Immobilized yeast bioreactor systems for brewing - Recent achievements

Abstract

During recent years, immobilised yeast technology has gained increasing attention in the brewing industry. As a result of extensive research immobilised yeast technology is nowadays a well established technology for beer maturation and alcohol-free and low-alcohol beer production. However, in primary fermentation the situation is more complex and this process is still under scrutiny on the lab or pilot level. This paper describes several favourable immobilised cell - bioreactor systems for primary beer fermentation with particular emphasis on alginate-yeast microbeads - internal loop gas-lift bioreactor system, introduced into this field by our research group.