sciencetech-blog

comments

It's every beer drinker's worst nightmare: You set your bottle down on a table and open it, only for the drink to foam up and come shooting out, drenching the table and most likely you as well.

But that nightmare might soon become a thing of the past thanks to an unlikely source: magnets.

Researchers have found that applying a magnetic field to an antifoaming agent, they can reduce the foaming effect to a huge degree - and it could bring the cost of beer down in future.

Belgian researchers have used magnets to make beer less foamy. Applying a magnetic field made antifoaming agents more effective. The field is applied when hops extract is added to beer's malt base. This prevents it from attracting too much CO2 - which causes foam

The research, led by Zahra Shokribousjein from the Centre for Food and Microbial Biology in Belgium, studied the effect of a bottle of beer overfoaming.

Known as gushing, it occurs when fungi infect the beer's malt base, latching on with surface proteins called hydrophobins, according to Science Magazine.

When the beer is being brewed, these hydrophobins attract carbon dioxide molecules, which make the beer bubbly.

To counteract the effects, brewers use hops extract, which is an antifoaming agent that binds to the proteins and prevents them attracting CO2.

However, the process is not wholly effective, and beer can still become overly bubbly or foamy in some instances.

The latest study though found that when a magnetic field was applied to malt, the hops extract was broken into smaller particles.

To apply the field, the researchers passed the liquid through a tube with a magnet wrapped around it.

They found that this increased the effectiveness of the antifoaming agent, prevent CO2 from binding with the hydrophobins.

In fact, the method was so effective that much lower amounts of hops extract were needed, reducing the cost of brewing the beer in the first place.

And the process, which takes only a minute, also made the beer taste less bitter.

The method was so effective that much lower amounts of hops extract (stock image of hops pictured) were needed, reducing the cost of brewing the beer in the first place. The method takes just one minute and could make beer cheaper - as less hops extract is needed to prevent the formation of foam

'The results indicate that when a magnetic field exerted on hop extract, this compound is dispersed more and smaller particles are formed,' the researchers write in their paper.

'Therefore, the specific surface areas of the particles are increased and interact with larger numbers of hydrophobins.'

The research, to be published in the January edition of the Journal of Food Engineering, took place at the Belgian Orval Bewerey.

And the next step will be to try and increase the scale of the method, to increase it to industrial-level production.