A Comparative Analysis of Different Pitching Rates on Castle Lager Beer Flavour Stability: A Case Study of Delta Lagers Manufacturing Company Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Abstract:Beer stability is a critical quality parameter and there is vast amount of research that has been done in attempt to understand and optimise it. The research study was incited by the result of low lag time (potential to resist staling) and high T150 (degree of staling) in one of the main stream brands at the beer processing firm, which caused the beer to stale much faster than normal. The research focused on the flavour stability aspect of beer stability and different methods of analysis were employed to investigate the effect of different pitching rates on products of yeast metabolism in-turn flavour stability. Results revealed that beer fermented with a low pitching rate had a high amount of sulphur dioxide which meant the Lag Time was also high due to sulphur dioxide exerting anti-oxidant properties which prevented oxidation of beer for longer periods than beer fermented with a high pitching rate. The results also revealed that there is no significant difference in these beers regards sensory analysis following analysis using the t-test.