Brewing beer has been an art form for centuries, but the chemistry behind it remains largely shrouded in mystery. Fortunately, a team of researchers at the University of Victoria has developed a revolutionary lab-on-a-chip device that could change the game. By studying the role of gluten and hop oils in beer emulsions, they’re uncovering new insights that could help brewers create even more flavorful and shelf-stable beers. This article explores how this innovative technology is poised to transform the brewing industry and uncover the hidden secrets of the perfect pint. Beer Chemistry, Microfluidics
Decoding the Hazy Beer
And as the brewing industry develops, brewers are constantly searching for novel composition analysis that can mimic their beers while preserving the crafted sensory notes of their pints. Lately in the beer world, one of the cool things to do is hype up a hazy pale ale — beers that have cloudy visuals and big hop flavors.
To help us understand better what makes these cloudy beers stand out (in a good way), Katherine Elvira and her team, at the University of Victoria, have created an easy to use lab-on-a-chip device. Using this novel technology, they examined how the protein gluten (present in beer) helps to stabilize hop oil emulsions. Understanding these processes at a deeper level will allow brewers to adjust their ingredient compositions in the future, producing more flavorful and aesthetically pleasing beers.
Exciting perspective among the microfluidics marvel turning lab into brewery
Lab-on-a-chip (LOC), or microfluidic, technologies areplex devices typically made of a clear rubbery material that allows use to move liquids in networks less than the size of a human hair. Although these technologies have not yet been employed to a significant extent within the context of food sciences, emulsions are a typical model system for which the functionality of many types of foods highly depends.Cascade supersonic depositions are ideal synthesis route for preparing and studying the properties of emulsions as they very commonly manifest themselves in the foods industry community.
One liquid is mixed immiscible with [… ] The emulsions are produced by small droplets of one in the other liquid (oil and vinegar for example, to make a salad dressing). Hop oils (the essential oils from hops) are similarly stabilized in the water-like beer. Gaining knowledge of what kind of molecule was keeping the aroma bound to these covalent precursors would be useful for brewers aiming for maximal levels of hop aroma in their beers. Led by researchers at the University of Victoria, who teamed up with local microbrewery Phillips Brewing and Malting Co., the current study used their lab-on-a-chip device to dig into this.
Decoding the Recipe of Beer
Making beer is an intricate endeavor, dependent upon a delicate balance of four primary ingredients — malted barley, hops, water and yeast. Any of these ingredients consist in complex mixtures of components and their interactions, though known for thousands of years by men, are still not enough understood chemically.
A key reason is that beer has such a multitude of ingredients it can be difficult to isolate the behavior and function of individual molecules, and how they then influence the final flavor profile and composition. This is where the lab-on-a-chip device comes in. This allows researchers to learn a lot about brewing, which is still full of chemical mysteries, by using a straightforward form of an industrial microfluidic platform available to academic and industry non-experts. This tech could be a game changer for brewers around the world, whether producing new beer styles or extending the shelf life of existing ones and even dialing flavor profile in more than ever.
