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Associate

Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 26

Sonication in Beer Making

04/25/2012 12:34 PM

In beer making, may the use of an ultrasonic element degas the formed CO2 and thus speed up the fermentation ? May the same ultrasonic element act on the yeast disrupting the cell wall and release more enzymes ?

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Guru
Hobbies - Fishing - New Member Hobbies - Target Shooting - New Member

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#1

Re: Sonication in beer making

04/25/2012 12:44 PM

Beer making is a labor of love. If your last name is Budweiser, and you want to make beer that tastes like Budweiser, use your speed-em-up apparatus.

If your name, however, is oh say gerdsmit or such, let nature do it's elegant work in it's own sweet time. I promise you, your beer won't taste like Budweiser.

How do I know about these divinations ? I make beer (and better) all the time as a hobby.

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Guru
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#2
In reply to #1

Re: Sonication in beer making

04/25/2012 1:54 PM

you will sell drink no beer.....before its time.

and I believe the patriach of Budweiser wasn't Mr Budweiser, it was Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch, hense Anheuser/Busch

I know, thats my favorite.

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Guru
United States - Member - Member Engineering Fields - Electrical Engineering - Electrical Construction

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#4
In reply to #2

Re: Sonication in beer making

04/25/2012 3:24 PM

As long as we are talking about beer and Anheuser.............................

After a long hot morning of doing laundry at the corner laundrymat, old Stella is pulling her cart full of laundry behind her down the blazing hot sidewalk.

Boy, it sure is hot out here Stella says to herself as she trudges along.

As she passes the open door of a tavern Stella notes the nice cool air and music from within drifting out to the side walk.

Stella says to herself "an ice cold beer would go down real nice right now".

Stella turns and pulls her laundry cart into the dark, cool tavern and plops down on a bar stool.

The barkeep approaches and asks "What can I get you Ma'am?"

As Stella wipes the sweat from her brow she responds "Well gee mister, an ice cold beer sounds real good right about now".

With that the barkeep asks "Anheuserbush"?

Stella ponders the question a moment and through blushing cheeks responds "Well just fine mister, Anheuserpecker"?

If the punch line gets edited or deleted, PM me and I will send it to you.

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Guru
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#3

Re: Sonication in Beer Making

04/25/2012 3:03 PM

What?!?

You think that breaking the cell wall of yeast will release more enzymes? Let me take a wild guess here, you did not do very in High School Biology.

Let me try to explain the error of your idea. If I crack your head open with a machete will I find more brilliant ideas on beer making inside?

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#5

Re: Sonication in Beer Making

04/25/2012 3:34 PM

You better hope that Stinky Pete doesn't come across this thread.

Peering through rimmed bloodshot eyes, he would type a response with his cigarette stained fingers clearly displaying contempt for even thinking such a thing. Something along the line of...

OF COURSE do it! Anything that speeds up the fermentation process, thus <cough> increasing the quantity available for consumption, must be vigourously embraced! <wheeze splutter> Get to it, mate! So what if it won't work, give it a blinkin go.

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Guru

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#6

Re: Sonication in Beer Making

04/25/2012 4:09 PM

You'll just make flat beer...this excerpt from someone experimenting with just such a device...

http://www.cuisinetechnology.com/sonicprep.php

"We also tried "barrel aging" beer using the same approach as our liquor trials. The good news is, yes, you can barrel age beer. Even PBR! As you can tell, I'm very selective about my alcohol. Unfortunately, in the process of sonicating the beer, the Sonicprep effectively degassed it. Had we kept CO2 cartriges on-hand, this would have been easy to remedy. Unfortunately, we only had nitrous which doesn't produce the same acidic flavors. Was barrel aged PBR good? I'm not sure, honestly. Without blind-tasting it, carbonated, at the same temperature as a control, my personal bias creeps in and influences what I think I prefer. But, I believe it has promise.

I also decided to make beer using the Sonicprep. My thinking was this: traditionally, you dissolve the ingredients in a batch of beer by boiling them in water. But, the heat of boiling likely changes the flavor of the beer. If you could dissolve the ingredients and extract flavors without boiling, you'd have a fundamentally different beer. Perhaps it would be the whitest white beer ever! So, I poured a batch of Belgian-style ale ingredients and distilled water into a 5-gallon plastic bucket and started sonicating.

Unfortunately, the effective range of the Sonicprep tip is only a few inches, so it didn't circulate the beer ingredients as I hoped. The malt extract sank to the bottom and the fuggle floated on the top. Hmph.

Rather than give up (like a sane person might), I divided the 5-gallon batch into 1-liter mini-batches and processed them one-by-one. I added charred oak chips and sonicated the beer on full power for about 5 minutes per batch, then poured the batch through a strainer. Once I had reached the end of 5 gallons (which felt like days later) I added the yeast and let it do its thing. Again, without a control to compare to it's hard to render an objective judgment, but it's a good beer. There's a faint note of charred oak and the beer is light in color, but in no way "white" - the malt extract is quite dark and is responsible for most of the color in the beer. In any event, I got 5 gallons of a very drinkable beer that was never boiled. I'll call that a WIN."

http://seattlefoodgeek.com/2012/01/experimenting-with-the-polyscience-sonicprep-ultrasonic-homogenizer/

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Power-User

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#7

Re: Sonication in Beer Making

04/25/2012 4:57 PM

Cavitation by an ultrasonic transducer would probably not be suitable for what you intend to do: strip CO2 from the beer so as to favor the forward fermentation reaction. If you strip the CO2 by cavitation, oxygen will also evolve into the cavitation bubbles. Yeast need oxygen for fermentation.

Noncondensable gases in cavitation bubbles cushion the implosion of the water vapor, so it would be better to strip all dissolved noncondensable gases by a degassing process before ultrasonication so you could get the cell wall breaking that you want.

Here is an example of a device that has gas stripping upstream of cavitation: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7757866.pdf

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Guru
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#8

Re: Sonication in Beer Making

04/26/2012 11:43 AM

i think you should spend a while in one of the trappist monasteries in Belgium. Perhaps near Gent. Perhaps the best beer i ever tasted. Pity i never noted the name (if it had one), now that many Belgian beers are available in Bangalore.

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