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Genetically Modified Beer
GM Beer

Introduction

This Web page has quite an emotive title. There is a lot of talk in beer literature these days about the use of Genetically Modified (GM) versions of beer's basic raw materials: Malted Barley and Hops and, for some beers, adjuncts such as GM Maize (Corn); GM yeast also comes up in Google (www.google.com) searches. GM is defined below. Major brewers will deny that they are using these, or intend to use them, see below, but there is one GM "ingredient" that many of them are using: Genetically Modified (GM) enzymes. Enzymes are also defined below. Note that, strictly speaking, the enzymes themselves are not GM, but they are produced by genetic modification of materials, such as bacteria, would you believe, see below. However, as they have been produced by a GM route, I call them GM enzymes or Genetically Modified enzymes; they are clearly a GM product.

It does not take too much reading of beer books for one to learn that it is the natural enzymes in malted barley (malt) that, at the mashing stage of the brewing process, convert the starch present in the malt into sugar, which, in turn, is converted by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas (CO₂) at the fermentation stage. The books emphasise that the barley from which malt is produced contains none of the required enzymes; the barley must be soaked to make it start growing (germination), a process that produces the enzymes. The germination is then halted. This is achieved by drying the sprouting grain. If this is done mildly, typically using hot air, pale grains are produced; if more heat is added, by roasting the germinated barley in a kiln, dark grains are produced. The resulting product is called malted barley or just malt, of which there are various types, depending on how the germination is stopped: Pilsener Malt, Pale Malt, Crystal Malt, Chocolate Malt, etc.

But what if there are not enough of these natural enzymes present in the mash, and what if they are too sensitive to temperature such that they become inactive too quickly? The answer is simple: add some enzymes that have been produced by genetic modification, i.e. which have been genetically engineered to be more temperature tolerant: thermostable. And the nice European Union (EU) tells us that the brewer does not need to declare them as ingredients, see below! Provided that they did not use GM hops, malt or an adjunct such as corn (maize), they could probably even declare that they are GM-free, even though GM enzymes have been used to produce them! Note that the respected Unibroue brewery (www.unibroue.com), in Canada, who do not use any GM products or industrial enzymes at any stage in the production of their beers, got into trouble with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), when they put wording on the labels of their beers stating that they were certified GM-free; click here for more details. This is clearly not in the interest of consumers. At least the Swedish brewers Österlenbryggarna (www.tvabryggare.se), in Ystad, declare the use of German-grown GM maize/corn in the brewing of a beer called Kenth (5%) (the brewer is called Kenth Persson). Indeed, they declare this in a positive way, i.e. they point out that the GM maize is grown using less pesticides than normal maize (the genetic modification involves splicing with a bacterium's gene to make the corn more resistant to the corn borer pest); click here for more details of this Monsanto initiative, and here for the brewery's own information on this beer, in English. Of course, such a beer will not be of interest to the lover of decent beer, who tends to fight shy of Corn and Rice brews, irrespective of whether the Corn/Rice are GM products or not! Clearly, Kenth is aimed at people who do not care what they drink as long as it has alcohol in it, c.f. its extremely low ratings on the highly respected www.ratebeer.com; click here to see them.

This Web page covers "GM enzymes" and other "industrial enzymes", i.e. not all manufactured enzymes that are used to brew beer are produced by GM means. Such enzyme are typically called industrial enzymes, of which GM enzymes are a sub-set. For the serious beer drinker, industrial enzymes should be frowned upon. Two of them in particular, see below, allow very high levels of adjuncts to be used in the brew house, which will unquestionably be to the detriment of beer quality, but see below, for an example of a beer type, for which their use can be justified. Therefore, a case is made for brewers of Speciality/Specialty/Craft/Artisanal Beers to declare that they will not use enzymes other than those which naturally occur in non-GM malt, i.e. they will not use either GM enzymes or "industrial enzymes" (see below for a rare "small print" justification for their use to produce a special Wheat Beer). You might also read of these enzymes being described as: microbial enzymes, microbial meaning "of or relating to microorganisms"; or exogenous enzymes, exogenous meaning "originating outside an organism", i.e. not occurring naturally within malt.

