FST CH 12

GENE TECHNOLOGY

As I write, no Maltster or Brewer is deliberately and directly using genetically modified raw materials, with the exception of a Brewer in Sweden that is overtly using such ingredients and incurring the wrath of Greenpeace in the bargain. The question is: will Maltsters and Brewers take advantage of this exciting new technology? I believe the answer is yes, but only once they are absolutely convinced that there are real merits in so doing. We have seen clear evidence of the readiness of these industries to embrace new technology, but there is also absolute caution applied by Maltsters and Brewers whenever change is suggested: only when justification is 100% will a move be made. One has only to survey the history of brewing science to realize the truth of this statement. It is now over twenty-five years since the first research on genetic modification of brewing yeasts took place, and plenty of yeasts have been successfully modified. And, as yet, none of them is in commercial use Only one genetically modified brewing yeast has been cleared through all the necessary authorities, this in the United Kingdom. Should a brewing company wish to use it, they may. As yet, none has taken up the option. In part this seems to be because no Brewer wishes to be first into the marketplace with a beer labeled "product of gene technology." More importantly, however, none seems to be convinced that the merits of this particular organism outweigh the very real concerns that exist with the application of this science. The first Brewer to employ genetically modified yeast will do so because it brings genuine benefit to the consumer. Perhaps the yeast will boost the levels of some component of beer that is beneficial to health (see chapter 4). Or might it be a yeast that enables beer to be brewed substantially more cheaply—although the author fails to see how the science of genetic modification can hope to address one of the biggest cost components of beer in many countries: excise duty! (See below.) The one yeast so far cleared for commercial use was "constructed" in one of my former research teams, led by John Hammond and his colleagues. Into a lager strain was introduced a gene from another yeast, this gene coding for an enzyme that will convert more of the starch into fermentable sugar, thereby enabling more alcohol to be made per unit of malt or, alternatively, enable less malt to be used per unit of alcohol. As we saw in chapter 8, not all of the starch from barley is converted into fermentable sugars in conventional brew-house operations. To produce the so-called diet beers that have more (even all) of these partial degradation products of starch (dextrins) shifted into alcohol, Brewers add an enzyme (called glucoamylase) that is capable of performing the extra conversion. What we did was to take the bit of the genetic code from Saccharomyces diastaticus that codes for this enzyme and transfer it to a conventional bottom-fermenting strain of Saccharomyces pastorianus. This was done so efficiently that the extra DNA stayed in the yeast from generation to generation. Most importantly, we had transferred DNA from an organism that was extremely similar to the host organism: from one yeast to another one. And it worked! The host yeast was able to make the enzyme from the "foreign" bit of DNA and spew it into the wort, and there it chopped up the dextrins. The fermentations were performed on scales as large as 100 hectoliters, and the beer produced was indistinguishable from that produced conventionally. The beer was produced, bottled, and labeled for research purposes only. The genetically modified yeast employed in making Nutfield Lyte was used as a test case for the purposes of seeking approval from the necessary U.K. authorities and advisory groups. For approval to be granted, the yeast had to be cleared by four entities: the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes within the government's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; the Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification (part of the government's Health and Safety Executive); the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (Department of the Environment); and the Food Advisory Committee. Four different departments had a say—four separate elements to scrutinize every facet of the science, ethics, and safety of the project and who had to be satisfied before permission was granted. And still this yeast remains in the freezer awaiting application. Everybody is applying understandable caution, but all the evidence is that the technology is sound and safe, provided that a responsible attitude is adopted. This is certainly the case for Brewers, and for Maltsters, too, although there is some distance to go yet before suitable genetically modified barleys become available. They will be developed—with "new" properties such as enhanced disease resistance, enabling a reduced need for spraying with pesticides. The Maltster will adopt the same cautious approach as the Brewer on whether to use them. Of course, both the Maltster and the Brewer have a stake in the use of barley; indeed, ultimately it will be the Brewer that will drive the use or otherwise of genetically modified barley. Gene technology, then, is an exciting concept and one that could provide genuine benefits. All the signs from the brewing industry are that the technology will only be used if those benefits accrue to the consumer.

