Analytical Session
YASUSHI NAGATOMI, Research Laboratories for Food Safety Chemistry, Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd., 1-1-21 Midori, Moriya, Ibaraki 302-0106, Japan
Co-author(s): Tomonori Inoue, Atsuo Uyama, and Naoki Mochizuki, Research Laboratories for Food Safety Chemistry, Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd., Moriya, Japan
ABSTRACT: Mycotoxins are frequent contaminants of grains and are considered critical risk substances for brewers. Meanwhile, in response to recently increasing consumer demands for food safety assurance, brewers have to present any risks substances that can contaminate their products, based on experimental data. In this study, the fates of mycotoxins in the course of beer brewing were investigated with the view to ensuring improved risk control. Ground malt was artificially contaminated with 14 mycotoxins that are well known and often found as food contaminants and was brewed via steps such as mashing, boiling, and fermentation on a laboratory scale. Analytical samples were taken from wort, spent grain, and beer produced at certain key points in the brewing process. The samples were extracted and purified with the SPE (solid phase extraction) method, and concentrations of the mycotoxins in the samples were analyzed by LC-MS/MS using a multi-residue method. In the results, half of the mycotoxins clearly showed a reduction in concentration in the unhopped wort and were adsorbed onto the spent grain after mashing. In addition, some of the mycotoxins diminished during boiling and fermentation. This suggests that the risks of contaminating beer with mycotoxins was reduced remarkably after the entire brewing process.
Yasushi Nagatomi received a B.S. degree in pharmaceutical science and a Ph.D. degree in synthetic organic chemistry from Osaka University. He began his career in 2000 at Merck Research Laboratories Tsukuba Research Institute (Banyu, Japan), where he was engaged in the development of anticancer substances for eight years. In 2008, he joined Asahi Breweries, Ltd. and currently works in Research Laboratories for Food Safety Chemistry at Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. As a chief researcher at the laboratories, he is responsible for developing technologies for food analysis for the assurance of food safety.