Some Definitions: Enzymes, GM, GMO

The following definition of enzymes, comes from leading enzyme manufacturer, Genencor International's website, www.genencor.com: "Enzymes are proteins, composed of amino-acids, which are produced by all living organisms. Enzymes are responsible for a number of reactions and biological activities in plants, animals, human beings and microorganisms. Enzymes are essential for all metabolic processes, but are not themselves living materials. They are distinguishable from other proteins because of their catalytic activity."

A former Web page on the John Innes Centre website, www.jic.ac.uk gave the following definition of Genetic Modification: The manipulation of a living organism's genetic make-up by eliminating, modifying or adding copies of specific genes often from other organisms through modern molecular biology techniques. Also called "gene splicing", "recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology" or "genetic engineering". Sometimes you will come across GMO when Genetic Modification is being discussed; it stands for Genetically Modified Organism.

Sighted in the Brew House

In May, 1999, I went on a visit to Bass's keg-only brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England, which is now owned by Coors. This place would not normally be of interest to the Speciality Beer or Real Ale (Cask Ale) lover, but this was a trip organised by a professional body related to my job, at the time, in the oil industry, from which I have since retired. CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale (www.camra.org.uk), the UK's beer premier consumers' organisation, coined the term Real Ale, which means a draught beer that has been brewed and stored in the traditional way, and which has undergone secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed; It is also called "cask-conditioned" beer. It is generally delivered by mechanical means, using a handpump, the latter having become the symbol of Real Ale, although it is quite acceptable for it to get to the glass using an electric pump or come straight from a tap on the cask, employing gravity. This definition of Real Ale implies that the beer is unfiltered and also unpasteurised, since filtration would remove the yeast required for further fermentation in the cask, and pasteurisation, a heat treatment, would kill the yeast. Keg beer is filtered, and more often than not pasteurised, a process which destroys the subtle fruity aromas that are produced at the fermentation stage of the brewing process; it is a dead product, see below; Real Ale is a living beer. Keg beer is delivered to the glass using gas pressure (Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) or Carbon Dioxide/Nitrogen (N₂)). Two examples of unpasteurised Keg Beers are given below.

The brewery in Tadcaster manufactures beers that I would not dream of drinking: Carling [Black Label], a pasteurised version of Grolsch under licence, Keg Stones and Caffrey's. For the latter, honest, there is a manifold for road tankers to connect up to and off load, labelled "Caffreys Adjunct"!

From Bacteria to Enzyme: just a bit of GM Away

On the visit to Bass, Tadcaster, when we got to the brew house, there were containers of beta-Glucanase (β-Glucanase) by the mash tun. They had a cross on them signifying "dangerous chemical" and the legend "Liquid Enzyme". It was immediately clear to me what this was for, i.e. it was an enzyme to augment the one that naturally occurs in malt, which breaks down glucans, the polysaccharides which if not broken down, can cause filtration problems at a later stage in the brewing process. The knowledgeable guide confirmed that this is what they were for. But imagine my amazement next day, on doing a www.google.com search to discover that beta-Glucanase can be produced commercially by Genetic Modification of a fungi or a bacteria; as such, for the latter, it is a bacterial enzyme! Hence the statement that it is free of Salmonella and E.coli in its specification sheets, see, for example, www.deltagen.com.au/DATA/PRO295.pdf, which is a spec sheet for a cocktail of brewing enzymes, PROMALT 295, from Deltagen (www.deltagen.com.au), an Australian manufacturer of industrial enzymes! In actual fact, their enzymes are not produced by GM means, according to their mission statement, which is not the case with Novozymes, the world's leading supplier of enzymes, see below. One could be mischievous and argue that these are mentioned on the spec sheet, for a reason that becomes clear, by going to the following Web page from the UK's Food Standards Agency. On this Web page, which has the title "Enzymic preparations derived from genetically modified organisms which are commercially available for food use in the EU", it can be seen that the "sources" (the things being genetically modified) to produce beta-Glucanase and alpha-Amylase (α-Amylase) (one of the main enzymes that converts malt's starch (main constituents: amylose and amylopectin) to sugar), see below, are bacteria: http://archive.food.gov.uk/maff/archive/food/novel/enzyme.htm. Click here for an article from Cornell University, in the USA, giving the same information and some useful background. A former Web page from Alltech (www.alltech-bio.com) explicitly stated that the beta-Glucanase and the alpha-Amylase in their "Allzyme BG" product are produced from bacteria, i.e. they are bacterial enzymes. Getting back to the testing of enzymes for Salmonella and E.coli, it is only fair to state that most food stuffs, and related items such as drinking water, have to be tested for these nasties.

