Give me a beer and I’ll tell you where comes.
the study is published in the magazine ‘ Food Control ’.
-Researchers from the University of Seville have developed a technique to recognize the geographical origin of the beers based on chemical patterns. The content of iron, potassium, phosphates and polyphenols is decisive. Thanks to the model have been able to distinguish German, Spanish and Portuguese beer with 99% effectiveness
Spain, 2011-December differentiation of beer according to its origin can be done using parameters related to its raw materials, such as water (metals and anions) and the type of hops (content in polyphenols) ”, explains SINC José Marcos jury, chemist at the University of Seville and director of a research to know the origin of the beers.
The first step is to select the variables most distinctive beers, such as the amount of strontium, aluminium, iron, for example through a statistical test. Then applies another mathematical analysis to eliminate those parameters that do not discriminate well the origin of beverages, and the result is a model based on the content of iron, potassium, phosphorus, phosphates and polyphenols.
Differences may seem subtle, but the model is capable of finding the relationship between these chemical descriptors and the geographical origin of the beers ”, says jury. The last step is to implement support vector machines ”, a set of algorithms that recognize patterns in the data.
Researchers have applied this technique to differentiate beers produced in Germany, Spain or Portugal and have managed to know which country they come from with 99.3% of effectiveness, according to the results published in the journal Food Control.
the technique allows to distinguish geographical beer.
this type of study can be extended to other geographical areas, but must take into account that to expand the number of classes obtaining an adequate model complicated ”, clarifies jury. differentiation must address whereas large areas and studying a posteriori possible groupings that appear less large areas ”.
important identification for the food industry
authenticity or geographical identification studies are very important ” in the food industry, according to the investigator, post which provide differentiating characteristics of the products, which can affect your marketing ”.
Some 20 brands of beer, German, British and Czech are currently registered in the database (Database Of Origin and Registration) DOOR of the European Commission on Agriculture and Rural Development, which includes products with a protected geographical indication. Studies such as the one presented offer innovative techniques to confirm the geographic origin of these drinks.
Bibliographic reference:
Angela Alcázar, José Marcos Jurado, Ana Palacios-Morillo, Fernando Pablos, MarÃa Jesús MartÃn. Recognition of the geographical origin of beer based on support vector machines applied to chemical descriptors ”. Food Control 23: 258-262, 2012 (but now available on line). DOI:10.1016/j.foodcont.2011.07.029.
