BARLEY AND MALT NETWORK

Members Area  

Member companies of BRi are invited to nominate a member for the raw materials barley network. There are now approximately 110 named individuals in this network. Nominees are closely involved in all aspects of the programme including direction of project work. They receive a full project report and will be invited to attend a two-day meeting once a year. This meeting covers all of the work of the BMRN but updates on other relevant projects at BRi are also presented.

The Network also receives a Newsletter twice a year, keeping them up-to-date with all the activities of the research programme and the latest news from the world of barley research including our collaborations with the Institute of Food Research (Foam) and Food Biosciences at Reading University (antioxidants). Members are also invited to attend selected other meeting at BRi free of charge. Membership of the network brings specific benefits but is also an ideal way of keeping up with the work at BRi.

The projects

Recent highlights include:

	An investigation into the role of Lipid Binding Proteins and the flavour of beer
	Model based control of the formation of colour and flavour during malt roasting (Catharine O'Shaughnessy received the IGB Cambridge prize for this work)
	A method of determining malt friability from the sound made during the milling process
	Membership of the BMRN also offered free attendance at the December meeting of the Food Modelling Club. This meeting saw an early presentation by Bronek Wedzicha of Leeds University on <The Mechanism of Formation of Acrylamide in Food> (subsequently published in Nature)
	Other work has covered the health benefits of silicon in beer, the formation of 3MCPD and Acrylamide during roasting

Present work includes:

	A cheap instrument for quantitative measurement of water distribution in barley during steeping
	Pdx, a supersonic mashing system that combines effective milling and mashing in one step
	Do Lipid Binding Proteins influence wort fermentability?
	A new method for assessing the fermentation performance of malt

Future projects:

We are actively seeking grant funding for the following projects:

	Developing new methods to determine the levels of mycotoxins in grain
	The role of lipoxygenase in malt and in beer flavour stability

Resources

BRi has one of the most sophisticated pilot plants for malting, roasting and brewing in the world. This plant offers a high degree of flexibility and accurate process control for new variety trials, new product development, process optimization, and safety evaluation. A range of standard and specialist analysis together with tasting and malting consultancy is available to complement pilot trials. We specialize in cereal protein and carbohydrate research and analysis.

Contract services

These exploit the expertise built up through core research activities and often implement the latest of our findings. The following represent a cross section of the projects that the programme has recently carried out for a range of companies:

	Pilot malting of barley and other cereals
	Pilot brewing with novel raw materials
	Speciality malt preparations
	Control of fermentablity to reduce alcohol duty
	Analysis of foam negative materials
	Quality analysis service of raw materials
	Antioxidant analysis
	Folate (vitamin B9) analysis

If you would like to join the network or would like more information please contact Robert Muller using the Contact Us button.