AN antioxidant in barley could keep beer tasting fresh.
When researchers at the University of California, Davis, mimicked beer
storage by keeping it at 50 °C for 90 days, levels of acetaldehyde, an
oxidation product associated with a stale taste, increased nearly tenfold.
In a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food
Chemistry, they say that adding the antioxidant
2″-O-glycosylisovitexin (GIV) to fresh beer reduced that figure
by 60 per cent. GIV has no taste and is abundant in barley leaves.
