Hop specialist awards research prize to scientists

BarthHaas Grants | Hop specialist BarthHaas has announced the research prize winners of its BarthHaas Grants 2022. One grant goes to the scientists Natalia Svedlund and Dr. Frederico Magalhães of the Department of Brewing and Beverage Technology at Technische Universität Berlin, while another has been awarded to support the project run by Dr. Mathias Hutzler, Dr. Hubertus Schneiderbanger and Dr. Martin Zarnkow of the Research Center Weihenstephan for Brewing and Food Quality at the Technical University of Munich.

The team led by Svedlund and Magalhães is conducting a research project to determine what conditions can intensify the fruity and floral aromas in cider during dry hopping and fermentation. They are focusing on the suitability of various apple and hop varieties and yeast strains for dry hopping. The team led by Hutzler, Schneiderbanger and Zarnkow, on the other hand, is testing particular highly concentrated yeast during fermentation for the parameters aroma yield, biotransformation, antimicrobial activity, and oxygen exclusion in connection with dry hopping.

The prize-winning research projects are each to receive a grant of 10,000 euros. The award ceremony took place again live for the first time on the BarthHaas campus in Nuremberg last Monday, October 17. In the last two years, due to the pandemic the awards had been presented during online events.

Thomas Raiser, member of the management team of BarthHaas, congratulated the prize winners on their highly promising research concepts. “I’m very interested to see what results these projects will produce”, said Raiser. “Many of the research projects we have supported in recent years have led to new findings.”

Since 2007, the annually awarded BarthHaas Grants have supported groundbreaking scientific projects at universities and research institutes. In many cases they have served as seed capital: Many successful projects attracted wide attention and could then be continued with public funding.

BarthHaas hopes by means of the grants to arouse enthusiasm for hops, support research concepts and, last but not least, establish and intensify contacts with promising young research scientists. A lot has happened in hop research in recent years. By awarding these grants, hop specialist BarthHaas has provided an important stimulus to science again and again.