SINC

Researchers at the University of Seville have developed a technique based on chemical patterns for identifying the country of origin of beer.

Beer snobs wishing to know the provenance of their favorite European pilsners and lagers are in luck: Scientists have developed a new chemical test that can tell you where the brew originated.

Though such tests have long existed for products such as wine, spirits, coffee and tea, one hasn't been developed yet for beer, noted Jose Marcos Jurado, a chemist at the University of Seville in Spain.

"That surprised me because beer is one of the most consumed beverages in the world," he told me in an email today. 

Jurado and his colleagues developed a test that identifies chemicals in the beer that relate to various raw materials such as water and hops. A set of algorithms recognize data patterns in those chemicals that point to the beer's country of origin.

In experiments, the researchers tested their model on pilsners and lagers — blonde-colored beers — from Germany, Spain, and Portugal and found it to be accurate 99.3 percent of the time.

Some brewers manipulate the chemicals in their water to produce the style of beer they want. For example, brewers of pale ales around the world often try to match the salt content of the water in England's Burton-upon-Trent where the style was perfected.

Jurado noted that additions of salts could trick the part of the test designed to detect iron, potassium and phosphate, but the test also measures chemicals such as polyphenols from hops, a plant that gives beer its characteristic bitterness and aromas.

"It is always possible to fake a beverage," he noted, "and this model can fail." Though, he added, the addition of more chemical parameters to the test could make it even more tamper-proof.

And there might even be reason for doing so. There is a growing movement in Europe to put beers on a list of products with Protected Geographical Indication. This test could be used to certify the authenticity of listed beers.

"This practice [of chemical fingerprinting] is much extended in products like wine and its influence in marketing is well known," Jurado said. "We have given a first step in that direction, trying to point out the importance of these kinds of studies in products like beer."

Findings are published in the journal Food Control.

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Alaskan Brewing Co.

Alaskan Brewing Co. received a nearly half-million dollar grant to install a steam boiler fired entirely by spent grain.

The U.S. government is giving a nearly half-million dollar grant to a beer maker in Alaska that aims to install a first-of-its-kind boiler that is fueled entirely by spent grain.

All brewers are confronted with mountains of spent grains — mostly barley. Many get rid of the waste by routing it to farmers for animal feed, a noble service that can help grow a steak to accompany your fine ale.

For the Alaskan Brewing Co. in Juneau, this has involved an added step, since the closest market for its grains is a long-distance, boat-ride away in Seattle.

To keep the grains from decomposing during transport, the brewery first dries them in a machine that is heated by a biomass burner that uses about 50 percent of the spent grain as a fuel source.

Now, with the help of the $458,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Energy for America program, the brewery is installing a machine that will use the dried grain to power a biomass steam boiler.

"The new boiler will eliminate the brewery's use of oil in the grain drying process and displace more than half of the fuel needed to create process steam," the company said in an emailed statement.

Brewers use process team, for example, to boil the sugary water called wort, created when sugars are extracted from the grains, a key step in brewing beer.

The boiler will cut the brewery's overall energy use from oil, and corresponding carbon emissions, by more than 70 percent, according to Alaskan Brewing Co.

The system also eliminates the need to ship the grain south to cattle around Seattle, Ashley Johnston, a company spokeswoman, told me.

The grant is one of eight announced Thursday by the agriculture department, all of which are aimed at helping rural businesses to lower energy costs so that they can stay competitive and, potentially, hire more workers.

In total, 52 projects received over $31 million in grants and loan note guarantees through the program this year. The grants can finance up to 25 percent of a project's cost.

More on beer, energy and the environment:

• Beer brews up higher German beer prices
• The why of yeast's buzz-giving ways
• Yeast is a rising biofuel booster
• A cleaner environment … through beer
• Inventor turns brewery waste into natural gas
• Beer lovers told to beware of global warming
• Beer maker sees green from start to finish