At the Tadcaster brewery, after fermentation, the beer is passed through a very large tower of the type that you find in a chemical factory or in an oil refinery. It was packed with the filtration material, kieselguhr, and through view holes in the piping one could see a murky liquid going in and a bright and clear liquid coming out. The guide, probably because he was clearly a fan of traditional beer, strongly emphasised the "dead" nature of the beer coming from this vessel.

Every now and again the kieselguhr has to be replenished. Minimising the things that can clog it up, if you do not have a swing filter for use whilst the other is out of service, ups productivity. Hence the importance of the beta-Glucanase, for it removes things that could block up the filter more quickly. The viscosity of the beer is also reduced when the glucans are broken down, this making pumping and therefore, flow through the vessel faster, thus giving the potential for increased throughput, should it be a bottleneck in the process. Of course, by reducing the viscosity, the beer's mouth feel will be changed for the worse. Note that a beer's protein content is also important when it comes to mouth feel, but certain malt and other grain proteins can cause clarity problems. These proteins are broken down by enzymes in malt called proteases or proteinases. If there are not sufficient in the mash tun, this is no problem to the mass market brewer, as industrially produced, thermostable (i.e. GM) proteases can be added, to further thin the beer!

Where have all the Flavours Gone:
in the Pasteuriser, Everyone!
When will Drinkers Ever Learn? When will They Ever Learn?

Some brewers on the Continent, once having installed filters that remove all the yeast from the beer, no longer pasteurise it. An example is De Koninck (www.dekoninck.be), in Antwerp, Belgium, and Grolsche (www.grolsch.com), in Groenlo, in The Netherlands (until 2004); the latter's beer in flip top bottles, at least, is not pasteurised. This is not the case with the Grolsch brewed under license in Tadcaster and all the other beers brewed there, since downstream of the filter is the biggest pasteuriser that I have ever seen; the beer and its flavour does not stand a chance in this!

Where has all the flavour gone, long time passing? The latter sentence and the title of this section are based on Pete Seeger/Joe Hickerson's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?". Should you wish to sing along to the tune, use the player below! For a rather nice presentation, by Carrie Robison, of the original lyrics, set to music, click here and here for Carrie's Home page; this non-beer personal website is very good, a beautiful site representing the Internet at its best.

Carlsberg: Probably the Most Well Known
Genetically Modified Beer in the World

The famous Eurofizz brewers, Carlsberg (www.carlsberg.com) use to have an advert in the UK featuring Orson Wells declaring their main fizz to be "Probably the Best Lager in the World". Of course, it is not close to being the best, and it is a long way from being "The Best Beer in the World", their equivalent slogan outside the UK, Lager being a term used in the UK for beers, most of which are moderate to, for me, undrinkable fizzes, in the loose Pils (Pilsener) style. Carlsberg declare on their website that "Carlsberg has no current plans to employ genetically modified raw materials or yeast strains in beer brewing" and yet they manufacture their own enzymes, using a GM route, and use them to fabricate their dead beers; at the time that I discovered this, I thought of producing some T-Shirts with the Carlsberg logo and the legend "Carlsberg - Probably the World's Most Well Known Genetically Modified Beer". The GM-produced version of beta-Glucanase that Carlsberg produces was designed to be more temperature resistant (thermostable) than the version that naturally occurs in malt; it typically lasts three times longer in the mash and has thus more time to work at breaking down glucans. Diter von Wettstein, who was involved in the development of GM enzymes at Carlsberg, on his retirement, went to the USA and carried on equivalent work on genetically engineering thermostable beta-Glucanase in malting barley itself; click here for more details. Interestingly, although Carlsberg claim that they will not use GM materials when manufacturing their concoctions, they are clearly doing research into GM Barley, i.e. click here for a newspaper report giving details of their lawsuit against a company in the USA that Diter von Wettstein is involved in. They obviously believe that Diter has taken some of their GM Barley research information to the USA. But why would Carlsberg engage in GM Barley research if they were not one day going to use the malt made from it in the manufacture of their alcoholic liquids? That Carlsberg are doing research into many aspects of the use of GM materials in beer production is stated on the Competencies page of the Carlsberg Research Centre's website, which can be reached by clicking here.

