You’ve just finished work on a Friday afternoon and visit your favourite drinking spot to meet with friends and colleagues. You’ve ordered your drink and you’ve been poured the perfect pint. It tastes like beer, looks like beer and has that refreshing head of foam that’s familiar and so loved by beer drinkers worldwide.
Except, there’s something different about this beer; it wasn’t transported in liquid form to your local pub. This beer began as a powder, and now, it’s in your pint glass. That’s the vision of one innovative German Brewery based near Munich.
Revolutionising Traditional Brewing Technology
Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle, a long-established brewery, has used its connections with technology partners and funding from BMWi to create a dextrin-rich powdered beer that they predict will disrupt the industry in a positive way.
Although this technology has been used to brew non-alcoholic beer, the company is now in the process to create an alcoholic version.
It’s expected to turn heads in the industry, imagine a beer where transport costs as a fraction of what they are now. No glass bottles, no water or full beer bottles. Just powder which can be added to water to make a perfect pint for the end consumer.
Managing director of the brewery, Stefan Fritsche, is under no illusion that such a change would be accepted quickly by the end consumer.
“It’s not just about bringing a new product onto the market, but about disrupting the beer business model. Therefore, we do not see our core target group as primarily the classic German end consumer, but global resellers (dryest beer packers), who do not necessarily have to have brewing knowledge, but who can make the granules suitable for the end consumer’s application”
After almost two years of research, Klosterbrauerei is already testing the market and targeting countries in Asia and Africa with the highest transport costs. They predict tests will continue until mid-2023.
An Environmentally Friendly Alternative
Billions of litres of water are regularly required to be transported worldwide before the consumer can get their hands on a pint. Transport costs of traditional brewing methods are one of the first challenges the brewery is tackling head-on with their invention. Their innovative water-soluble granules can be transported at a fraction of the weight of traditional water-based beer.
“The time is ripe to put classic beer production and logistics to the test in view of the way we treat our environment,” commented the shareholder of the Neuzelle monastery brewery, Helmut Fritsche.
Having already found a route to saving on transport costs, the monastery brewers are now looking at the manufacturing process and have ambitious plans to reduce costs here, too.
Looking To The Future
For now, the beer granules make a non-alcoholic beer, but its inventors have plans to introduce an alcoholic version in the future, presumably based on how well the non-alcoholic version is received after marketing tests.
The brewery’s highest priority now is to work with its investors to reduce manufacturing costs and look at labour, energy and material costs.
What effect do you think the new powdered beer will have on the industry? Would you try a powdered beer if it lived up to its promises?
Source: Klosterbrauerei
