Japan: Sapporo Breweries develops barley to keep beer fresh longer

Sapporo Breweries Ltd said it has developed a new line of barley that keeps beer fresh longer and will start commercial production of the line in Canada in 2008, Kyodo News reported May 11. The company has filed patent applications for the barley line in about 30 countries in a bid to launch a beer material business to earn royalties, it said.

The firm said it has taken eight years to develop the barley that lacks lipoxygenase, or LOX, which causes the flavor of beer to deteriorate. Sapporo Breweries said that in brewing tests the barley was found to reduce the amount of flavor-deteriorating substances in beer to one-third of the conventional level and foam-reducing substances were reduced by half. Sapporo Breweries will serve up to 6,000 glasses of beer made with the barley for 250 yen per glass at its Ebisu Beer Museum in Tokyo from Friday.

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