Identification & Background:
Project title: Bio4Drinks – Obtaining Multifunctional Natural Ingredients for the Beverage Industry
Project code: NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-113508
Main objective: Strengthening research, technological development, and innovation
Region of intervention: North
Beneficiary entities:
Tree Flowers Solutions, Lda (Project Leader)
MORE – Laboratório Colaborativo Montanhas de Investigação – Associação
IPB – Instituto Politécnico de Bragança
Fermentum – Engenharia das fermentações, Lda
Approval date: 29-07-2021
Start date: 01-09-2021
Conclusion date: 30-06-2023
Total eligible investment: 615.438,01 €
Financial support of the European Union: FEDER – 458.150,90€
Objectives
1) Valorization of at least two by-products of the wine sector (seeds, leaves, grape pomace) and two of the chestnut (flowers, leaves, hedgehogs, chestnut shell), in bioactive ingredients of high economic value (production of extracts);
2) Develop a sustainable process in terms of cost-effectiveness and low environmental impact to obtain 4 extracts of wine and nut by-products, rich in bioactive phenolic compounds;
3) Evaluate and characterize the phenolic extracts, in terms of stability, bioaccessibility and bioavailability;
4) Develop optimized formulations of extracts, aiming to stabilize the phenolic compounds for application in two drinks, beer and flavoured water;
5) Validate, on a pilot scale, the effectiveness of extracts rich in polyphenols applied in the food prototypes developed, as antimicrobial and antioxidant agents, in order to act as a preservative in the case of beers and as a functionalizing agent in the case of flavoured waters.
Activities
- Technical specifications;
- In vitro studies of bioactive properties and toxicity of extracts;
- Stability studies of the developed ingredients and beverages;
- Obtaining beverage prototypes with the incorporation of the studied ingredients;
- Dissemination, communication and exploitation of project results;
- Project management.
Expected results
Get at least 4 new products, namely:
- Two new craft beers with lower risk of oxidation and organoleptic alterations (reduction to 3-4% of loss of organoleptic characteristics after 4 months of storage). It should be noted that, on average, a craft beer has a shelf life of 10 months, but after 4 months of storage, it loses between 30 and 40% of its organoleptic characteristics. In this sense, Bio4Drinks aims to reduce these changes by about 90%.
- Two flavoured waters with functional properties (e.g. antioxidant), contributing to the improvement of existing products.
