Beer and Probiotics

Are you getting enough probiotics in your diet? There's no governmentally recommended nutritional minimum, but the suggestion by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics is to have a minimum of 1 billion probiotics per serving in order to attain the maximum health benefits.

That's a lot of microbes!

Fortunately, a team of scientists from the National University of Singapore has come up with a tasty, if potentially addictive, way for you to hit your healthy bacterial benchmarks: beer! The researchers fermented a probiotic brewski that packs an optimal dosage of bacteria for your gut.

“The health benefits of probiotics are well known. While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics. Developing sufficient counts of live probiotics in beer is a challenging feat as beers contain hop acids that prevent the growth and survival of probiotics.” said Chan Mei Zhi Alcine from the Food Science and Technology Program at NUS.

The idea that certain ingested microorganisms may be a boon to our gastro-intestinal systems is a fairly new one. It was the Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff who first developed the thesis based upon his study of long-lived yogurt-eating Bulgarian peasants, back in 1907.

Not every probiotic bacterium offers the same bang for the bug. Research has shown a variety of different beneficial effects may be expected, depending upon the strain of bacteria. These include alleviation of infectious diarrhea, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, gut transit, irritable boel syndrom, abdominal pain and bloating, ulcerative colitis, Helicobacter pylori infection, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and necrotizing enterocolitis. The NUS brewmeisters used the strain Lactobacillus paracasei L26, which was first isolated from human intestines and has the ability to neutralize toxins and viruses, as well as regulate the immune system.

“For this beer, we used a lactic acid bacterium as a probiotic micro-organism. It will utilize sugars present in the wort to produce sour-tasting lactic acid, resulting in a beer with sharp and tart flavors. The final product, which takes around a month to brew, has an alcohol content of about 3.5 per cent,” Chan said.

The probiotic brew rides atop a new wave of interest in both craft beer and gut flora. Although side effects of probiotics are uncommon, it is worth noting that some people get flatulence and minor stomach discomfort when they first begin using them. Certainly the beer is not going to help with either of these.