INPUTS AND OUTPUTS

Brewers will continue to strive toward minimizing inputs; for example, they will continue to develop their processes toward less energy demand and less water. Consumption figures for efficient and inefficient breweries, respectively, are shown in table 12.1. Many breweries have headway to make to catch up with the pack. Even the leaders in the efficiency stakes are eager to improve. The really energy-demanding operations in malting and brewing are malt kilning and wort boiling, and there is still some way to go in making substantial savings here without jeopardizing product quality. Developments focus on heat recovery, of course. The cost of refrigeration is also a major factor, hence the interest of a number of Brewers in lessening chilling demands There is some concern regarding the ongoing availability of good quality water for malting and brewing, forcing yet more attention on reducing water consumption in cleaning operations and on the need for more recycling. Concerning outputs (other than the beer itself, of course), Brewers again are adjusting their processing to reduce wastes such as spent grains, surplus yeast, and, of course, wastewater. Naturally, the more efficiently a material such as malt is converted into beer, the less overflow there will be to spent grains. There is a long, long way to go, though, before malt will be entirely convertible into wort and thence beer. The furthest anyone has got within the remit of a conventional brewing operation was my own previous organization (BRi), on a pilot scale, with the acid hydrolysis of the surplus grains to produce more sugars. The problem became one of "spent spent grains": the husk of barley is pretty resilient! Hull-less varieties of barley are available, though they are susceptible to infection in the field and are difficult to malt because the naked grains tend to stick to one another. In terms of saving water, the focus has to be on the amount required for washing and cleaning purposes. Naturally, the smaller the plant relative to the output of beer, the less cleaning water is needed. Indeed, continuous processes run for days or weeks, potentially years, without stripping down and cleaning, and are therefore very economical in terms of water usage. A former colleague was fond of drawing attention to the apparent illogicality of the malting and brewing processes: "We take moist barley from the field and, in drying, heat it to drive off water. Then we add water in steeping, germinate, and then drive off water in kilning. To the brewery—and we add water in mashing. Then we drive off water in boiling ... " I took the point, of course, but reminded him that all of these stages are performed for very good reasons, which is not to say that there may not be radical alternatives in the future. Some folk point out that a goodly proportion of the dry weight of a barley kernel never finds its way into a beer. What a waste, they say. They forget that good, Efficient modification of the endosperm requires embryo growth— it's the price to be paid. OK, then, comes the reply, use raw barley and tip in the enzymes from a bucket. Possible, indeed it has been done—but the flavor is not as good and, anyway, the extra cost of processing in the brewery (e.g., shorter filter runs) takes away much if not all of the financial benefit. Not to be deterred, the revolutionist shifts to an argument for taking the cheapest alcohol source one can find on the spot market and tipping in the flavor, color, and foam from a bottle. Sure, you can do it—but is it beer? And what will you do with all the surplus mash tuns, lauters, kettles, whirlpools, fermenters, and sundry other items? I have no difficulty with the research being put in place to do this—but for me it's a technology that will only really have its zenith on board interstellar craft headed on centuries-long journeys into outer space—and long after we traditionalists have departed this mortal coil! Beer is increasingly marketed on a platform of care, tradition, and benefit. That ought to mean that we don't stray too far from the present way of doing things (which has only truly been tweaked in relative terms over many generations) unless other substantive pressures come to bear. The fact that Brewers spend over $2.50 per barrel on advertising as opposed to just a few cents on scientific research ought to give the reader a reasonable grasp of what is generally considered to sell beer.

