History of enzymes in beverage industry

Since prehistoric times, fermentation processes for brewing, baking and the production of alcohol have been known. Enzymes have long been used in the manufacture of cheese, beer and wine.

Chemical test of ancient pottery jars reveal that a fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was made in China 7000 before.

Residues from wine also have been found on pottery from Egypt dating back to3150 BC. Beer was also brewed in Mesopotamia 3000 BC, but not until first century AD in Europe.

The existence and power of enzymes was first revealed in the nineteenth century with the study of fermentation.

In 1830 Augustin Pierre Dubrunfaut, French chemist noted that malt extract has the potential to change starch into sugar.

In 1850s, Louis Pasteur proposed that fermentation of sugars into alcohol by yeast is catalyzed by ferments, which were later named as enzymes. He demonstrated the role of microorganism in food and beverage and the characterization of digestive enzymes, marked a major turning point in approach to food and beverage production and storage.

In 1897, Eduard Buchner succeeded in extraction insoluble active form from yeast cells the set of enzymes that catalyses the fermentation of sugar to alcohol and gave the name ‘zymase’.

Emil Fischer, German scientist in the late nineteenth century discovered that different yeast fermented different sugars. This lead to his famous conclusion about enzyme and corresponding substrate that have to fit a lock and key to affect each other.

The chemistry of enzyme was known for the first time when James Sumner in 1926 obtained a reasonably pure crystalline form of urease from jack bean meal.

With the recent development in biotechnology, awareness of scope of enzymes, availability of cost-effective enzyme purification process and efficient enzyme made tremendous changes in the beverage industry.
History of enzymes in beverage industry