Oh the irony! Research on beer done by Spaniards.
As the glacially-old joke used to go:
Why is Spanish beer like making love in a canoe?
They're both f**king close to water….
Anyhow, scientists in Seville have managed to develop a testing system to discover the origins of beers tested. German, Portuguese and Spanish beers can be identified by their chemical makeup (to 99% accuracy). It is, however, not as accurate as the 100% effective method of READING THE LABEL!
American beers presumably can't be tested, due to their utter absence of any defining characteristic….
Researchers at the University of Seville (Spain) have developed a technique based on chemical patterns for identifying the country of origin of beer. The content of iron, potassium, phosphates and polyphenols is found to be determining components. German, Spanish and Portuguese beers have been detected with 99% accuracy thanks to the model.
"Beers can be differentiated from one another according to their country of origin by using parameters linked to raw materials, such as water (metals and anions) and the type of hop (polyphenol content)," tells SINC José Marcos Jurado, chemist at the University of Seville and director of the study that aims to find out the country of origin of beers.
Using a statistical test, the first step is to select the variables that differentiate beers the most. These include the amount of aluminium, iron or strontium for example. A mathematic analysis is then applied to do away with the parameters that fail to describe the origin of beers very well. The result is a model based on the content of iron, potassium, phosphorous, phosphates and polyphenols.
The researchers have used this technique to differentiate between beers produced in Germany, Spain or Portugal and they have managed to identify the country of origin with 99.3% accuracy, according to the results published in the Food Control journal.
Twenty brands of German, Czech and British beer are registered on the DOOR database (Database of Origin and Registration) of the European Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development, which brings together Protected Geographical Indication products. Studies like this one can offer innovative techniques for confirming the country of origin of such drinks.
Source: FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
