Elsevier

Food Bioscience

Volume 39, February 2021, 100814
Food Bioscience

The development of a broccoli supplemented beer allows obtaining a valuable dietary source of sulforaphane

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fbio.2020.100814Get rights and content

Abstract

Beer is a popular fermented beverage made, basically, by water, malted cereals, yeasts, and hops. However, the actual market demands innovative beers with new nutritional and organoleptic properties, achieved, for instance, by the addition of functional ingredients. In this hallmark, the objective of this work was to elaborate a new beer enriched with broccoli florets as a source of bioactive compounds, potentially contributing to human health. As a result, the newly developed broccoli-supplemented beverage exhibited high concentrations of the bioactive isothiocyanates as sulforaphane (SFN) (18.85 μmol/L), while the inactive glucosinolate precursor (glucoraphanin (GR) was not detected. In addition, during the 150 days storage, SFN was almost stable, just evidencing a slight but significant decrease, reaching a final concentration of 0.80 μmol/L. Besides, the alternative developed beer showed an acceptable sensorial profile. Thus, the present work describes the design and development of a new broccoli-supplemented beer that would constitute a valuable dietary source of health promoting SFN.

Introduction

Beer is one of the most widely consumed beverage, mainly constituted by water, malted cereals, yeasts, and hops (Gresser, 2009, pp. 359–397). Thus, combining different factors allows designing and producing a wide diversity of beer types, like Ale or Lager (Papazian, 2009, pp. 41–74). According to data available from the Spanish Beer Socio-economic sector, the industrial production of beer has raised through the last ten years to reach almost 38 x 106 hl per year -(STATISTA, 2020). These beverages usually display a wide diversity of colors and organoleptic characteristics, mainly due to the ingredients used for the distinct beers and the content of compounds produced during the fermentation process (Albaladejo et al., 2017; Kyselová & Brányik, 2015, pp. 477–500; Vera et al., 2011). According to the nutritional and non-nutritional composition of beer ingredients, bioactive nutrients (vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and amino acids, among others) and non-nutrients (mainly phenolic compounds), this beverage could be considered on its potential health benefits, as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects (Humia et al., 2019; Md Salim et al., 2019).

The referred increase of beer production is a result of the market demand, which nowadays is favored by the wide range of beers available, being relevant the new craft beers that has increased the production and consumption in countries like Italy, Spain, France or Mexico (Carvalho et al., 2018). In this aspect, the market demands more and more variety and quality, as well as healthier products that would contribute to human wellbeing. Thus, the nutritional and organoleptic quality depends on an array of factors including diverse manufacturing conditions (Caporale & Monteleone, 2004), the yeast strains employed and the characteristics of the fermentation process (Capece et al., 2018), the type of cereals or seeds, and the ethanol grade (Bellut et al., 2019). Besides these factors, directly and closely related to beer quality, the use of new ingredients, conferring to beer distinguishing characteristics, has prompted to evaluate the possibility of including in the beer manufacturing process functional ingredients that could provide valuable biological activities (Humia et al., 2020).

In relation to the use of functional (health-promoting) ingredients for the development of new types of craft beers, broccoli (Brassica oleracea) is an interesting source of both nutritional (vitamins and minerals) and non-nutritional (phenolic compounds, glucosinolates (GLS), and isothiocyanates (ITC)) bioactive compounds (Ramirez et al., 2020). Indeed, this brassica-food has been successfully used in the development of functional products as an ingredient donor of bioactive compounds (Alvarez-Jubete et al., 2014; Dominguez-Perles et al. 2011, Dominguez-Perles et al. 2012; Totušek et al., 2011). Regarding this fact, diverse health benefits have been associated to bioactive compounds present in this plant-based food, but the radical scavenging activities of different compounds is depended on their structure (Dimitrić Marković et al., 2017; Koh et al., 2009; López-Chillón et al., 2018). The most characteristic class of phytochemicals in brassica-foods are sulfur-containing compounds, known as glucosinolates (Abellán et al., 2019). However, these are non-bioactive compounds, as they need to be metabolized into the bioactive ITCs by the enzyme myrosinase. This enzyme is released from the vacuoles, present in plant cells, after damages that affect the integrity of the cell membrane (Baenas et al., 2017). Glucoraphanin (GR) and sulforaphane (SFN) are the most abundant GLS and ITC in broccoli, respectively (Dominguez-Perles et al., 2011), being characterized by a range of biological activities that could enhance the healthy attributions of beer (Bertuzzi et al., 2020).

Due to these antecedents, the present study deals with the design of a novel craft beer using broccoli as an ingredient, source of bioactive compounds. As far as we are aware, this is the first report were a beer is enriched with broccoli and characterized on the content of SFN, thus obtaining a new product as a valuable source of bioactive compounds.

