How is Enzyme Manufacturing Useful Across The Food Industry?

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19 April 2021

Enzymes are unit proteins created by living cells that catalyse specific chemicals — this increases the speed of reaction by several million times. They are crucial to industries that are into making cheese, brewing beer, baking bread, extracting fruit crush, tanning leather, and far more. The points below elucidate how enzyme manufacturing has been useful across the listed food industries:

Table of Contents

Enzymes Used In The Food Industry

Breweries

Enzyme manufacturing has been a crucial reason for the success of the beer manufacturing industry. Breweries wouldn’t be able to brew their beer without enzymes and the yeast that are present in the beer. One of the primary steps of the brewing process involves sprouting grain and breaking that starch into maltose and glucose sugar molecules via amylase enzymes. Yeast then consumes these simple sugars and produces alcohol and CO2 via glycolysis and alcoholic fermentation.

There are two main biochemical processes central to brewing that require enzymes:

Conversion of starch (naturally present in barley) into fermentable sugars.
Fermentation of sugars by yeasts to produce ethanol and carbon dioxide.

To be useful for brewing, starch must be broken down into smaller units, such as maltose and glucose, which can later be used by yeasts during fermentation. The enzymes responsible for breaking down the long starch chains into fermentable sugars are called starch hydrolases. Four main enzymes are involved in the transformation, all of which are produced or activated during malting. All of the subsequent enzymes are necessary so as to maximize the fermentability of the brew:

Alpha amylase
Beta amylase
Dextranase
Alpha glucosidase

All in all, the process of brewing beer requires a whopping 12 enzymes!

Cheese Making

Cheesemaking is an age-old tradition that needs surprisingly few ingredients: milk, bacteria, rennet, and salt. However, it is only enzymes provided by enzyme manufacturing firms that are the main source of flavor and texture of any cheese. Rennet is an enzyme that breaks down the milk protein casein to form cheese curd; it is a combination of chymosin and pepsin enzymes and is naturally found in the stomachs of milk-drinking/producing animals, but fermentation-produced chymosin is sourced from a plant, fungal, and microbial sources for industrial cheese-making purposes. Rennet is an enzyme utilized to coagulate milk, so as to make a thick curd. It begins performing at temperatures between 85-105F, even at higher temperatures it’ll not be deactivated until it reaches 140F. So, when the recipe states, it is time to cut the curds, it is important to do so in a timely manner. Otherwise, the curd can become too firm for the cheese you’re trying to form.

Fruit Juice And Tea Industry

Enzyme manufacturers usually deal in enzymes like pectin, cellulase, and amylase, used alone or in combination for the fruit juice manufacturing industries. These enzymes are mainly used for peeling fruit, clarifying fruit juice, reducing the viscosity of fruit juice, and enhancing stability. The same is also applied in making vegetable juice, extending the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, retaining nutrients, and much more.

Additionally, enzymes also are widely utilized in the deep processing of tea. Tannase can improve the tea cold-soluble, prevent tea cloudy, and can improve its strength of the tea. It is utilized in tea, tea, and oolong tea. Cellulase and pectinase can break down the cell membrane of tea, making the active ingredients of tea more easily dissolve, improving the speed of instant tea products, product clarity, and the aroma of tea. Protease can improve tea extract rate and clarity, enhance the taste and improve the separation performance of tea.

Baking Industry

Baking enzymes are used for providing flour enhancement, dough stability, improve texture, volume, and color, prolonging crumb softness, uniform crumb structure, and prolonging the freshness of bread. To meet the rising demand for quality, enzymes are seen as natural solutions in today’s baking market.
Breadmaking is one of the foremost common food processing techniques globally. The use of enzymes in bread manufacturing shows their value in internal control and efficiency of production. Amylase, alone or in combination with other enzymes, is added to the bread flour for retaining moisture more efficiently to increase softness, freshness, and shelf life. Additionally, lipase and xylanase are used for dough stability and conditioning while glucose oxidase and lipoxygenase are added to improve dough strengthening and whiteness. Transglutaminase is used in the baking industry to enhance the quality of flour, the amount and texture of bread, and the texture of cooked pasta. Lipases are used to improve the flavour content of bakery products by liberating short-chain fatty acids through esterification and to prolong the time period of the bakery products.

Thus, we see how the act of enzyme manufacturing has been nothing less than a blessing for the food industry. The sectors utilising enzymes that are listed above are only a few among the many others that rely on enzyme manufacturing firms for a quicker, smoother, and consistent manufacturing process.

Enzymes For Food Industry