Development and Assessment of a Small-Scale Wort Filtration Test for the Prediction of Beer Filtration Efficiency

A Small-scale Wort rapid Filtration Test (SWIFT) that predicts beer filtration efficiency has been developed. The test is simple, cost effective and correlates with existing beer filtration tests such as beer Vmax membrane (Esser test) and diatomaceous earth (Walton filter) tests. SWIFT has an advantage over existing beer filtration tests as it can be easily incorporated into barley quality laboratories utilising excess wort from extract analyses, thus negating the need for additional sample preparation or to ferment and age beer. Furthermore, the test does not rely on expensive equipment or specially trained laboratory technicians. SWIFT, which may also be used to evaluate degassed beer, is a syringe test that utilises a 13 mm diameter 0.45 μm membrane and is negatively influenced by wort viscosity (P<0.05). It is envisaged that SWIFT may be applied by barley breeding programs for the evaluation of progeny lines to provide a better prediction of beer filtration performance than total wort β-glucan measurements. In addition, maltsters and brewers could use SWIFT to assess malt samples, and provide early warning of potential beer filtration problems during the brewing process.