Is that a genuine Heineken? Rapid test could tell you

A simple laboratory test can tell if a bottle of beer contains what's on the label or a cheaper substitute, say scientists in Brazil.

Brazil has seen several cases of food fraud recently in which counterfeiters switch the labels and bottle caps of less expensive beers with the labels and caps of the more expensive market leader brands.

The new test - based on a technique known as paper spray mass spectrometry (PS-MS) - can detect that kind of fraudulent activity in as little as a minute, write the researchers in the journal Analytica Chimica Acta (Volume 940, 12 October 2016, Pages 104–112).

The Brazilian beer market is dominated by large companies selling lagers - Anheuser-Busch InBev, Grupo Petrópolis, Brasil Kirin, and Heineken - which together produce around 96 per cent of all the beer consumed in the country.

"Owing to their effective marketing, customer's preference, higher quality and prices in their category, these brands have been the subject of frauds," say the authors.

PS-MS is a relatively new technique, introduced around six years ago, and in this study was combined with a statistical technique known as partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA).

The team used this to distinguish between the three top-selling beer brands in Brazil - Brahma, Antarctica, and Skol, which are the also the most commonly counterfeited brands and all made by Anheuser-Busch InBev - and five lower-priced alternatives. The technique was found to be 100 per cent reliable.

"The differentiation and classification of foods and beverages is of major importance for both consumers and producers, once they guarantee confidence on label descriptions and authenticity," said the researchers.

"The combination of PS-MS and PLS-DA is a powerful analytical tool for this task but is still underexplored."