The 6 brewing methods identified in order to describe them better have in fact often cohabited or cooperated within the same cultural area at certain times in their history. One must be careful not to match a cultural area too closely to a specialised unique brewing method. Thanks to recent archaeological research, we know that these 6 brewing methods have been used at the same time in the same cultural areas during antiquity.
Furthermore, the same brewing process can combine complementary brewing pathways. The acid hydrolysis, for example, enhances the amylolytic ferments or the malting process. A lactic fermentation can take place at the same time as an alcoholic fermentation.
IS THERE A 7th PATHWAY to BREW BEER?
For example the industrial technology of synthetic enzymes fixed on a permeable substrate slowly traversed by a starch extract. The same technique has already been tried and tested by passing a wort through porous yeast-fixing membranes to undertake a continuous fermentation. The novelty lies in the synthesis of the enzymes and the process that makes the production of the sweet wort and the alcoholic fermentation follow one another in the liquid phase inside a single high cylindrical tank, with a dynamic of the liquids based on their decreasing densities.
More generally, the Western tradition of malting (pathway no. 2) and the Asian tradition of synchronised saccharification-fermentation (pathway no. 3) could one day merge and produce new kind of beers with new brewing diagrams.