The Sterile Filtration of Beer - Keeping up with Consumer Trends
Posted by Food Beverage Filtration Team on Wednesday, May 16, 2018
The Sterile Filtration of Beer - Keeping up with Consumer Trends - Beverages -
Parker Bioscience
Some of the world’s largest breweries have recently reported a decline in sales
as they have admittedly failed to amend their brand portfolio to meet consumer
trends. Sterile filtration could be the key to adapting to these changes to
consumer behaviour.
Changing consumer trends
Modern beer drinkers are moving away from the traditional big brands and opting
for increasingly sophisticated drinks such as craft beers. As a result, large
breweries are experiencing a decline in sales, losing their market share to
smaller breweries who are more on target with consumer preferences.
In an effort to regain market share, breweries are aiming to remodel their
brands in order to appeal to the modern consumer. They have begun adapting to
these changes through acquisition of popular craft breweries and marketing some
of their brands as a more premium product, in an attempt to appeal to the
sophisticated beer drinker.
Breweries of all capacities are beginning to realise that in order to protect
their bottom line profits in such a competitive market they must amend their
production process and fundamentally seek to produce higher quality beer at
optimum cost efficiency.
Process optimisation
The process of microbial stabilisation is an essential stage of all beer
production, without which the product may succumb to spoilage due to bacterial
contamination before it can be consumed. This process is typically achieved by
one of a few methods: good sterile practice, tunnel pasteurisation, flash
pasteurisation or sterile filtration.
Good sterile practice cannot guarantee complete product sterility and may result
in huge product losses due to human error or environmental contamination
regardless of protocols followed.
Furthermore, tunnel pasteurisation is an out-dated method, which consumes
enormous quantities of thermal energy, and is not always guaranteed to kill all
suspended bacteria.
Today, therefore, the two primary methods of microbial stabilisation are flash
pasteurisation and sterile filtration. However, the brewing industry is shifting
away from flash pasteurisation as they discover the significant advantages to
both operating costs and overall product quality of sterile filtration over
flash pasteurisation.
Reducing costs and increasing flavour to meet consumption trends
The recent partnership between Parker and Agidens automation – experts of both
automated sterile filtration modules and flash pasteurisation systems, have
enabled Parker Bioscience to establish a comparison of the operating costs of
flash pasteurisation vs sterile filtration using Parker's BEVPOR BR range of
microfilter cartridges. The research measured the annual electricity
consumption, the annual water consumption and the annual consumable spend of
both sterile filtration and flash pasteurisation processes. The results
concluded that these combined factors proved sterile filtration to be the most
cost-effective method of microbial stabilisation, saving brewers up to 44% of
their annual operating costs when compared to flash pasteurisation. Parker
Bioscience offers a free full-cost analysis based on your breweries specific
parameters, which can determine the cost savings of sterile filtration compared
to your current method of microbial stabilisation.
The Sterile Filtration of Beer - Keeping up with Consumer Trends_Cost
Analysis_Parker Bioscience