APPLYING WHEY AS AN ASSOCIATE ON CRAFT BEER MANUFACTURING

Whey is a co-product obtained from cheese manufacturing and considered pollutant when inappropriately disposed of. Made of 5% lactose approximately which can be used as carbohydrate in fermentation process when hydrolyzed. On craft beers until 45% of mash malt original extract can be replaced by another source of carbohydrate and another soluble solids. The aim of this project was to evaluate the physical-chemical craft beer characteristics produced adding whey (sweet whey). It was produced three types of beer, with whey; whey and lactase; and control. It was an analyzed real extract by calculation, apparent and primitive extract and alcohol content using NIR; and the color by spectrophotometry according to Analytica EBC. The experiments were made in triplicate and the results obtained by the average, compared to T Student test. The beers have presented an alcohol content of 5,29, 5,49 and 5,61% v/v; real extract of 7,53, 7,58 and 6,73% w/w; apparent extract of 5,46, 5,44 and 4,58% w/w; primitive extract of 15,13, 15,45 and 14,88% w/w and colors of 60, 60 and 55 in control, with whey and whey and lactase, respectively. There was no significant difference between the beers and all of them were rated as good quality ones according to the real extract. The lower value on the apparent extract on the beer with whey and lactase is due to lactose hydrolysis. In general the samples were rated as strong ones by their primitive extract values over 14% and a dark color because of their 20 or more units correspondent. The experiments showed that whey has a great potential in replacing carbohydrates derived from malt on beer manufacturing.