Fábrica Nacional de Cervezas and Quilmes launched the "Make Your Own Beer" contest for college seniors. The contest featured two challenges: "Launch Your Brand" and "Make Your Own Beer."
Felipe Burgos and Agustín Martínez, eighth-semester biotechnology engineering students, saw the post on Instagram and decided to take on the “Brew Your Own Beer” challenge. They already had experience in the world of beer, as they brew craft beer for their own consumption.
The contest consisted of two parts: the first required participants to submit a healthy craft beer option, provide the recipe, and describe its flavor, cloudiness, and bitterness, among other characteristics.
They were also tasked with proposing an innovation that would allow them to create a healthy beer. According to Burgos and Martínez, they achieved this by incorporating probiotics with a strain of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. boulardii, which is used for various treatments in different fields of medicine.
“This yeast is used to treat stomach ulcers, lower uric acid levels, and improve bowel movements, among other benefits,” says Burgos.
To present their project idea, they made a video describing the characteristics of the beer, which they named Hamann, after the surname of Burgos’s grandmother, who was of German descent.
In the home stretch
Having already been selected as one of the top five, they moved on to the second stage of the competition, where they had to develop a marketing strategy and ensure the product’s scalability.
To that end, they were assigned a mentor who helped them through the process. “It was a period of intense study; we read papers, reviewed case studies, and processed a lot of information,” says Burgos, adding, “We also met with the mentor online every three days to review the project’s progress.”
“Our mentor, Gonzalo Escobar, is a chemical engineer with a master’s degree in brewing and has 20 years of experience in the industry. We are very grateful for all the help he is providing us.”
In this second stage, the most challenging part, according to the participants, was finding the right technique to introduce the microorganism into the beer without causing long-term damage.
To that end, they proposed microencapsulation technology: “It’s like putting a protective shield around the yeast, which will allow it to survive the pasteurization process and stay in the bottle longer, among other benefits,” they explain.
The awards ceremony
Once the new technology had been finalized, Burgos and Martínez traveled to Buenos Aires to present the project and won the competition. They are delighted by the recognition but admit that they were already satisfied with everything they had learned so far. Now all that remains is for them to enjoy their prize—a trip to Leuven, Belgium, a city known as the beer capital—and continue presenting their idea to industry experts.