Section snippets

Plant material

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L var. Italica, cv ‘Parthenon’) heads were obtained from a commercial grower in Murcia (Spain). The inflorescences (marketable-mature heads) were transported immediately to the laboratory, under cold conditions, after harvest.

Beers brewing

Preliminary analyses lead to select 10% addition of broccoli to beer (w/v) as the best ratio for the study, due to its limited impact on the organoleptic properties of beer, observed by a trained panel (see below).

After defining the weight of

Changes in the quality parameters of the beer due to the supplementation with broccoli heads

Taking into account the previous results obtained by the testing panel, a beer similar to the typical pale ale was obtained, but with a more malty and caramelized character. The beer had 20 IBUs (International Bitterness Unit) and the color had 20 EBC (European Brewery Convention), so the beer was within the typical range of this style, as well as in its alcoholic graduation, 5.5% ABV (Alcohol By Volume).

Broccoli beer showed statistically significant differences on pH, acidity, alcohol content,

Conclusions

Broccoli beer can be an alternative for nutritional beers development, as their organoleptic properties could be well accepted and attractive for the consumers. This work showed the conversion of GRA into its functional isothiocyanate, SFN, in a broccoli-supplemented novel beer, as well as the SFN behavior during the different elaboration steps of the beer. The assessment of SFN stability during storage, the beer matrix allowed to stability a valuable SFN content in the beer, during 150 days of

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ángel Abellán: Investigation. Raúl Domínguez-Perles: Validation, Writing - original draft. María José Giménez: Investigation, Writing - original draft. Pedro J. Zapata: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision. Daniel Valero: Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Cristina García-Viguera: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

No conflict of Interest.

Acknowledgements

AAV was supported by INBAUTEK SL enterprise (Murcia, Spain). Research Group “Food Quality and Safety” of University Miguel Hernández for technical support in sensory evaluation.

References (42)

  • B.V. Humia et al.

    Physicochemical and sensory profile of Beauregard sweet potato beer

    Food Chemistry

    (2020)
  • E. Koh et al.

    Content of ascorbic acid, quercetin, kaempferol and total phenolics in commercial broccoli

    Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

    (2009)
  • L. Ludikhuyze et al.

    The activity of myrosinase from broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. cv. Italica): Ifluence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors

    Journal of Food Protection

    (2000)
  • M. Serra Colomer et al.

    The raise of Brettanomyces yeast species for beer production

    Current Opinion in Biotechnology

    (2019)
  • L. Wei et al.

    Melatonin treatment affects the glucoraphanin-sulforaphane system in postharvest fresh-cut broccoli (Brassica oleracea L.)

    Food Chemistry

    (2020)
  • P.J. Zapata et al.

    Phenolic, volatile, and sensory profiles of beer enriched by macerating quince fruits

    LWT

    (2019)
  • S. Zhang et al.

    Sulforaphane in broccoli-based matrices: Effects of heat treatment and addition of oil

    LWT-Food Science and Technology

    (2020)
  • Á. Abellán et al.

    Sorting out the value of cruciferous sprouts as sources of bioactive compounds for nutrition and health

    Nutrients

    (2019)
  • M. Albaladejo et al.

    Discriminant analysis classification of different types of beer according to their colour characteristics

    Journal of Physics: Conference Series

    (2017)
  • A. Albaser et al.

    Discovery of a bacterial glycoside hydrolase family 3 (GH3) β-glucosidase with myrosinase activity from a Citrobacter strain isolated from soil

    Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

    (2016)
  • L. Alvarez-Jubete et al.

    Development of a novel functional soup rich in bioactive sulforaphane using broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. ssp. italica) florets and byproducts

    Food and Bioprocess Technology

    (2014)
  • Cited by (7)

    • Broccoli products supplemented beers provide a sustainable source of dietary sulforaphane

      2023, Food Bioscience
      Citation Excerpt :

      Beers were supplemented with 1% sprouts and 0.1% broccoli by-product powder (both weight/volume). These supplementation rates provided no significantly different GSL concentrations in beer (12.98 mg/L, on average (Abellán et al., 2021)). After 3 days of maceration at 10 °C, the plant material was removed with a mesh filter.

    • Bioactive compounds, antioxidant activities and flavor volatiles of lager beer produced by supplementing six jujube cultivars as adjuncts

      2022, Food Bioscience
      Citation Excerpt :

      The highest alcohol content of 5.1% (v/v) was found in beer fermented by adding MZ, whereas the control and BZ supplementation showed the lowest alcohol content of 4.2% (v/v). Color is an important indicator of beers, which provides the information about beer style and determines consumers’ preference (Abellán et al., 2021). The effects of jujube supplementation on color attributes of beers were evaluated by color parameters (L*, a*, b*, and EBC) and total color difference (ΔE).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text