At bar, few sights are more deflating than a beer bottle overflowing with foam.
This process of over foaming, also known as Gushing, causes when barley
grains in infected by fungi in beer's malt base. Gushing is vigorous
over foaming of carbonated drinks without shaking.
 |
| No more Foamy Beer |
The
microorganisms attach itself onto barley with surface proteins known as
hydrophobins. Hydrophobins are basically a surface active molecules
that cause gushing of beer. At a time of brewing process, these
hydrophobins are capable to attract carbon dioxide molecules produced by
the
mashed barley as it ferments, which results the beer far too bubbly.
However, Brewers always try to reduce the overfoaming effect by adding hops extract. It is nothing but a anti-foaming agent that binds to the proteins first.
Food Researcher Zahra from Belgium, found a technique to overcome this over foaming problem in beer with the help of magnets. They
take a malt fill with hops extract and applied a magnetic field to it,
what happens, the magnets dispersed the anti-foaming agent into smaller particles.
Hence,
the specific surface areas of the particles are increased and can
interact with larger numbers of hydrophobins. It will lead to block
carbon dioxide and decreasing gushing (overfoaming). The whole team
published this research in Journal of Food Engineering.
In future, they are going to explore whether magnetic fields alone could reduce foaming on an industrial scale.
Source: ScienceMag, Sciencedirect
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