Let $\beta >1$ be a non-integer. We consider $\beta$-expansions of the form ${\sum }_{i=1}^{\infty }{d}_i/{\beta }^i$, where the digits ${\left(d_i\right)}_{i\ge 1}$ are generated by means of a Borel map $K_{\beta }$ defined on ${\{0,1\}}^{\mathbb{N}}\times [0,\lfloor \beta \rfloor /\left(\beta -1\right)]$. We show that $K_{\beta }$ has a unique mixing measure ${\nu }_{\beta }$ of maximal entropy with marginal measure an infinite convolution of Bernoulli measures. Furthermore, under the measure ${\nu }_{\beta }$ the digits ${\left(d_i\right)}_{i\ge 1}$ form a uniform Bernoulli process. In case 1 has a finite greedy expansion with positive coefficients, the measure of maximal entropy is Markov. We also discuss the uniqueness of $\beta$-expansions....