PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The innovative procedure, developed with support of the LIFE programme, consists of a new process of cold degermination for beer. In order to achieve good storage properties, beer must be filtered and degerminated, which has traditionally been done by pasteurisation. At the Göss brewing plant of Steirerbrau, the beer is heated with a so-called tunnel pasteuriser to a temperature of 62° C to 68° C after bottling. This process is considered to be very safe, but has some drawbacks: an adverse change of taste, a large space required for equipment and a percentage of broken glass caused during the heating of the bottles. It must be underlined that this traditional process consumes a great deal of water and energy (CO2 emissions). Compared to the traditionally used thermal treatment, the new process saves natural resources and reduces pollution and can be done without the resulting adverse change of taste. For the above mentioned reasons, the traditional tunnel pasteuriser is a relatively expensive and quality-reducing process. A new process has been advanced using newly developed membranes which top the traditional macro- and microfiltration. Due to the aforementioned mentioned reasons, Steirerbrau is going to install several membrane filter plants, in combination with a preliminary filtration stage (deep-bed-filter).