Traditional and modern biotechnology

The brewing industry has changed from local, small breweries to global companies and fully automated plants. Our knowledge on biological processes of the barley-to-beer chain and tools to control the process and product quality, benefit from the development of basic sciences and engineering.Beer has been brewed for thousands of years. For a long time beer production was, however, pure cookery. The development of the brewing industry began in the 19th century – largely as a consequence of the development of technology in general. The scientific basis of beer brewing was also laid at that time. Sciences such as biochemistry and microbiology benefited greatly from the early malting and brewing research that was driven by the need to understand biological processes such as germination, mashing and fermentation. Later the term biotechnology was invented meaning industrial application of living cells and combining basic sciences with engineering. Nowadays the definition of biotechnology is even wider and covers the research and development of biological processes on a genetic and molecular level.