Ervas de amargor em substituição ao lúpulo na indústria cervejeira: uma revisão

Abstract

Beer is a fermented beverage composed primarily of barley malt, water, hops, adjuncts and appropriate microorganisms. Hops (Humulus lupulus) is a climbing plant typical of cold regions, and its production is difficult in several countries, such as Brazil, for example. This factor, combined with the high economic value for importing this input and the search for products with differentiated sensory characteristics, makes it feasible to study new options for its replacement in brewing production. Brazil is a country with a vast diversity of plants, with a list of different herbs used for the production of teas and treatment of diseases, where several of them have a different flavor. In this context, the present study carried out aliterature review aiming to evaluate the possibility of using different bitter plants to replace hops in beer production. For this, we carried out a survey of works related to the subject, published in the last 30 years, using the databases of Google academic, Scielo, BDTD, Periodicals, Science Direct, Scopus, ACS Publications and Web of Science. The 7 herbs that appeared most frequently were selected, and then a second research with the use of these herbs as hop substitutes, carrying out a compilation of information about them. It was observed that these herbs have great potential to supply the bitterness of beverages, offering compounds that add differentiated nutritional and sensory values to beers. However, in the experiments it was possible to verify that a higher dosage of these plants can bring unpleasantresidues to the palate, demonstrating that further studies are still needed to ensure that this substitution does not affect the sensory acceptance of the final product.