Sorghum

Since the 1970’s Kerry Ingredients & Flavours (formerly Biocon and Quest International), has been directly involved in developing efficient brewing processes for the production of clear lager beer from sorghum. The importance of this work was highlighted when in the 1980’s the Nigerian government due to economic reasons, put a ban on the importation of malted barley into Nigeria. This forced local breweries to brew exclusively from sorghum and maize. With optimized levels of commercial enzymes and brewing ingredients, high quality clear lager beer can be produced from sorghum. Sorghum is currently available to brewers as malt, or as a raw unmalted cereal in the form of grits or whole grain. The following table summarises the current array of options available to sorghum brewers.

While sorghum has been successfully used to replace malted barley in African countries such as Nigeria, more recent interest in the area of gluten-free beer, has highlighted sorghum (a gluten free cereal) on the world-stage as a leading contender for the production of gluten-free beers. The following table summarises the main difficulties in sorghum brewing and the solutions that Kerry Ingredients & Flavours provides in addressing these problems.

Typical problems	Our Solutions
Poor extract levels	Promalt SL, Promalt SS
Poor mash or beer filtration	Promalt SS, Promalt SL, Biofase & Bioglucanase
Insufficient levels of free amino nitrogen	Promalt SL, Bioprotease
High mash viscosities and starch positive wort	Hitempase
Limited vitamins, essential salts and amino acids for yeast	Yeastex
Poor wort fermentability	Bioferm P / FA Conc Promalt SS
Poor foam stability	Biofoam K, Biofoam W, Biofoam CL