A friend of mine likes to call chilled beer as ‘child bear’ since he saw it outside a roadside food joint in some small city. He absolutely loves beer and adores the sound of the beer can popping.
So imagine how relieved beer lovers like him and other would be to find out that chemists in Madrid, Spain have made an app that will be able to tell if the beer is stale.
Chemists at the Complutense University of Madrid have come up with a method that will detect the freshness of beer.
They have created a polymer sensor that will change color upon detecting furfural, a compound that occurs in stale beer and gives it the characteristic stale flavour. And the best part is that the sensor can be controlled by a smartphone app.
Up until now, furfural was measured with chromatography techniques. Researcher Elena Benito-Peña says, “But these methods involve the use of expensive equipment and sample preparation is very time-consuming.”
The system consists of sensor discs that detect furfural and are made from polymers similar to the ones used to make contact lenses. Once in contact with furfural, they change color from yellow to pink, pink being the color for the most stale beer.
The mobile app from an Android smartphone then lets you take a picture of the disc and the degree of freshness can then be determined by the color change.
The results obtained using the polymer disc were comparable to the ones using conventional chromatography.
Benito-Peña adds, ” But it can also be used with other food products such as honey, milk, coffee, etc.”Â