Utilizing Chemistry, Microbiology, and Sensory data to Better Control Quality Outcomes and Predictability in a High-gravity Brewing Environment

New Belgium Brewing Company – Fort Collins is the central location for production within the New Belgium/Bell’s brand family. The brand mix inherently leads to demands that often push the limit of production to levels that impact quality outcomes and predictability, typically with exogenous enzyme usage, high ethanol concentrations, and high bitterness.

The objective of this oral presentation is to summarize NBB’s quality department’s learnings when using exogenous enzymes to influence real degree of fermentation (%), the impacts those have on overall fermentation time, consistency, and yeast outcomes. For example, when using a-amylase enzymes, it’s critical to monitor the maltose to glucose ratio and establish hard limits in a production environment. We will also discuss how we were able to establish bitterness concentration limits utilizing Analytical and Microbiology data. Bitterness limits are often unknown for yeast strains used in the production environment, and we will discuss how this is critical information to establish limits that ensure harvestability and positive sensory outcomes. In addition, we will also discuss current publications to that intend to establish predictive models regarding Analytical’s bitterness data in conjunction with Sensory’s expected perception. Current models are only 77% accurate, with research often conflicting one another.