I have a Dream that One Day Supermarkets will only Stock Decent Beers; I have a Dream!

I saw all this as a major weapon that could be used by CAMRA, since it was formed to promote unpasteurised, unfiltered beer. Major supermarket chains have well publicised policies of not stocking GM products. I had this vision of them having to rid their shelves of all their canned beers and replacing them with bottle-conditioned ones: Real Ale in a bottle from Belgium and England, etc. CAMRA did not have to state whether it was for or against the use of GM materials; it just had to make a simple statement: "Real Ale is not produced with any industrial or GM enzymes; most filtered mass circulation beers in the UK and the rest of the world are." (This statement may require a "small print" adjustment, as is explained below.)

Trappist Silence regarding GM Enzymes in Beer Production

After discovering the use of industrial, possibly GM enzymes, at the brewery in Tadcaster, I immediately sent a letter to the CAMRA Chairman, who expressed great interest. He obviously wanted to first check the facts with his own technical people, before commissioning a page one headline in CAMRA's newspaper, What's Brewing, for the November, 1999 edition, in time for the big Christmas party purchases of Eurofizz.

Then he backed off before this happened, after getting his technical advice; no story was printed in What's Brewing, apart from a small article inside the April, 2000 edition, in the "Guest Beer Writer" column, from myself. I believe he did a U-turn for two main reasons: firstly, European Union legislation lets brewers not declare the industrial or GM enzymes they use as an ingredient, since they are used in small quantities that are destroyed in the hop boil in the copper; and bad publicity for dead pasteurised, filtered beer could rub off on all beers, including Real Ale. So CAMRA is keeping a Trappist silence on the use of industrial enzymes, including GM ones, in the production of filtered beers. The big brewers who are using these ingredients must be really laughing at this. CAMRA continues with its silence to this day, and e-mails that I have sent to their most senior officials, in 2004, on the subject, have not been replied to or acknowledged.

"The World's 1st Malting Barley Beer"

I do not subscribe to this view that bad publicity for filtered beer produced using GM-produced enzymes would be detrimental to Real Ale, as they are only used in its production for unusual types with a very high Wheat content, see below. In fact, I sincerely believe that it would be beneficial. I feel that if handled properly, that it could give Real Ale a huge boost. It would also discourage producers of Real Ale from using industrial enzymes or GM-produced enzymes to replace or augment those in malt that actually convert the bulk starch in the malt to sugar. This would allow the backing out of malt and replacing it with adjuncts, such as the wheat starch that the Trappist brewery Chimay (www.chimay.com) uses (click here for a White Beer Travels page giving details of the materials used in Chimay beers). The ultimate beer with regard to the use of adjuncts is Citizen Original from East African Breweries Limited (www.eabrew.com), which is a 100% barley beer (it is described as "The World's 1st Malting Barley Beer" on its product description page on the site, www.eabrew.com/brands/citizen_original.asp). For this beer, the starch in the unmalted barley, which has no enzymes for converting starch to sugar, unlike malt, is converted to sugar by a collection of GM-produced enzymes, including the most important mashing enzymes. These GM enzymes, trade name Ceremix®, are produced by the Danish company, Novozymes, www.novozymes.com, who are part of Nova Nordisk: www.novonordisk.com. Note that I surmise that these enzymes are GM rather than just "industrial", as there is no declaration on the Novozymes website refuting this, unlike a manufacturer of enzymes cited above. In fact, if you click here, you can see (question/answer in bottom left of page) that Novozymes state that they produce enzymes by GM means. The enzymes used to produce Citizen Original include GM-produced versions of beta-Glucanase, along with alpha-Amylase and beta-Amylase (β-Amylase), these being the classic converters of the grain's bulk starch to fermentable sugars (collectively called diastase, hence the term "Diastatic Power" (DP) as a measure of the enzyme content of a malt or grain mix. With a ban on the import of malt into Nigeria, Nigerian Breweries (www.nbplc.com) goes one step further and uses Novozymes's enzymes to produce beer solely from Sorghum (a drought-tolerant grain, also known as milo) or Maize (Corn); click here for more details. Similarly SABMiller's Nile Breweries, in Uganda, manufactures "Eagle Lager" from Sorghum, using industrial enzymes supplied by the Irish company, Quest International (www.questintl.com), who are based in Kilnagleary, Carrigaline, County Cork.

