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Flash Pasteurization of Beer – a Critical Review
A. Dammann, K. Schwarzer, U. Müller and J. Schneider

The pasteurization of beer and in particular the flash pasteurization is a widely used technique for the biological product stabilization. In spite of the large extend of experience with the pasteurization the way how it is used in practice is a comparably rough method of low precision. In order to precisely adjust the two core process parameters temperature and exposition time detailed knowledge about the individual microbiological inactivation kinetics as well as about specific process and equipment characteristics is required. The article first considers the questions of the biologically demanded thermal load in terms of ?required Pasteurization Units (PU)?. The assumed underlying thermal death kinetics and the determination of the necessary logarithmic cell count reduction are discussed. Every claim demanding for a particular target PU for specific kinds of beers (or other beverages) base naturally upon simplifications and assumptions concerning the initial and target cell counts and the D-values of present microorganism. The necessity of both species/strain and matrix specific D-values are pointed out.

Descriptors: flash pasteurization/HTST, Pasteurization Units (PU), D and z-values, residence time distribution

BrewingScience – Monatsschrift für Brauwissenschaft, 64 (March/April 2011), pp. 32-40