30. (6 points): Your Beer company decided to make whisky products which can be m

Question

30. (6 points): Your Beer company decided to make whisky products which can be more profitable in the market. Both beer and whisky are produced with the same starting material, malted barley, and yeast fermentation. Therefore, whisky production can be achieved with minimal changes in existing beer-making steps and facilities. Which step in beer making should be modified to make whisky (refer to your lecture note)? What woul be the effect of the modification on fermentation? What outcome is expected in the final product of fermentation? You don't need to include distillation steps in your answer. (3-5 sentences)

Explanation / Answer

The beer and whiskey are alcoholic beverages where beer has low alcoholic content of nearly 4%, while whiskey has high alcoholic content may be of 70%. The preparation for beer and whiskey are similar, both are having the same basic ingredients barley water and yeast. In beer preparation, there are major four steps. Malting, mashing, boiling and fermentation.

Malting: The barley grain is heated, dried and cracked to extract enzymes out.

Mashing: The cracked grain is taken into the hot but not boiled water, to activate enzymes. The enzymes break complex molecules and release sugars into solution. the solution is collected from the mash. The sweet sticky liquid is called wort.

Boiling: The wort is boiled to make for an hour along with hops and other flavours.

Fermentation: Once the wort is collected from boiling it is cooled filtered and taken into fermenting chamber. This is fermented with yeast, for short period under room temperature or longer period under refrigeration. During fermentation the sugars in the beer breakdown by the yeast and Co2 and alcohol released as byproducts. The fermented liquid is bottled and marketed as beer.

If we want to shift the beer preparation to whiskey then we need to process it in additional two steps.

Distillation: In whiskey process, the fermentation step is followed by distillation step to improve the alcoholic content. If the beer needs to be converted into whiskey then it needs to be distilled. Under distillation process, the fermented liquid is transferred into distillation unit often made up of bubbled bottom pots with connected flat pipes. In this step, alcohol vapourises at 173°F lower boiling point than water, which makes it easy to separate pure alcohol from the fermented liquid. The remaining liquid is called wash which is discarded. The alcohol is distilled twice(double distillation) or thrice to produce a highly purified alcoholic product as whiskey.

Aging: Whiskey is mostly aged in wooden barrels, during which the water, alcohol and congener mixed with each other to give specific flavour to the drink. The reaction of the alcohol with oxygen and wood barrel also give taste to the whiskey.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 3
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.