"Our best selling beer is made without malt"

Nova Nordisk supply over 50% of the world's industrial enzymes. These products are detailed on the Novozymes website, for example, click here to see the report on the aptly named Viscoflow®, the trade name for their GM-produced beta-Glucanase. This describes its trials at the renowned brewing institute at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in Weihenstephan, in Germany.

Click here for another interesting paper on this site, entitled "Our best selling beer is made without malt"; it give details of a beer, called "Premium Senior" brewed by the Romanian company, S C Martens (www.martens.ro), that is produced using unmalted barley, with the help of the cocktail of enzymes produced by Novozymes. A reproduction of the label is provided on the left, which, as can be seen, is described, on the label, as a "Pasteurised Blond Beer" (in Romanian). Note that the brewery's website does claim that the beer "contains malt" (Contine malt), click here to see this, but how much, 5%, 10%? The Novozymes article claims that the brewery's beers have won Silver and Gold medals in competitions in Belgium.  Note that S C Martens is 67.67% (two  thirds) owned by the large, but independent Martens Brouwerij (Brewery) (www.martens.be), in Bocholt, in Belgian Limburg. The labels of the Romanian beers have the Belgian brewery's logo on them, as can be seen by comparing this label with the logo on the Home page of the Belgian Martens website. Another quote from the paper that is mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph is amazing when you consider that it comes from a Belgian Specialty Beer brewer, Raymond Moureau: "The real secret behind Premium Senior is, however, that I have put my soul into it." It is a pity that he has put little or no malt in it!

Some people argue that it is quite OK to use extra beta-Glucanase in a brew, even a GM-produced version of it, and that the sentiments of this White Beer Travels Web page represent a knee-jerk reaction to GM enzymes in beer. However, there are some fairly old references to the use of industrial enzymes in the production of beer, for example, in the classic 1989 book by George Fix: Principles of Brewing Science (ISBN 0-937581-17-9, published by Brewers Publications). On page 101, it states that " ... high molecular weight proteins can cause a variety of problems in brewing ... "; on page 31 "Many brewers view beta-glucans as a wasteful carbohydrate. They are known to greatly increase wort viscosity when not properly degraded, which can lead to filtration and haze problems.  ... Their presence in raw barley is one of the main reasons special enzymes are used when this material is used in appreciable amounts as an adjunct." The interesting point for me here is that the use of "special enzymes", which means that industrially produced enzymes is not a new subject, but one which has been kept successfully hidden from the general drinking public for a number of years!

Doesn't "Campaigning for Real Ale (Cask Ale)" mean
Fighting to Save It?

I have expressed no explicit personal view on the merits or otherwise of GM products in this Web page; I make no implication that adding additional enzymes is a bad thing, even the ones most favoured by brewers: those having a high degree of thermostability, the GM ones. If an enzyme is declared to be thermostable, you can be sure that it has been produced by a GM route. What I am getting at is that it is a bit like a war, a war against the brewers who are still trying to kill Real Ale by replacing it with pasteurised, filtered, gassy keg beer. In a war, all weapons ratified by the Burton Convention (the beer world's equivalent of the Geneva Convention - sorry I made that up) are legal. Therefore, as the general public's perception is that GM is bad, why not tarnish their filtered, pasteurised beers with a GM label and somehow throw in the fact that the GM-produced material is based on a bacteria? As they say: "All is fair in love and war". CAMRA, for me, has lost a lot of its fighting/campaigning spirit by not using all such weapons in the fight. However, if less militancy is the order of the day, when compared to the pioneer days of CAMRA, a less aggressive, more measured approach as to how CAMRA could start fighting back is covered in the next paragraph.

