Thanks to a study by the University of Seville echoed by the SINC agency, there is already a technique to recognize the geographical origin of beers based on chemical patterns . The key is to measure the content of iron, potassium, phosphorus, phosphates and polyphenols. With these measurements, scientists have been able to distinguish German, Spanish and Portuguese beers with 99.3% efficiency .
As José Marcos Jurado, co-author of the work, explains, "the differences may seem very subtle, but the model is capable of finding the relationship between these chemical descriptors and the geographical origin of the beers," says Jurado. The last step is to apply "support vector machines", a set of algorithms that recognize patterns in the data.
Studies of authenticity or geographic identification are "very important" in the food industry, according to the researcher. Currently about 20 German, Czech and British beer brands are registered in the DOOR database ( Database Of Origin and Registration ) of the European Commission for Agriculture and Rural Development, where products with Protected Geographical Indication are collected. Studies such as the one presented offer innovative techniques to confirm the geographical origin of these drinks.
