Avaliação da atividade antioxidante em cervejas artesanais produzidas em Fortaleza registradas no Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento

Abstract

The consumption of craft or pure malt beers follows a growing route between the inhabitants and visitors of Fortaleza-CE, considering that about 40 labels of this category of beers are already being marketed in that city. It should be considered that this increase may also be related to sensory and nutritional aspects of this beverage, because beers generally contain appreciable amounts of phenolic compounds, which protect against various diseases, act as natural antioxidants and absorbers of free radicals in physiological systems. Thus, due to the important role played by phenolic antioxidants in the production of salutary properties of beers, it is indispensable to have methods capable of measuring antioxidant activity (AA). Among the traditional methods for measuring AA are 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), 2,2-azino-bis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) and the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent. The aim of this work was to determine the AA in three types of craft beers (D&G, HS and W5B) manufactured by a microbrewery of Fortaleza-CE and three beers (P, S and I) manufactured on an industrial scale in order to correlate with their total phenols (TFT). The results indicate that the craft beers D&G, HS and W5B presented higher TFT: 149.82 ± 0.36; 141.50 ± 0.40 and 124.85 ± 0.46, respectively, than beers P, S and I: 80.86 ± 1.20; 53.51 ± 2.78 and 27.35 ± 2.60, respectively. These results may be directly related to the polyphenol content of the malted cereal and hops used. The DPPH method was controversial, since large-scale beers (S and I), which generally contain less than 40% malt, had higher AA values than craft beers (HS, D&G and W5B) and pure malt (P). According to the ABTS method, the decreasing order of AA for HS, D&G and W5B craft beers was: 82.99 ± 0.51> 79.61 ± 0.36> 48.77 ± 0.41, respectively. Large-scale beers, P, I and S, had the following AA values: 72.71 ± 1.20; 52.87 ± 2.60 and 47.56 ± 2.78, respectively.