Produção de Cerveja do Estilo Gruit Beer Utilizando Ervas

Abstract

Currently, Brazil occupies the third position in the world ranking of beer production, with an amount of about 14 billion liters, nevertheless, occupies only the seventeenth position when we observe the consumption per capita, which makes infer that the Brazilian market has a lot of potential for growth. It is believed that the craft beers are boosting the sector with the registration of new breweries, and with the prioritization of the sensorial quality of the product. Given this, beers named as special, often present in their recipe, aromatic hops and very striking, which ends up making the product more expensive. Hops (Humulus lupulus) is a very sensitive plant that can only be grown in cold places, making it impossible to produce in national territory, which obliges all breweries to import it, making it the most expensive ingredient of beer proportionally . Therefore, the present work had as objective the production of hopeless beers of the style Gruit Beer, as well as the selection and investigation of the use of herbs to confer properties of bitterness and aroma. The herbs selected for the work were carqueja (Baccharis trimera), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and ginger (Zingiber officinalis). Various proportions were tested between the herbs and two were selected for the production of beers along with another one containing hops, for comparison purposes. The fermentation kinetics were followed and it was observed that the samples containing the herbs had a higher concentration of sugars from the added adjuvant, boosting the alcohol production, while the other parameters did not present differences between the experiments. The microbiological analysis showed a slight contamination by total coliforms in the beer at the central point. A sensory analysis would be very important, since the public's acceptability of Gruit Beer could be a viable alternative for the production of beer without the use of hops.