Barley malt, the traditional raw material for beer production, is facing challenges due to climate change, including declining yields and quality. Simultaneously, consumer preferences are shifting towards more diverse, sustainable, and functional beer options. As a result, breweries seeking a competitive advantage are turning more towards alternative unmalted cereals and pseudocereals. Additionally, recent advancements in enzyme technology have created new opportunities for brewing with 100% unmalted cereals. While 100% unmalted barley brewing is well studied, research on alternative cereals and pseudocereals remains limited. To address this gap, the ongoing TETRA project ‘MaltLess’ has conducted small-scale mashing experiments using exogenous enzymes on 11 unmalted cereals and pseudocereals, including two- and six-row barley, wheat, khorasan, spelt, sorghum, einkorn, tritordeum, triticale, buckwheat, and rye. In the initial phase of the research, experiments focused on alcoholic wort production, using barley as a reference to assess the impact of key parameters such as pH, milling size, and enzyme dosage on wort quality. Subsequent experiments with alternative cereals and pseudocereals involved adjusting enzyme composition and mashing schemes to address grain-specific challenges, including higher gelatinization temperatures and elevated arabinoxylan levels. Wort filtration efficiency improved significantly at lower pH and with finer milling for barley, wheat, khorasan, and spelt, while tritordeum, triticale, einkorn, and sorghum showed limited enhancement. Rye and buckwheat exhibited high viscosities, with buckwheat particularly hindering filtration. Most cereals achieved acceptable original gravities and free amino nitrogen levels, while Triticum-related cereals displayed elevated concentrations of soluble high molecular weight proteins. Sugar profiling confirmed consistently high levels of fermentable sugars across all samples. Overall, mashing with 100% unmalted alternative cereals and exogenous enzymes was successful. The results of this study will offer valuable practical insights for brewers interested in experimenting with alternative unmalted cereals and exogenous enzymes. These findings will be further validated on a 20 L scale to address potential challenges related to scaling up.
Backaert et al. (Wed,) studied this question.