Beer Guide and is entitled Mapping Beervana’s History. Showing the connections between the many Portland breweries and their founders and brewers, it makes clear just how incestuous the beer industry is, not just in Portland, but quite frankly everywhere.

mapping-beervana
Click here to see the poster full size.