Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EJDFoodSci (Food science, technology and engineering - European Joint Doctorate training towardsknowledge, skills and mobility)

Teaser

The objective of the project is to train 8 early stage researches (ESR) in an innovative, international PhD program, to become top-class specialists and professional leaders, highly demanded in the job market.General characteristic of the trainingTraining objectives will be...

Summary

The objective of the project is to train 8 early stage researches (ESR) in an innovative, international PhD program, to become top-class specialists and professional leaders, highly demanded in the job market.
General characteristic of the training
Training objectives will be achieved by participation in:
-specialized courses,
-an international team, using facilities of multi-institutional consortium;
-academic and industrial internships.
·      What is the problem/issue being addressed?
A more interactive collaboration between maltsters and brewers is necessary because the two processes is inextricably linked. Reducing heat inputs during malting and brewing will reduce the overall production cost and CO2 emissions by decreased energy use. Reducing the oxygen and heat impact during malting and brewing will result in an increased quality of products by reducing oxidation reactions and negative reactions due to heat load. 
·      Why is it important for society?
Developing new approaches in the malting and brewing industry, by:
- either introducing innovative raw materials (abundant in the parts of the world where barley is less abundant),
- reducing the energy uptake, thus reducing the CO2 emissions,
- reducing heat load on the malts,
- reducing oxygen impact on the malts,
will allow for obtaining a better quality malt, improved flavour stability of beers, and a more environmental friendly technology.
The brewers, consumers, and general society may benefit from the above innovations.

The overall objective of this project is to reduce the environmental impacts of malt and beer production by reducing energy inputs; it also seeks to improve the flavour quality and stability of beers through the application of state of the art, interdisciplinary scientific knowledge to the novel malting and brewing production processes we propose to develop. To remain competitive on the international market, improvements in the shelf-life of beer (currently limited by flavour stability) must be delivered.

Work performed

Training phase
All ESRs participated in 200h of high quality training offered by 7 research units. The ESRs met supervisors from 6 top class universities providing research and training for the brewing sector. They also met representatives from 4 non-academic partners of the consortium: Carlsberg, Boortmalt, VLB Berlin and FlavorActiv.
Trainings took place at the following institutions:
1. University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland
2. Versuchs und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin, Germany
3. Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
4. University of Copenhagen, Denmark
5. University of Ghent, Belgium
6. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
7. University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
The project has a very good coverage in the press and social media. It has also been promoted on many occasions by the project coordinator (presentations during seminars, trainings, etc.) The project runs a facebook and twitter accounts. The facebook profile has over 2000 followers and the twitter account nearly 100. The ESRs have established their own facebook pages and/or twitter accounts devoted only to the activities in EJDFoodSci project.

Dissemination activities
- 13th trends in brewing conference, April 2018 (6 presentations)
School Of Biosciences And School Of Veterinary Medicine Postgraduate Symposium, University Of Nottingham, April 2018 (1 presentation)
19th School Of Fermentation Technology 2018 (sft), May 2018 (7 presentations, 2 chapters in book, 3 posters)
American Society Of Brewing Chemists and Master Brewers \'Brewing Summit\' conference, August 2018 (1 poster)

Research
Innovative raw materials
Several cereals, pseudocereals and legumes have been theoretically tested on their suitability for research. As most of these grains have been investigated before, it was stated that trials on lentils would be done in the means of malting and brewing. The malting process of lentils was stated by several trials, followed by small scale mashing trials. An addition of technical enzymes was stated for the use of 100 % lentil malt. Nevertheless, results were sufficient and further research was done on the topic. Lentil malt was then used as a 10 and 20% adjunct to barley malt without technical enzymes.
Control of the oxidation processes /metal ions induced/
The research has focussed on evaluating the effects of malt roasting on the metal-binding capacity of malts with an emphasis on the oxidative stability of wort and beer. Spent grains’ capacity to bind iron and copper during mashing were evaluated. Sweet worts made from malts with different degrees of roasting were screened and the respective oxidative stabilities were sweet worts made from malts with different degrees of roasting and respective oxidative stabilities were determined. The results were presented on a poster at Trends in Brewing 2018 and orally at School of Fermentation Technology 2018.
Reduction of water and energy use during malting
Fundamental procedures for the future work and experiments with green malt were developed. The developed procedure to separate the germinated malt into husk/rootlet and endosperm fraction, with only the endosperm-rich fraction being used for conventional mashing represents an innovative solution to produce wort from unkilned malt. Through optimization of the separation process, hot water extract values in the region of 71% d.b. were achieved. Lipoxygenase activity and nonenal potential were measured following treatment under varying conditions of pH, temperature and with/without oxygen. The impacts of these treatments on key diastatic enzymes was likewise measured.

Final results

Improvement of flavour stability of beer
Investigation on the time to kill the embryo in combination with faster drying was not successful at the lab-scale. The main focus of the research is to reduce the heat load during kilning. In order to evaluate the influence of malt on beer flavour stability, the method for determination of aldehydes (beer staling markers) in barley and different samples from malting is required. The research was performed focused on the method applied for quantitative determination of aldehydes, based on Head-Space Solid Phase Mass Extraction Gas Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) with on-fiber derivatization of carbonyl compounds.
Metal ions in brewing
A collaboration with the department of chemistry at Univ. Copenhagen is established in order to investigate the actual species of copper and iron in sweet wort. The first step will be determining the capacity of sweet worts to bind copper(II). A standard method will be established, which can be used throughout the brewing process. Parts of this follow-up will be performed at UA Krakow.
Green malt
Monitoring and further investigation into the scalability of the developed procedures as well as the biochemical differences of germinated and kilned malt will be analyzed.
Optimization of fermentation processes
The analytical method based on liquid chromatography electrospray ionization mass spectrometry for targeted yeast proteomics is currently being developed, optimized and validated. In this context, a literature search and selection of biomarker proteins was performed to be used on our LC-ESI-MS research work. The sample preparation and LC-ESI-MS work will be performed in collaboration L-ProBE, LM-UGent, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University. 

Website & more info

More info: http://www.ejdfoodsci.eu.