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Since October, we have been conducting brewing trials as part of bachelor theses, and work on the production of gluten-free beers is also continuing in the background as part of a doctoral project. Although we cannot report on this in detail here, we can already provide some insights.
On December 7, 2023, we presented some gluten-free quinoa beers at an event to promote business in southern Lower Saxony. Although beers based on pseudo-grains such as quinoa are not beers within the meaning of this law according to the provisional Beer Act of 1993 ("Reinheitsgebot"), our partner could later apply for approval to market these beers as so-called "special beer". We therefore continue to refer to these research beers as beer at this point. During the tasting, in addition to an isothermally mashed pilsner beer with only 3% alcohol by volume, which served as a reference, we offered a total of four varieties based on quinoa, whereby the measured gluten content of these four beers was below the detection limit of 10 mg/kg, meaning that these beers are gluten-free by law: Amber-Quinoa, Quinoa-IPA, Quinoa-Weissbier, Quinoa-Sauerbier.
The bottom-fermented Amber-Quinoa, produced using the Pilsen brewing method, achieved a high approval rate and, like the Quinoa-IPA, was rated as authentic. A priori, we had expected differing opinions on the wheat beer and the sour beer, and this was confirmed. Some liked the quinoa wheat beer, some didn't, and it was most likely to be associated with a certain quinoa character.
In the case of the sour beer, fermented with a special yeast, we felt a clear reluctance, as sour beer is almost automatically associated with a "Berliner Weisse", which is usually drunk with fruit syrup (Berliner Weisse with a shot) due to its dominant acidity. The majority of those who dared to try the quinoa sour beer were positively surprised, as the acidity is rather mild, and some very good suggestions were made to market such a beer, in which no more quinoa aromas were identified, as a summer beer, even with a shot of fruit syrup. We are very pleased with the feedback on this beer tasting and are also delighted with the suggestions we received. Our project will run until fall 2024 and we are quite confident that we will continue with this exciting topic after that.
The following beers have been or are being produced in a total of four bachelor theses
- Gluten-free alcohol-free beers are made from barley malt, which is mashed isothermally at a high temperature, and fermented top-fermented with Lallemand Brewing LoNa, which is maltose-negative. We obtained mild beers that are considered alcohol-free by law with a maximum of 0.5 % vol. The gluten was broken down using a gluten-splitting enzyme. In order to be able to determine the gluten content in-house in future, we will be purchasing an ELISA reader in the new year.
- In another bachelor's thesis, a total of four bock beers were produced using the isothermal high-temperature mashing process. A very interesting result is that the saccharification of Pilsner malt and Pale Ale malt is equally fast, while the saccharification of Munich malt and a bock beer mixture consisting of 65% Munich malt and 35% enzymatically inactive caramalts was even slightly faster. We can therefore not confirm that Munich malt is weak in enzymes and requires the addition of pilsner or even barley diastase malt. All four beers were adjusted to an original gravity of 17 °P, they were mildly hopped and each was bottom-fermented with the Whitelabs WLP-830.
- Another bachelor student was given the task of producing and investigating pale ale beers with aromatic fruit hops. For this purpose, a wort was produced using the isothermal high-temperature mashing process, which was divided into a total of six fermentation vessels. In one case, cold hopping was carried out with a special hop extract from Yakimachief, while the others were fermented in the presence of different hops (P90 or P45 pellets). It is of interest in the context of the bachelor thesis to investigate how pronounced the so-called "hop creep effect" of these different hop varieties is, i.e. how much overfermentation takes place compared to the reference beer, which is only hopped with aroma extract.
The next regular beers, which will be reported on again in the usual way, will be brewed next January. The plan is to brew 200 liters of pilsner beer and a NEIPA with tropical fruit aromas. At 11 °P, these beers will contain no more than 2.5% alcohol by volume.