Monitoring the production of carbon dioxide during beer fermentation.

Pandiella, S.S., Garcia, L.A., Diaz, M. and Daoud, I.S.

Abstract
The mechanism of carbon dioxide production during fermentation is explained and laboratory, pilot and industrial scale experiments are described in which the relationships between total carbon dioxide production, the dissolved carbon dioxide concentration, the rate of carbon dioxide gas release and other fermentation parameters such as ethanol formation, the consumption of fermentable sugars and the rate of decrease in specific gravity were studied. It was found that the output of carbon dioxide gas is sufficiently closely correlated with the decrease in specific gravity (the parameter currently most often used in the brewing industry to monitor the progress of fermentation), as well as other parameters such as yeast growth, sugar consumption and ethanol production, to justify the choice of on-line carbon dioxide gas measurement as a means of monitoring fermentation with potential applicability in automatic process control.
Keywords : 1993