Improving yeast flocculation at the end of fermentation in beer brewing, Nile breweries limited-Jinja

Abstract

Over the years, yeast flocculation has been traditionally used in brewing as an easy and cheap process of separation of cell biomass from fermentation broth. For most industrial applications, in which yeast strain- saccharomyces cerevisiae is used e.g. beer brewing as in Nile Breweries Limited, appropriate flocculation is certainly one of the most important characteristics of a good production strain. But flocculation is a very complex process which is affected by numerous parameters such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, etc., most of which are discussed in this report, with emphasis on s. cerevisiae in most cases. Furthermore, a profound knowledge of mechanisms involved in flocculation is given, as well as industrial applications of flocculent yeast. This report further looks at solving the problem of poor yeast flocculation, by mainly considering/ monitoring the effect of wort calcium as one of the major influencers of this process, preferably at the end of fermentation