PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The brewing process is very energy-intensive and requires significant amounts of water, compressed air, lighting and refrigeration. The standard process for brewing a beer or a malt-based beverage is unsustainable in terms of water consumption and thus causes problems in terms of water scarcity. The most energy-intensive part of the brewing process is boiling, which consumes up to 20% of the total heat required and generating high levels of greenhouse gases. There is a clear need for a more cost-effective and sustainable process that meets the goals of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change by lowering use of resources such as water, and of climate change mitigation policy by contributing to the transition towards a low emission and climate-resilient economy.
OBJECTIVES
The LIFE BEVERAGE project aimed to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases caused by beverage production through a new process that would be piloted at breweries in Belgium and the UK. The new system was based on the principle of stripping unwanted components from a liquid by sparging an inert gas. This would simulate the effect of boiling without the heating requirements. When applied to breweries in which no energy-reducing measures have been installed in the boiling step, the technology would enable a reduction of the average evaporation rate from 7.5% to zero, improving water and energy efficiency and offering potential climate advantages compared to current best practice. If the project would be successful the technology could be applied to other breweries, thus enabling this sector to contribute to the EU?s shift towards a resource-efficient, low-carbon and climate-resilient economy.
Therefore, LIFE BEVERAGE would have been a concrete example of a LIFE Climate Change Mitigation action contributing to the development and implementation of European Union climate-related policy and legislation, in particular with regard to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from intensive industrial production.
RESULTS
During the preparatory actions, the LIFE Beverage coordinating beneficiary (Anheuser-Busch InBev) developed two successful sparging systems for a boiling kettle of around 1 hl. The boiling temperature was kept at 99.5°C, thereby reducing the energy consumption and the evaporation rate. No alteration of the beer (in taste or conservation) was identified.
However, the validation of the single-point external sparging system at industrial scale was cancelled at the Jupille brewery (Belgium) due to persistent drawbacks. The produced beer had a strong taste deviation, which made it unsuitable for marketing. As an alternative, the beneficiary decided to use a sparging ring technique, as developed in the Magor brewery (UK). Instead of placing the sparging ring inside the kettle (as in Magor), they placed the sparging ring on the exterior bottom of the kettle.
The internal sparging ring with multi-point spargers (boiling kettles of Magor) limited the vibrations to the kettle to reasonable levels. Moreover, the foam production could be dealt with by reducing the volume of the boiling wort by 5-10% (brewing at a higher density).
At least for one industrial trial in the Magor brewery, the beneficiaries obtained a beer without deviation in taste; but these results could not be repeated. For Jupille, the management decided to increase the malt content in the beer due to consumer preference. As a consequence, the presence of high cocoa-pyrazine (CP) was again too dominant. For Magor, the change in malt type also resulted in high CP flavours.
Regarding the after-LIFE activities, the beneficiary put in place a concrete plan for the next developmental stages. Anheuser-Busch InBev has clear sustainability goals, such as having 100% of the net volume of beer carbon neutrally brewed by 2030, and reducing by 25% the CO2 emissions across the company’s value chain by 2025. This sparging technology is essential for achieving these goals, so the development of this technology will continue.
Although the project objectives have not been reached and the developed technology was not validated as initially foreseen, the project beneficiary has committed to sharing the technology, once properly developed, with the brewing industry and wider industry/academia partners. For this purpose, they developed licensing agreement contracts and technology transfer documents.
Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report and After-LIFE Communication Plan (see "Read more" section).
