Congratulations to Maany Ramanan, Food Science Graduate Group Ph.D. student, who initiated and led work on the new review paper, “Beer for live microbe delivery”, in the February 2024 issue of Journal of Functional Foods.

The paper reviews what we know about how the beer-brewing process can be used to increase the friendly microbes in beer (using probiotic yeasts and/or bacteria), production issues to maximize microbial growth, health-specific strain selection, potential to expand the probiotic health benefits to other brewed beverages including alcohol-free beer and discusses future topics to explore. 

Collaborating on this paper with Professor Marco and Professor Fox was a great experience for me and enabled me to widen my knowledge in food microbiology and fermentation science. Given the attention that functional foods have received recently, I am hopeful that this review will serve as inspiration for brewers to push boundaries with product innovations. - Maany Ramanan

Maany started working on the paper while taking the Advanced Food Microbiology course (FST204) with Professor Maria Marco.  She is a member of Professor Glen Fox’s Brewing Lab.