Abstract:To address the ever-growing group of health-conscious consumers, more and more nutritional and health claims are being used on food products. Nevertheless, only very few food constituents, including plant sterols, have been appointed an approved health claim (European Commission and Food and Drugs Administration). Plant sterols are part of those limited lists of approved compounds for their cholesterol-lowering properties but have been praised for their anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic properties as well. Despite this indisputable reputation, direct quantitative data is still lacking for naturally present (conjugated) plant sterols in beverages. This study aimed to fill this gap by applying a validated extraction and UPLC-MS/MS detection method to a diverse range of everyday plant-based beverages. β-sitosterol-β-D-glucoside (BSSG) showed to be by far the most abundant sterol in all beverages studied, with concentrations up to 60-90 mg per 100 mL in plant-based milk alternatives and fresh fruit juices. Ergosterol (provitamin D 2 ) could be found in beers (0.8-6.1 µg per 100 mL, from the yeast) and occasionally in juices (17-29 µg per 100 mL). Overall, the results demonstrated that the concentrations of water-soluble sterol conjugates have been underestimated significantly and that specific plant-based beverages can be good, low-fat sources of these plant sterols.

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Gluten is the main family of storage proteins found in barley. During malting and brewing, some of the barley malt's proteinaceous material is hydrolysed into peptides or to amino acids. Most of the gluten proteins are removed with the spent grains and with hot‐ and cold‐breaks. However, some gluten proteins and especially gluten‐derived peptides can remain throughout the brewing process and will hamper the gluten‐free (≤20 ppm) status of the beer. In this work, three production batches (a, b and c) of 51 Belgian barley malt beers from 24 breweries were analysed with the sandwich (R7001) and competitive (R7021) Ridascreen gliadin R5‐ELISA to quantify gluten proteins and peptides. Although the majority of the beers contained low‐gluten protein concentrations of ≤20 ppm (a/45, b/47, c/48), only a minority were truly gluten‐free with ≤20 ppm gluten peptides (a/18, b/17, c/15). The grain bill had no influence on the measured gluten concentration, but the use of (combined) clarification techniques and presence of wheat malt in the grist was respectively a positive and negative influence. Ten beers, from four breweries, were gluten free in all analysed samples. These included two wheat beers, reflecting the importance of effective clarification in the management of gluten. These results explore the feasibility of the production of gluten‐free barley malt beers. Copyright © 2018 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling

Lentils, a popular foodstuff worldwide, are gaining more interest for their use in alternative diets. In addition, we are observing an ever-growing demand for new raw materials in the malting and brewing industry and an overall rising interest in a low-gluten lifestyle. Therefore, in this study, malt was produced from green lentils and used in both laboratory- and pilot-scale brewing trials. Malted lentils were used as 10% and 20% adjuncts at the laboratory scale, following the Congress mash procedure, and the most important parameters (e.g., filtration time, pH, color, extract, fermentability) of the wort and beer samples were analyzed with a special focus on the concentrations of metal ions (Mg2+, Ca2+, Zn2+, Fe) in wort. The production of beer with lentil malt as an adjunct was then scaled up to 1 hl, and several beer parameters were analyzed, including the gluten content and foam stability. The results showed that the gluten content was decreased by circa 35% and foam stability was enhanced by approximately 6% when adding 20% lentil malt. Furthermore, the use of lentil malt reduced the filtration time by up to 17%. A trained panel evaluated the sensorial qualities of the produced beers. Overall, the use of green lentil malt shows promising results for its potential use in brewing.