The Brewers and Malsters Guild of Ireland has a Charter that states that its members will not use industrial enzymes to produce their beers. Of course Guinness is not in the Guild and uses them, perhaps GM ones, in all its beers. I believe that CAMRA should push for similar "rules" in their Charter or Code of Practice for brewers who joined an equivalent guild in the UK, or were members of organisations such as SIBA (www.siba.co.uk), the Society of Independent Brewers, and IFBB, the Independent Family Brewers of Britain, www.familybrewers.co.uk, whose members are all committed to producing quality, character beers. No doubt, the bigger regional brewers of Real Ale, who are not members of SIBA, would follow suit, which would, hopefully, put pressure on the bigger brewers to do the same. CAMRA could also, in parallel, actively encourage all brewers to declare that industrial enzymes are not used in the production of any of their Real Ales (with one proviso, see below). Similarly, in other countries, beer consumers' organisations, such as Belgium's Zythos (www.zythos.be and White Beer Travels Web page) and The Netherlands' PINT (www.pint.nl), or the umbrella organisation, the EBCU (European Beer Consumers' Association) (www.ebcu.org), should do the same with regard to their countries' Speciality Beers, as could Craft Beer (Specialty Beer) organisations in the USA, etc.

There are two categories of industrial/GM enzymes that can and should be attacked by beer consumer' organisations: those which aid filtration, such as beta-Glucanase, which is used by the producers of filtered beers, but not unfiltered ones, such as Real Ale or bottle-conditioned beers in the Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK and elsewhere; and those which are used to replace malt with adjuncts (which include unmalted barley) in the mash, such as alpha- and beta-Amylase. CAMRA should make it clear that the latter can be used to make Real Ales more cheaply, to the detriment of quality, and should thus be actively discouraging their presence in the mash, and the other beer consumers' organisations should be doing the same for their countries' Speciality/Craft/Artisanal Beers.

Smooth Flow is doing Real Ale no Favours or Flavours

Although CAMRA truly did save Real Ale for the nation, following its formation in the early 1970s, the fight is not over. In England we are now being inundated with another form of pasteurised and filtered beer: Cream Flow or Smooth Flow. Many examples of this beer have the same name, or one similar, to a Real Ale produced by the same brewer. For example Tetley's Bitter has a Real Ale (cask-conditioned) and a Smoothflow form, with very similar pump/font clips. In pubs where the Real Ale version is available, there will usually be a keg tap for the Smooth Flow form alongside it, how sad, or even replacing it, how, very, very sad! In the town where I live, Grimsby, in England, we have, in just one year, in the early part of the 21st Century, lost over twenty Real Ale pubs to the moderate product that is Cream Flow or Smooth Flow. These beers are generally produced using industrial enzymes, most likely GM ones. Rubbishing them could bring the handpumps back to these pubs and many hundreds of others around the country.

The website for Tetley's Bitter, which is excellent as a Real Ale, but is now available in Smooth Flow form, is not www.tetleybitter.co.uk, but www.smoothlydoesit.co.uk, honest, you check it out! Most amazingly, I was travelling on the M1 motorway, in 2002, in the vicinity of the Carlsberg-Tetley facility, in Northampton, England (since just called Carlsberg); a car shunted into the back of my car; the young woman driver produced her business card, which declared that she was the Product Manager for Tetley's Bitter; in the old days, this position would have been held by an older man from Yorkshire, who swore by his handpumped Tetley Bitter! Tetley's Bitter, both Real Ale and Smoothflow variety, is brewed in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

Can Addition of Enzymes to the Mash Tun Ever be Justified?

