You feel disappointing when you find your whole keg of Heiney if totally skunked. Here is a solution for it. Chemists in Spain have found the way to tell your beer is a mess or not using an app. Chemists from the Complutense University of Madrid created a furfural-sensing polymer disc and app.

This app tells you when a beer has too much of a “stale” flavour. Furfural is a chemical which is related to the taste and smell of beer. Furfural is present in most of the beers. When the beer ages and begins to change chemically, it gives a stale or cardboard-like flavour and reduces the fresh aromas.

UCM researchers developed system consists of sensor discs that detect the presence of furfural in beer. These sensors are made of polymers which are used in manufacturing contact lenses are designed to change its colour when they come into contact with a beer having furfural.

“We have incorporated an aniline derivative into the sensor material which reacts with the furfural and produces a pink cyanine derivative that allows us to identify the presence of the marker in the sample. The intensity of the colour increases as the concentration of furfural in the beer rises and, thus, as more time passes since the beer was produced,” explains chemist Elena Benito-Peña.

The researchers also created a mobile app for Android smartphones. A picture of the sensor disc allows for the identification of the amount of furfural in the beer. The level of freshness can be determined by this test.

“The measurements have been taken using samples sent directly from the brewing company with different production dates and distinct degrees of ageing. These same samples were also sent to a laboratory where they were analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The results we obtained were completely comparable,” said Benito-Peña.