Anybody who has ever tipped a pint of Irish stout with a Guinness aficionado knows how sacred beer foam can be.
Purists claim the perfect pint of Guinness comes from a two-part pour that takes exactly 119.5 seconds, leaving a creamy head floating atop a pool of black liquid.
Too much or too little head is tantamount to an overcooked steak served up in a five-star restaurant. The $6 pint will be sent back from whence it came.
It is that type of passion over beer foam that has prompted the Canadian Grain Commission to study what proteins participate in the production of the bubbly froth.
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“People generally have quite strong opinions of beer foam,” said Marta Izydorczyk, the commission’s program manager for barley research.
It is even the subject of intense debate for those who prefer to drink beer from the can or bottle rather than the glass.
“Even those who are clearly not paying attention to it, they are ready to judge,” she said.
The commission and researchers at the University of Manitoba are trying to isolate which proteins provide beer with its sought-after head. To do this, they will use mass spectrometry, an analytical technique employed by medical researchers to identify proteins responsible for diseases and viruses.
Izydorczyk said the researchers will look for proteins that contribute to the quantity of foam, how creamy it appears, whether it contains large or small bubbles and how well it clings to the side of the glass after a gulp of ale.
Preferences for each characteristic vary from person to person, depending on ethnicity and gender.
“Women would prefer no clinging to the side of the glass whereas men prefer more,” Izydorczyk said.
“Apparently women associate this with kind of a dirty appearance.”
While there may be no ideal to strive for, by examining existing two-row and six-row barley varieties, researchers will be able to determine which proteins they contain so breeders can create future lines that will meet the needs of specific demographics.
They will also be able to identify undesirable proteins, such as those that cause beer haze. Most brewers are striving to create a crystal clear beer rather than a murky, cloudy concoction.
Izydorczyk said long-held conventional wisdom dictates that barley breeders should be developing lines with lower protein levels to compete with Australian and European barley in world markets.
“That concerns us,” she said.
She would like to see a more reasoned approach where detrimental proteins are reduced while beneficial ones are maintained or increased.
In the next year or two, Izydorczyk hopes to formulate a set of recommendations on how the industry can use the proteins she has identified.
“If we can isolate and identify all proteins participating in foam production and haze production then we can manipulate them, either through malting barley breeding programs or in the processing stage.”
