Brewery and Food Flavours - INBR

The INBr team (1 Acad., 1 post-doc, 7 PhD theses, 3 technicians, 1 CLC) is active in the brewing field on four long-term research topics : 

1) improvement of flavor and colloidal stability through aging (cardboard, Madeira, ribes ... off-flavors), including the new NABLABs segment,

2) fate of polyphenols through processing,

3) discovery of new molecules in hop and spices, mainly polyfunctional thiols (free forms and their cysteinyl/glutathionyl precursors), resveratrol and enzymes (hop creep),

4) climatic/environmental (local ingredients/sorghum, green malt, regenerable filtration, ..) and health (perillaldehyde, furan-2(5H)one, ..) issues in the brewing industry.

These topics are investigated in beer, but also in some other fermented foods including Belgian wines, chocolates (from Criollo and ancestral cocoa beans), ciders ... Yeast selection for specific productions of flavors is also conducted with industrial partners. With the aim of having efficient methods for analysing aroma and their precursors, part of our job is devoted to the improvement of their extraction from different matrixes before GC-MS/PFPD/O or UPLC-MS/UV injections.

Our INBr CRQMB service platform (Centre de référence pour la qualité des malts et de la bière) is dedicated to malt/hop/beer chemical and sensorial analyses, consulting, new product design (microbrewery), and practical courses for industrials. We are also responsible for the Advanced Master in Brewing Engineering diploma (AGRO, 60 ECTS).