Beer is brewed in batches, put simply heated, sugars dissolved, cooled, yeast added, yeast convert the sugars to alcohol, some clarification process where solids are removed (including dead and alive yeasts), then some go though a pasteurization process and carbonation.
It seems like this can be made into a continuous process operation using something very close to how a waste water treatment plant works, which is not surprising as it is basically doing the same thing (bio-organisms convert nutrient rich ‘water’ into a final desired product with solids removed).
Has this ever been done? Is there some reason this would not work to make a decent quality mass produced beer?
I know in biotechnology there is such a thing as continuous fermentations but they are tricky to get right, and eventually you have hit the proverbial “reset” button: stop the process, clean out the vessel and start over. I think so called batch fermentations still predominate in the industry.
For one thing the conditions in your fermentation vessel can select for a strain of whatever microorganism you are using (yeast, in the case of beer) that has different properties than the strain you started with. This is the nature of biological organisms, and it could very well end up changing your final product.
