A Atuação do profissional da química no processo de fabricação de cerveja

Abstract

The professional of Chemistry is the one who has a range of knowledge about operations and control of chemical processes, production planning, chemical reactions, laboratory analyses, development of products and others. Those features are of the essence for a professional who works in the brewing process area of an industry. The necessary steps to brew beer are preparing the wort, managing the fermentation and filtering. The wort is an aqueous extract rich in sugars which will be consumed by the yeast in order to propagate and ferment. The alcohol that yields from the fermentation will be filtered and stored inside pressure vessels to be further packed into bottles and cans. It is extremely necessary to control the entire brewing process by carrying on physical-chemical and analytical analyses in order to evaluate the development of the process and guarantee the quality of the product. Along the work, it was elaborated a case study about the major anomalies that happen on each subarea of the brewing process. The major causes and the actions that were adopted to solve the issues were listed down. It was observed that it is extremely necessary to have a broad knowledge of the productive process in order to come up with the most suitable corrective actions. Besides that, when this knowledge is allied with the theoretical chemical concepts that are learned during the Chemistry bachelor’s program, the actions taken to solve the problems can be more effective. Indeed, more job opportunities in the brewing industry ought to be available to chemists. Their knowledge about chemical reactions that happen during the process and also about the principles of the analyses which are conducted along the production are essential in order to guarantee improvements on the quality of the beer and a greater efficiency on the productive process.