Now, there’s no chance of you gulping down a stale mug of beer. Thanks to this app., there is a way of finding out if your beer is still drinkable or not.
Chemists at the Complutense University of Madrid have developed a method that helps in ascertaining the freshness of the beer.
As bear ‘ages’ beyond its drinkable age, by default, it welcomes a compound viz. furfural. And the method developed by the chemists uses a polymer sensor that changes its colour on detecting the presence of furfural.
Also, the sensor can be controlled by a smartphone because of the smartphone app developed by the team.
Researchers informed that until now, brewers used methods based on chromatography techniques to detect the presence of compound indicating the staleness of beer.
But Elena-Benito-Pena, a researcher, said these plans weren’t profitable. Also, they consumed a lot of time as well.
Whereas, the method developed by chemists at University uses polymer sensors which are programmed to change their color from yellow to pink, on detecting furfural in the beer.
Elena-Benito further informed that the intensity of the color is directly proportional to the amount of presence of furfural.
Meanwhile, the researchers have managed to creating an Android app which spells convenience for a lot of beer enthusiasts. The picture of the sensor disc is examined to determine the amount of the compound in beer.
To test the authenticity of this method, several samples from different brewing houses were tested by using both the methods i.e. chromatography techniques and polymer sensor. It is imperative to mention here that both the methods rendered same results.
With Polymer sensor technique being cheaper, time-effective and available for Android (iOS users will have to wait for a little), there’s no chance of you consuming a stale or ‘over-aged’ beer.
