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Project

Ontwikkeling van een “high-throughput” screeningmethode om de enzymproductie te optimaliseren voor een ideale mout met het oog op het verbeteren van de procesefficiëntie en de smaakstabiliteit van bier

This 4-year research project is focused on the application of a proteomics approach to elucidate the regulation of biological systems during all stages of beer production. As of today, it is quite challenging for different maltsters to produce high quality malts. The malting regime for a high-quality barley malt must account for several conflicting demands. Brewers do require a malt exhibiting a strong cytolysis of the starchy endosperm cells to enable access for the amylases during mashing and to guarantee a high lauter performance during wort separation. However, with a strong cytolysis also comes an excessive breakdown of the storage proteins. While a certain degree of proteolysis is necessary for optimal fermentation (since Saccharomyces cerevisiae lacks extracellular proteases), extended proteolysis is detrimental to the beer foam-and flavor stability quality characteristics. Thus, the maltster must find a balance between cytolysis and proteolysis to produce a malt that rises to the quality demanded for modern brewing. The major challenge to achieve this balance lies in the unpredictability of the ideal malting conditions as they are influenced by biological and environmental factors. Among these factors, the barley variety has been reported to strongly influence the malting outcome. This therefore warrants the development of a suitable screening platform to enable individual fine turning of the various malting parameters to individual barley varieties as a way of positively influencing endosperm enzymatic modification in view of improving process efficiency and beer flavor stability. This project aims to develop such a method by application of state-of-the-art proteomics and enzymology methods. The project will be conducted in close partnership with Prof. IIse Van de Voorde, while the malting trials will be conducted at the new pilot scale malting facility under the supervision of Dr. Gert de Rouck. Most of this work will be done at the Laboratory of Enzyme, Fermentation and Brewing Technology (EFBT).

Date:4 Oct 2021 →  Today
Keywords:Proteomics, Malting quality, Enzymatic activity, High-throughput screening, Flavour stability
Disciplines:Proteomics, Bioprocessing, bioproduction and bioproducts
Project type:PhD project