Evaluation of the filtration process for craft beer with Macaúba cake adjunct

Abstract

Beer is one of the oldest fermented beverages produced by man. The practice started even without knowledge of the fermentation process itself. Currently, research in this area is spreading rapidly and the production of craft beers, whose main composition is malt, water, hops and yeast, has been gaining ground in the alcoholic beverage market. In this context, many producers aim to innovate by creating their own beers, adding ingredients that will change their characteristics, making them more pleasant and thus conquering audiences for their productions. The addition of other raw materials, or the replacement of malt with adjuncts, can alter aromas, flavors and change the style of beer. In order to evaluate a new product, the residual cake generated by the extraction of oil from the pulp of the Macaúba fruit was used to produce craft beer. By extracting the oil from the pulp, a residual cake with a large amount of fines was generated. Thus, the influence of these fines in the beer production process was evaluated. 25% of residual cake was used to replace malt. At the end of the maturation process, four liters of beer were subjected to filtration through a polypropylene membrane filter and three liters were not filtered. Organoleptic analyzes of total sugars, soluble proteins, total solids, total acidity, density, pH, color, ash and alcohol content in filtered and unfiltered beers were carried out. The analyzes showed differences regarding the presence of bubbles in the beer foams, indicating the presence of residual oil from the extraction process. The sugar contents were 48.8 g/L for unfiltered beer and 45.8 g/L for filtered beer, which indicates that most of the fines were retained in the membrane. For color analysis, filtration influenced causing great differentiation in the color of the beers.