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'Ultra-Sound Assisted Extraction' is now being applied to all foods. To Coffee, and of course our beer.
Sonic's can effect the germination of malting barley, and like in this article replace the milling/malting phase of the brewing process.
The question to ask is why? Why apply sonic's to germinating grains? So they may germinate quicker. Why apply sonic's to malted grains, to break them up ( mill ) and to extract the sugar ( mash ) to a higher efficiency?
Why would you want to do this? More efficient mashing? ( 3% ), and germination ( maybe save 6-12 hours ), because if you brewing 100,000 liters of piss-beer an hour this is real money to be made.
Currently BUDweiser only buys the best malt, & hops. A ultra-sonic system that improves efficiency say 3-5% allow a cheaper or lower quality product to be bought and fed into the system.
What does all this mean for the home-brewer? Nada
What are the health effects of ultra-sound on germination? Nobody knows and nobody cares. Chemically what does ultra-sound do to our food when the starches are converted to sugar? Again nobody cares, google it, you'll not find a mention anywhere.
What is the benefit of changing the modern ( 500 year old ) brewing process? Nada. Belgium Monks got it right a long time ago. Like we used to say in Unix back in the 1970's, "If it works, Don't Fix It".
Slow-Food, and Slow-Beer people. That is what's best in life.
LED lights were sold, over neon, over incandescent, now we find out LED is bad, when will they tell us the ultra-sonic processed foods are bad for our health? Probably only after the corpses are on laying on the streets.