RAW MATERIALS

Nobody envisages a dramatic shift in the grist materials that will be used for brewing. Indeed, a number of Brewers have shifted back from sizable use of adjuncts to grists that are largely (if not entirely) of premium malted barley. They are convinced that this offers genuine quality, though there remains a clear justification for using other cereals where they offer unique attributes to a product, in terms of flavor or color, for instance The contribution of malt and adjuncts to the cost of beer is relatively low. There really is little strategic or financial justification for taking shortcuts with them, unless they are not available (e.g., the banning of malt imports in Nigeria) or there is a further financial incentive so to do. Just such a case arose in Japan, with taxation legislation that led to disproportionately less duty on "sparkling malt drinks," otherwise known as happoshu. They must contain less than 25% malt. They are packaged like beers and, to the consumer, are clearly from the same stable, even if the label cannot use the word "beer." The reality is that savings on a tax bill will be much more significant than savings on the grist bill. The reader will note that the Japanese brewers have not strayed from their traditional high-malt recipes for their flagship products. The belief is that pressures will continue to minimize the use of additives in the growing of barley and its subsequent malting, yet everyone realizes that these agents can offer real advantages to the process and product; better to use a pesticide in the production of barley and to ensure its removal during steeping than to run the risk of a fungal infection of grain. Here, too, may be a major target for genetic modification: the construction of barleys that have inbuilt resistance to attack by undesirables. There is concern that not enough premium malting-quality barley will be available to meet the increasing demand for it. And this situation is exacerbated considerably by the shift to growing corn as a source material for the production of grain alcohol destined for automobiles. The surge of bioethanol has thrown the grains market into turmoil—suddenly the growing of a prestigious but high-maintenance crop like malting barley seems unattractive to many. Leading hop varieties, particularly those with good aroma characteristics, will continue to be in heavy demand, and there will be shortages. The shortage may be exacerbated if hop growers succeed in their quest for alternative uses for hops, for example the identification of a high-value phytonutrient or two, which would suddenly rocket the value of hops. The cost of hops has already shown dramatic inflation as I write (March 2008). As brewers got ever more adept at extracting the last drop of bitterness from the crop, at a time when the world trend (despite the efforts of the U.S. craft brewers with their mega-bitterness beers) is toward less bitterness, so too did hop growers find themselves with surplus capacity. They responded by grubbing out hop yards and growing something more promising. The tipping point was reached in 2007, when there was insufficient hop supply to satisfy the global beer demand. Bigger brewers with their forward purchasing contracting did not suffer unduly, but many a smaller brewer reached for the telephone and called around in desperation, trying to locate hops. The crystal ball suggests that brewhouse operations ten years hence will not be radically different from those in place today. Already there has been an increase in the number of breweries incorporating mash filters rather than lauter tuns (see chapter 8), and no successor to the mash filter seems to be emerging. Perhaps brewhouse operations will become continuous, to match continuous fermentation operations, and yet few if any brewers seem to be convinced that continuous production of beer would be right for them. Without doubt, though, Brewers, just like any other industrial sector, seek to lower their cost base. They all share the opinion, for instance, that processes will become far more automated, taking advantage of the rapid developments that are being made in the miniaturization, sensitivity, and flexibility of information technology. Automation has already happened to a certain degree, with substantial reduction in workforces having occurred over the years. The most impressive example of automation I have seen was in the warehouse operations of a major Japanese brewery. All but one of the forklift trucks was a robot, each busily shifting beer around the site according to a pre-program. And each truck played a tune as it trundled along—one was whistling Yankee Doodle!

PACKAGING

One brewer suggested to me that brewing could evolve to be a service to a distributed packaging industry, in just the same way that the soft drink industry operates today. It is certainly the case that the bulk of the raw materials cost, approximately half of the cost of processing, and, indeed, much of the innovation, is at this stage in the brewery operation. Therefore, issues such as reduced raw materials costs (for instance, use of aluminum), recycling, de-manning of what tends to be a very labor-intensive function, and energy conservation are all to the fore, as, of course, is the trend toward plastic instead of glass bottles.

THE PRODUCT

The common theme, however, which ran right the way through the replies on raw materials, brewing, and packaging and into consideration of the beer itself, is quality. In particular, Brewers anticipate beers having extended shelf lives to meet longer distribution chains, and there will be much more choice. The consumer is becoming more enlightened about issues of wholesomeness and quality; Brewers appreciate that they will have to meet drinker demand in this area, including the development of new beers with unique properties based around variables such as flavor, foaming, texture, and, in a very responsible manner, health attributes. Research into so-called Consumer Sciences is developing fast. In the future, it will be possible for producers of all types of foodstuffs, including beer, to be able to forecast with much more confidence which products will be enjoyed by the customer. Understanding of the specific effects different components of beer have on the sensory apparatus in the mouth and nose will enable beers to be "designed" that are best suited to the enjoyment of the consumer.

