A Rapid Method for Testing Filtration Performance of Malt and the Optimization of the Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, the authors studied a rapid filtration test method that predicts malt filtration efficiency. The research is relevant to proposing a more efficient malt filtration. 

In my opinion, the manuscript is well written and clear, but hade errors typographic, that is necessary minor corrections are required. I send the revised document indicating the corrections

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers

Thanks very much for taking time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! I have checked the similar mistakes and corrected all of them. Please find my itemized responses in below and my revision in the re-submitted files.

Reviewer 2 Report

Since all the work are not related to the type of filter,the results are partially exploitable.  

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.

The reviewer comments are bold below, our response is given in normal font. 

Since all the work are not related to the type of filter, the results are partially exploitable. 

The work is not related to the type of filter because we only want to test the original filtration performance of different malt. All the factors need to be removed and only imitate mashing process to test wort turbidity. We use 3μm drainage fliter membrane to strain the wort because over 90% colloid particles can be filtered out. These particles involved protein，polysaccharide and some other particles which influence filtration performance. If they remain in the wort it would increase turbidity. Thus we test the wort turbidity to know filtration performance of malt.

Reviewer 3 Report

The title is misleading. It was difficult to understand the purpose of the experiment and what scientific question as being answered. It was unclear on the new 'filtration' method. If there was a new method, was it compared to any previous methods?

There was inadequate detail in the methods. What was the scale of any mashing. What was the scale of any commercial brewing? What was the filtration method exactly? Was it just using '3μm drainage fliter membrane'? If so, this is not about filtration but measure efficiency of wort run-off or wort separation if it is does after mashing. Filtration generally means filter beer prior to packaging.

Why is there no actual results presentation of the filtration times or for the actual measurements of wort and beer traits as per the correlation shown in Figure 1. The lack of these important details mean this whole experiment and the results reported are highly questionable. 

If there was an experiment with enzyme additions, please write this out in detail. Was this in a laboratory setting or commercial brewery? Line 71 mentioned a reference that didn't use commercial scale trials. Have commercial trials been conducted in this experiment outlined in this paper. 

If discussing saccharification, then why not measure it, or was it measured but also not reported? 

In the Conclusion, the first sentence describes simulated data. So please provide the details of what data was used to development the models to do simulations. 

There are many spelling mistakes. This is also misuse of brewing terms.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the responses by the authors. But I still have concerns that the scale of this filtration method would not mimic a large scale commercial process. 

The abstract should finish with a statement on the importance of this new method and how it will be of benefit to the industry. The Abstract should also have the scale of the filtration method. Leaving this information out of the abstract is misleading. There is a lot of the stats saying how good the method is but the method is not describe. 

There is still no information on the scale of the mash in the Methods Section. This is important for readers to understand how the mash was carried out. The objectives of Methods is to provide information so other researchers could repeat the experiment and get similar results. Also the fine mill makes the extraction of malt better than a coarse method. So the results look better than they would be in a commercial scale.