Quality control of malt: turbidity problems of standard worts given by the presence of microbial cells

Since the main effect on beer colour originates from the chemical composition of malt, the measurement of the colour of won obtained from malt is one of the most important quality parameters to be controlled. Malt colour determination is usually performed spectrophotometrically on EBC Congress worts, which are generally bright. The quality control on the malt harvested in the year 2007 highlighted a problem of turbid Congress wort, for a part of Northern Europe samples analyzed, and therefore the spectrophotometric determination of the colour of wort was not possible. Thus both analytical screening of the quality parameters of malt and the scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to identify the nature of the turbidity in the worts. The results obtained suggested that the nature of the turbidity of Congress worts could have been due to microbial contamination of the barley, enhanced in particular by the rainy harvest and the consequent formation of exopolysaccharides (EPS) by stressed yeast and bacteria during malting.