In the mash for beers designated as Wheat Beers, there is typically only 30% to 40% Wheat, with the rest being Malt (Malted Barley, Barley Malt), since since Unmalted Wheat has none and Malted Wheat has less of the enzymes that occur naturally in Malted Barley that are needed to convert the starch in the grains to sugar. Therefore, if someone wanted to produce a Speciality Beer with an unusually high percentage of Wheat in the mash, then this would only be possible with the addition of enzymes to the mash tun.

But has anyone that ordinarily brews meritorious, conventional brews, produced such a beer? Well, I know of one, and it is from a highly regarded brewer of Real Ales, in Burnley, Lancashire, England: Moorhouse's (www.moorhouses.co.uk).

In June, 2006, as the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Football world cup was taking place in Germany, Moorhouse's produced a clear Wheat Beer called FIFA Pitch (4.2%). However, this was no normal Wheat Beer, its grist being as follows: 75% Malted Wheat, 5% Torrified Wheat, and 20% Maris Otter Barley Malt. A little Invert Sugar was also used in the FIFA Pitch mash. With less than 20% Malted Barley in the mash, conversion of the grain's starch to sugar was facilitated by the addition of an industrial enzyme to the mash tun: Trizyme, a brand name for a cocktail of three enzymes, including the principal ones required to convert Starch to Sugar: alpha-Amylase and beta-Amylase. As with other Moorhouse's beers, the hops used were Fuggles and Willamette (late addition for aroma). I found the beer to be absolutely top class; it reminded me (taste and visually) of one of France's very best beers, a clear Wheat Beer called L'Angelus, which is brewed by the Brasserie d'Annoeullin. Industrial enzymes are generally used for poor quality, filtered beers; this is the first example I have come across of them being used to produce a top quality, very innovative Real Ale. If anyone knows of any other examples of the use of industrial enzymes in the production of top class Speciality/Craft/Artisanal Beers, I would be most grateful if you could let me know.

Of course, it would be a sad day if Trizyme or its equivalent were used to back out malt in a Real Ale mash, should the malt be replaced by something dodgy (any starch source), rather than the noble Malted Wheat of the Moorhouse's FIFA Pitch.

Comments Received on this Web Page

I get quite a few e-mails commenting on this Web page, and depending in which camp they reside, usually defines whether the comments are positive or not. Some just fail to see a problem with the fact that, for example, Freeman Street, a street in Grimsby where I live, that is famous for its pubs - it has nine on it - all have no Real Ale, although they all did when I moved to the town in 1984; all now have only filtered and pasteurised beer from International brewers. However, I actually got a quite reasonable one from someone who was the Marketing Manager for one of the major producers of industrial enzymes, who has responsibility for the brewing industry. He welcomed a further dialogue in the hope that he could convince me that the use of industrial enzymes had a positive side to it.

I replied that this would be certainly be interested to hear any positive use of enzymes from the beer consumers' point of view, other than that it reduces the price, since, the main focus of my website is Specialty Beers, for which the audience that I am targeting it at are quite happy to pay extra for a more individualistic beer. I pointed out that I am particularly concerned about those enzymes that allow the replacement of part or even all of the malt in a mash with adjuncts, the latter including unmalted barley. I stated that whilst I could see a benefit in doing this for developing nations, I saw no merit in doing it for those interested in Speciality Beers in Western Europe; I stressed that, in my view their use will only be to the detriment of quality, but we see Martens doing it in Romania, see above, something this Belgian company could do in Belgium, to cut cost. I also pointed out that in the UK, we are not immune to dumbing down of quality that could result from the use of industrial enzymes. With my website, I stated that I am trying to bring this to the attention of people so that the backing out of malt, that is facilitated by industrial alpha- and beta-Amylase, does not become commonplace; I emphasised that I am not really concerned about filtration aids such as industrially produced beta-glucanase, since the beers it is used to produce are of no interest to me from a drinking point of view, but, as is clear from my website, I am disappointed that this weapon is not used by the consumer organisation, CAMRA, see above.

I did not receive a response to my responding e-mail. I sincerely believe that this is because for the consumer of quality Speciality Beers, which includes British Real Ales, that the use of industrial/GM enzymes offers no advantages, apart from the special case detailed above.

John White (1945-), , May, 1999, updated in June, 2007.