THE INDUSTRY

There will be an ongoing drive toward international brands, recognized names thriving far beyond home base. This will be achieved by acquisition, joint ventures (of the type seen in the construction and modernization of breweries in China), and brand licensing and contract brewing. Brewing companies will become further polarized, into the ever bigger at one extreme and the very small at the other; it will be those in the middle order that will find survival ever more challenging. More and more beer will be consumed at home, which is one of the justifications for increasing the shelf life of the product: once a beer has been retailed, the Brewer has no further control over its handling. All he can hope to do is build robustness into the product "Robustness into the product": those are apt words, indeed, with which to bring this book to a conclusion. Brewers (and their colleagues, notably Maltsters and hop suppliers) have devoted themselves for many, many years to delivering to the public a wholesome and flavorsome product, robust and so very consistent, glass to glass. Beer has a long and proud tradition. Thanks to more than a century of dedicated research, brewing has developed into a tightly controlled, Efficient technological process, albeit one, unavoidably and fascinatingly, subject to the vagaries of its agricultural inputs. Brewing is very much a science. Engage a brewer in conversation, though, and see the twinkle in his or her eye and you will rapidly come to the conclusion that they love their brewing and their beer—just as any connoisseur loves their chosen art.

This author does not foresee a dramatic change in the unit processes of malting and brewing in the foreseeable future. Fundamentally this is for two reasons. First, the nature of beer is as it is because of these processes: its flavor, its foam, its texture, its color, its wholesomeness are all dependent on the care and devotion invested by the Maltster, the Brewer, and the suppliers of hops and other ingredients. Which leads me to the second justification for leaving the basic procedures as they are: Brewers care, they take a pride in their products and in their heritage and they are fundamentally convinced that the best interests of the consumer are served by ensuring that they

adhere to professional standards. Of course the Maltster and the Brewer expect to operate efficient processes, using raw material and plant capacity resources economically. They know only too well, however, that their beers have the character they do because of a vast myriad of chemical and biochemical changes occurring during malting, brewing, fermentation, and downstream processing. It is a high-risk strategy to mess about with them. Accordingly, the farsighted Maltster or Brewer will listen attentively to suggestions for process adjustment and will apply the science conscientiously, but will resist absolutely any development that jeopardizes their product.

This book is filled with examples of how the malting and brewing processes have developed, and have become vastly more efficient, without fundamentally modifying the basic route from barley to beer. In chapter 5 we saw that interrupted steeping enabled the malting process to be foreshortened by several days and how the addition of extra gibberellic acid, a molecule naturally found in barley, can further speed up the process (if it is used, which it isn't in the United States). chapter 7 tells that the essential bitter and aroma ingredients of hops can be introduced more efficiently into the process in a form free from the vegetative parts of the plant. Chapters 8 and 9 show how the brew-house and fermentation operations have been subtly altered to enormously improve efficiencies, but without inherently changing the character of wort or beer; developments have included high-gravity brewing, pure yeast technology, diacetyl control, and enhanced yeast-handling strategies. chapter 10 indicates how enormous attention has been paid to stabilizing beer, with beneficial effects on the consistency of beer quality; advances here have included sterile filtration, use of nitrogen gas, and the application of stabilizing agents such as PVPP and silica

hydrogels to allow more rapid turnaround times, if that is the Brewer's desire. Finally, in chapter 11, we found how developments in analytical techniques are being applied by Brewers to achieve tight control over their process and product, with genuine benefits for the consumer. The future will see more of these improvements in the processes occurring. Perhaps the most publicized opportunity centers on the use of gene technology.

WHAT WILL THE INDUSTRY LOOK LIKE IN TEN YEARS?

o how will our beer be made in the future? Can we anticipate a radically different approach to the traditional and semitraditional processes that have been used to make the world's favorite beverage for thousands of years? Or will the basic shape of the business stay as it is, with incremental improvements rather than radical alternatives continuing as the status quo? Some while ago I canvassed a selection of other international experts from within the malting and brewing industries, asking them how they saw matters unraveling over a ten-year time frame. Their (and my own) views can be distilled as follows.