Break out the barbecue! Corner Brook study shows benefits of craft beer marinade
Backyard grillers have been saying it for years, and now there's scientific proof: marinating your meat in beer is good for you.
According to a team of researchers at Memorial University's Grenfell Campus, marinating moose and beef in unfiltered craft beer with a low-alcohol level helps preserve anti-cancer acids in the meat while significantly improving the antioxidants, which fight the compounds linked to multiple illnesses, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
"The population likes to have a beer with a grilled product so it's a double-whammy … you can get your beer and also have meat with flavour from your beer," said Raymond Thomas, associate professor and principal investigator of the functional foods research program.
The team of scientists and researchers at Grenfell Campus of Memorial University has been studying the effects of craft beer marination on grilled meat since 2016. The results were featured recently in two food science journals.
"One of the things that I hope will come from this work is an alternative use for unfiltered base craft beers that have these herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables used in the formulation, that you can use them to make different types of marinades that will improve the nutritional quality and safety of grilled food," said Thomas.
Thomas said there were two reasons craft beers, not more mass-produced brews, were used for the study: the ingredients are usually more creative, and most craft beer is not filtered, meaning sediment, which may contain yeast, aromas and proteins, is removed.
"If you are a small craft brewer, you can go out and play around with different types of ingredients so you have more independence in terms of new formulations that you can come up with over a short period of time," Thomas said. "I think that's where the difference is."
To protect the integrity of the research, Thomas wouldn't divulge the type of craft beer used. However, he said, many local brewmasters use the same ingredients and, since they are also not filtering the beer, the same benefits should apply.
"The main ingredients, rather than what kind of beer, is that it's an unfiltered beer that has herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables in a formulation so, regardless of who you are as a craft brewer, if you're using this in your formulation and you have these types of products, then it's the same type of compounds," Thomas said.
"It's just that your composition might be a little bit different, depending on what raw material but you should have similar possibilities and capabilities."
Thomas said the study was a departure from some of the work chemists are doing at Grenfell.
"It's [some] of the lighter, more fun work, and we use it as a balance to some of the hard-core basic stuff that we do."
Students agree
"This study will be very groundbreaking," said Charles Manful, one of the team's researchers. "This is going to be the first time that unfiltered beers have been used as a base to marinades that can suppress the formation of heterocyclic (amines)."
Heterocyclic amines are carcinogenic chemicals formed when cooking meat at high temperatures.
Manful's first graduate studies focused on Newfoundland's crop of wild blueberries. When he began researching marinades of craft beer, he was a little skeptical. However, once he began looking into the chemical makeup of the beer, he saw similarities.
"My initial thoughts were that it wasn't very closely related to my research, as I work on blueberries, but once I got into it and realized the chemistry was consistent to what I did in my previous studies, I … jumped into it," he said. "It's been a wonderful journey and I've learned a lot through the process."
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