Surprising results

The brewing world relies on enzymes more than you might imagine

Without peaking at published data, internal production records and extrapolating, or phoning a friend, here’s a Friday end-of-the-week puzzler. What percentage would you say of the world’s beer production now makes use of enzymes?

The answer is at the end of this post, but in the meantime here’s a big hint – it’s more than you might imagine. The information comes from Novozymes, the global life science concern. Regional marketing manager Vincent Gass estimates that the percentage is increasing 2% annually, and that this is an established long term trend rather than a sudden interest due to recent raw material shortages or outright cost pressures.

Novozymes will be familiar to visitors at drinktec for their much-discussed launch of Ondea Pro, an enzyme that allows beer to be brewed without the use of any malted barley, in other words a 100% barley beer. The immediate issue here is taste – does beer brewed with Ondea Pro match up against an equivalent beer brewed with malted barley?

Scepticism is a journalist’s stock in trade: for the doubting Thomas in all of us to see, or in this case to sample, is to believe. From the BG team commercial development manager Kamini Dickie – she formerly in charge of flavour and innovation at BRI, and thus a tough test – and yours truly this week sampled a 100% barley beer in blind tasting and came away impressed. It was a perfectly balanced ale, one that easily passed the commercial litmus test of drinkability.

Of arguably equal interest for the industry is how use of Ondea Pro offers sustainability gains. Novozymes have published a life cycle analysis based on three years of work with Danish brewer Harboe, which concluded that an 8gm saving in CO2 emissions for each 33 cl serving was possible. (The benefit of this work for Harboe is Clim8, the world’s first commercial 100% barley beer.)

The CO2 saving is derived largely from bypassing the malting process as well as some improvement in barley utilisation. Against this saving is increased energy use in milling, with barley husks now part of the process. It’s an interesting, thought-provoking read and can be downloaded here

http://www.novozymes.com/NR/rdonlyres/5D89A1D2-05CD-4D1B-B1C0-791EF869034F/0/BarleyBeer.pdf

And as to the use of enzymes? The answer, according to Novozymes, is 60% worldwide.