Probiotic Beer Gives New Meaning To The Term 'Beer Belly'

If you’ve ever listened to the sage advice of Jamie Lee Curtis, you probably know about the importance of probiotics to your overall health. But, until now, the most common place to get good microbes (to battle the bad ones in your belly) was yogurt. You can only eat so much Greek yogurt, though, before it starts tasting like fruit-filled sour cream. “There has to be a better way,” you scream from the roof of your apartment building. Well, you can stop wailing because there is another way to get your daily dose of probiotics and it sounds a whole lot better than eating a pint of Sriracha yogurt. Beer.

Researchers at the University of Singapore brewed a beer using the probiotic strain Lactobacillus paracasi L26, microbes that literally come from your gut. They are found in human intestines and are well-known for their ability to neutralize toxins and help regulate your immune system.

“The health benefits of probiotics are well known,” said fourth-year student Chan Mei Zhi Alcine in a University press release. She developed the beer with the help of Professor Liu Shao Quan. “While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics.”

During brewing, hop acids normally stop probiotics from growing. Mei Zhi Alcine spent nine months determining the amount of live probiotics needed to achieve her goal. In order to create the beer, she needed to make changes to the normal brewing and fermentation process. She propagated the probiotics and yeast in pure cultures and was able to keep the probiotics in the beer during the process.

“For this beer, we used a lactic acid bacterium as a probiotic micro-organism,” Mei Zhi Alcine said. After a month of brewing and fermenting the end result is a very sessionable 3.5% sour beer with high levels of lactic acid. Obviously, making a discovery like this has lead to the thought of money. The research team quickly filed a patent top stop someone else from swooping in and stealing their idea.

So, maybe soon you won’t have to choke down that sour-tasting, phlegm-inducing yogurt every day to keep your system in proper working order. You’ll be able to pop into your local bodega and grab a beer with the same healthy properties. This is definitely something we can get behind. We might even start calling beer “health food.” Final proof that alcohol is actually good for you.

This Probiotic Beer Gives A Healthy New Meaning To The Term ‘Beer Belly’