Spotlight on beer – International Beer Day

The first Friday of every August is international beer day. An excellent moment to put the spotlight on 2 quite different quality aspects of beer: gluten content and beer spoilage.

Great tasting beers – also without gluten

Beer has been a difficult product if you have to avoid gluten or choose to do so. Since most beers are brewed from barley and wheat, beer contains gluten. To be more specific, beer contains peptide fragments that are capable to trigger adverse reactions in susceptible consumers. Beer is a fermented product and the (gluten) proteins will get hydrolyzed. The peptide fragments are no longer detectable with most ELISA based gluten detection methods.

A competitive ELISA, based on the R5 antibody, will allow you to detect peptide fragments. The RIDASCREEN Gliadin competitive ELISA has obtained AOAC Official First Action approval (AOAC-OMA 2015.05) and will help you to ensure a gluten free beer.

This is how the method works:

https://youtu.be/HQTGEiDFEe8

Basically, you have two options to brew a gluten free beer. One option is to use cereals for brewing without gluten. Rice, sorghum, buckwheat or corn are just a few alternative cereals you might choose. But these cereals give beer a somewhat different taste than wheat and barley brewed beers.

The second option is to remove the gluten peptides during the brewing process by using an enzyme. For both options the RIDASCREEN Gliadin competitive ELISA is the best choice to assure the beer is gluten free.

To give you an example of great tasting gluten free beers: Take a look at this brewery and find out how they ensure their beer is gluten free.

Don’t let a good beer get bad – beer spoilage

From a microbiological perspective beer is a stable product. The ethanol, low pH, CO2 and the hop compounds make beer a rather hostile environment for most bacteria and yeasts. Still some bacteria manage to grow in beer and they may cause beer spoilage. Lactobacilli, Pediococci and various yeasts are notorious for spoiling beer. The new GEN-IAL testkit allows you to get an extensive microbiological profile of your beer. You can detect 20 different bacteria and yeasts in 1 single PCR run. Would you like to learn how? Take a look here and find out more about probably the most extensive portfolio of beverage spoilage testkits.

Thirsty for more information? Contact us and enjoy international beer day.

Contact R-Biopharm XXZZXX