<p>A die hard fan of beer but not able to distinguish between different varieties of the bubbly? Here comes an electronic tongue that can do it for you.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Spanish researchers have been successful in recognising different varieties of beer using an electronic tongue.<br /><br />The discovery is accurate in nearly 82 percent of cases and can one day give robots a sense of taste!<br /><br />The electronic tongue - based on the human sense of taste - uses a generic array of sensors.<br /><br />"The method did enable us to distinguish between the main categories of beer we studied - Schwarzbier, lager, double malt, Pilsen, Alsatian and low-alcohol with a success rate of 81.9 percent," said Manel del Valle from Autonomous University of Barcelona.<br /><br />The array of sensors was formed with 21 ion-selective electrodes, including some with response to cations (ammonium, sodium), others with response to anions (nitrate, chloride) as well as electrodes with generic (unspecified) response to the beer varieties considered.<br /><br />The researchers recorded the response generated by the array of sensors and how this was influenced by the type of beer considered.<br /><br />"In other words, with generic response to the various chemical compounds involved - which generate information with advanced tools for processing, pattern recognition and even artificial neural networks - we were able to identify various brands of beer," added del Valle.<br /><br />This tool could one day give robots a sense of taste, and even supplant panels of tasters in the food industry to improve the quality and reliability of products for consumption.<br /><br />There are, however, varieties of beers that the tongue is not trained to recognise such as beer/soft drink mixes or foreign makes.<br /><br />It means the method does not recognise brands for which it was not trained, said the study published in the journal Food Chemistry.<br /></p>
<p>A die hard fan of beer but not able to distinguish between different varieties of the bubbly? Here comes an electronic tongue that can do it for you.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Spanish researchers have been successful in recognising different varieties of beer using an electronic tongue.<br /><br />The discovery is accurate in nearly 82 percent of cases and can one day give robots a sense of taste!<br /><br />The electronic tongue - based on the human sense of taste - uses a generic array of sensors.<br /><br />"The method did enable us to distinguish between the main categories of beer we studied - Schwarzbier, lager, double malt, Pilsen, Alsatian and low-alcohol with a success rate of 81.9 percent," said Manel del Valle from Autonomous University of Barcelona.<br /><br />The array of sensors was formed with 21 ion-selective electrodes, including some with response to cations (ammonium, sodium), others with response to anions (nitrate, chloride) as well as electrodes with generic (unspecified) response to the beer varieties considered.<br /><br />The researchers recorded the response generated by the array of sensors and how this was influenced by the type of beer considered.<br /><br />"In other words, with generic response to the various chemical compounds involved - which generate information with advanced tools for processing, pattern recognition and even artificial neural networks - we were able to identify various brands of beer," added del Valle.<br /><br />This tool could one day give robots a sense of taste, and even supplant panels of tasters in the food industry to improve the quality and reliability of products for consumption.<br /><br />There are, however, varieties of beers that the tongue is not trained to recognise such as beer/soft drink mixes or foreign makes.<br /><br />It means the method does not recognise brands for which it was not trained, said the study published in the journal Food Chemistry.<br /></p>