VIGOROX® Ceres to prevent beer from excess foaming

Evonik Active Oxygens is taking the fight to Fusar­ium fungi with a special wash­ing process: These microor­gan­isms primar­ily infest wheat and barley crops and can render large amounts of the harvest unus­able for any further process­ing. The new wash­ing process, which contains the active ingre­di­ent peracetic acid, can make a signif­i­cant contri­bu­tion to reduc­ing losses in qual­ity and yield. And that is not all, as the wash­ing process is also sustain­able in three ways…

The next time you open a beer and foam comes out, it may not neces­sar­ily be because the bottle was agitated. In fact, it may actu­ally be due to a bever­age-spoil­ing microor­gan­ism known as Fusar­ium wilt fungi. This pathogen can affect a wide range of grains and the conse­quences can often be disas­trous. Affected grain heads wilt and die prema­turely, render­ing them useless for further process­ing into foods.

The “gush­ing” is just one effect among many, with others includ­ing a spoiled taste and flavor of the fungi-infected beer. Fusar­ium fungi also produce toxic substances, such as deoxyni­valenol (DON), which can be a hazard to humans and animals.

Thresh­old values for DON

As high concen­tra­tions of DON can be hazardous to health, thresh­old values for food have been defined in Europe for the fungal toxin. These values range from 1,250 µg/​kg for unprocessed grains to 200 µg/​kg in baby food. The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) in the USA has issued advi­sory levels for DON.

Enor­mous losses due to Fusarium

Annual losses around the world due to Fusar­ium wilt are enor­mous, with esti­mates stat­ing that up to 25 percent of grains for foods and feed­stocks are infected with fusaria and other fungal toxins. Between 1998 and 2000, the esti­mated losses due to fusaria in wheat and barley were approx­i­mately USD 2.7 billion. In the state of Penn­syl­va­nia, Fusar­ium is the lead­ing wheat and barley infes­ta­tion. This is a consid­er­able prob­lem for all indus­try sectors which process grains for foods. Bread, pasta, corn­flakes and polenta, for exam­ple, are just some of the foods that frequently contain Fusaria toxins.

Malt­houses also have to deal with the fungus. They produce barley malt mainly for beer brew­eries, but also serve other indus­tries such as distill­ing, animal nutri­tion and cereals/​food.

Climate change is partially to blame for spread­ing the infes­ta­tion, as the increas­ing heat and humid­ity create ideal condi­tions for the fungus to thrive. “There were years in which malt­sters did not have enough barley of proper qual­ity to satisfy demand – and Fusaria was to blame,” says John Wallace, Direc­tor Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Amer­i­cas at Evonik Active Oxygens.

A three­fold sustain­able process

Evonik Active Oxygens, a global manu­fac­turer of hydro­gen perox­ide, peracetic acid (PAA) and persul­fate prod­ucts, has devel­oped an effec­tive and sustain­able process which can elim­i­nate Fusaria fungi from grains, an approach that makes a signif­i­cant contri­bu­tion to reduc­ing losses in qual­ity and yield. In an effort to apply the tech­nol­ogy against the fungus, Evonik is work­ing together with vari­ous malt­houses in the USA and Canada, while collab­o­ra­tions in Europe are in the pipeline.

Malt­ing is a key element in the millen­nia-old art of beer-brew­ing and consists of three steps:

1. steep­ing the grain,
2. germi­na­tion, during which the grain starch is fermented to malt and
3. the final drying, or kiln­ing, which enables the malt to be preserved.

Prior to steep­ing, the grain is soaked in Evonik’s solu­tion which contains very low concen­tra­tions of peracetic acid (up to 1745 parts per million). This solu­tion is marketed under the brand VIGOROX® Ceres, named after Ceres, the ancient Roman goddess of agri­cul­ture. The antimi­cro­bial effects of peracetic acid have been known for over 100 years, with scien­tists report­ing on the discov­ery of the antimi­cro­bial prop­er­ties of peracetic acid in a special­ist publi­ca­tion from 1902.

“It is impor­tant to remove the cont­a­m­i­na­tion with­out the process having any unwanted effects on the grain’s germi­na­tion capac­ity and other qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics”, Wallace adds. “We are work­ing with a food­stuff which is subject to very strict require­ments. Comply­ing with these require­ments while still achiev­ing a suffi­cient effect, is a balanc­ing act which we enjoy tack­ling with our many years of expe­ri­ence in PAA appli­ca­tions for the food sector.”

Join­ing forces to combat the beer-spoil­ing microorganism

Evonik Active Oxygens collab­o­rates with malt­houses on numer­ous levels: Employ­ees at Evonik conduct labo­ra­tory and field tests with the malt­houses in order to obtain a better under­stand­ing of how PAA affects grains. The company also provides equip­ment and infor­ma­tion. The team collab­o­rated closely with the Hartwick College Center for Craft Food and Bever­age in New York, an indus­try lead­ing resource for scien­tific matters regard­ing malt­ing and brewing.

The team has already enjoyed its first successes. In the past, brew­ing processes toler­ated a maxi­mum DON level of 1 mg per kg of grain. Higher levels in barley meant the grain could not be used with­out risk of nega­tive impacts on grain and beer quality.

However, thanks to the new, effec­tive VIGOROX® Ceres process, grains of any DON level can now be pretreated in order to reduce DON to the maxi­mum permis­si­ble concen­tra­tion of 0.5 mg/​kg, so that malt­houses can use them for malt­ing. “We are contin­u­ously opti­miz­ing our process and are on the right path towards ‘food-grade barley’”, Wallace states.

“Some of the very large malt­houses could bene­fit by having tens of thou­sand of tons of grain avail­able from a closer prox­im­ity, lower­ing their acqui­si­tion cost substan­tially, and saving hundreds of thou­sands of dollars indi­vid­u­ally, millions as an indus­try”, he says.

Addi­tional appli­ca­tions for the sustain­able wash­ing process are conceiv­able, for exam­ple in grain mills and indus­trial bakeries – in other words, every­where where the whole grain is processed into foods. And VIGOROX® Ceres is not only effec­tive against Fusar­ium – the Roman goddess can also put an end to many other fungi, bacte­ria, yeasts and viruses.