If you needed yet another reason to drink beer, science just gave it to you. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) just developed a new type of probiotic beer which could improve your immune system and neutralize¹ pathogens and toxins². 

 

如果喝啤酒还需要理由的话，科学家可以给你个理由。新加坡国立大学研究人员刚刚研发了一种新型的益生菌啤酒，这种啤酒可以改善你的免疫系统，消除体内的病原体和毒素。
 

 

The idea of developing a healthy, probiotic beer, came from Miss Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, a fourth-year student from the Food Science and Technology Programme at the NUS Faculty³ of Science. Chan realized that while the market abounds⁴ with dairy-based probiotics, there's another huge untapped market for probiotics: beer. Due to its nature, beer is a fertile ground for probiotics, and the craft beer phenomenon has been growing at a staggering rate in many parts of the world -- so why not blend the two?

 

"The health benefits of probiotics are well known. While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented⁵, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics. Developing sufficient counts of live probiotics in beer is a challenging feat⁶ as beers contain hop⁷ acids that prevent the growth and survival of probiotics. As a believer of achieving a healthy diet through consuming probiotics, this is a natural choice for me when I picked a topic for my final-year project," said Miss Chan, who will be graduating in July 2017. 

 

Working with Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan, she used a strain of Lactobacillus paracasei called L26, which seems to be particularly promising⁸. The probiotic gives a strong taste with pleasant aromas⁹, and the beer itself is quite light -- with only 3.5% alcohol. 

 

"For this beer, we used a lactic¹⁰ acid bacterium¹¹ as a probiotic microorganism," explains Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, who developed the beer, in a statement. "It will utilise sugars present in the wort to produce sour-tasting lactic acid, resulting in a beer with sharp and tart¹² flavors. The final product, which takes around a month to brew¹³, has an alcohol content of about 3.5 percent."

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