Unlike many good wines, which gain with age, beer suffers over time, although this deterioration varies greatly depending on the type of this popular drink and its storage conditions.
The person responsible for the beer spoiling and acquiring a rancid taste is furfural , a chemical compound that arises with the aging of the product and is difficult to detect in the industrial manufacturing processes of the big brands.
In response to this problem, a team of chemists from the Complutense University of Madrid has created a simple and inexpensive method that measures whether beer is spoiled. The system consists of small yellow polymer sensors that turn pink when they come into contact with a beer in the presence of the dreaded furfural.
In addition, the researchers have developed a mobile application based on Android (they are already preparing the iOS version) that, based on a photo taken from the sensors, indicates the amount of furfural in the drink and, therefore, its freshness. .
Chemist Elena Benito-Peña, one of the coordinators of the research, has detailed the experiment to the Scientific Information and News Service (SINC): “We have incorporated into the sensor material an aniline derivative that reacts with furfural and originates a derivative of pink cyanine that allows us to identify the presence of the marker in the sample. The intensity of the color increases with the concentration of furfural in the beer and, therefore, with the time elapsed since its manufacture “.
The scientist explains that the project was born after a meeting with the Mahou-San Miguel brewing company in which the firm exposed its technical problems to detect furfural in the tanks of its factories, and stresses that “this low-cost method can be used with other foods like honey, milk, coffee … ”.
