  The basic beer-brewing industrial practices have barely changed over time.
While well proven and stable, they have been refractory to substantial
innovation. Technologies harnessing hydrodynamic cavitation have emerged since
the 1990s' in different technical fields including the processing of liquid
foods, bringing in advantages such as acceleration of extraction processes,
disinfection and energy efficiency. Nevertheless, so far beer-brewing processes
were not investigated. The impacts of controlled hydrodynamic cavitation,
managed by means of a dedicated unit on a real microbrewery scale (230 L), on
the beer-brewing processes is the subject of this paper. The physico-chemical
features of the obtained products, analyzed by means of professional
instruments, were compared with both literature data and data from the outcomes
of a traditional equipment. Traditional processes such as dry milling of malts
and wort boiling becoming entirely unnecessary, dramatic reduction of
saccharification temperature, acceleration and increase of starch extraction
efficiency, relevant energy saving, while retaining safety, reliability,
scalability, virtually universal application to any brewing recipe, beer
quality, were the most relevant experimental results. The impacts of these
findings are potentially far reaching, beer being the worldwide most widely
consumed alcoholic beverage, therefore highly relevant to health, environment,
the economy and even to local identities.
