shelf life

If you like beer, then perk up those ears, for we have news of an innovation – brought to you by, who else, the Germans – that could lead to longer-lasting brews. The development in question is a polymer that extracts riboflavin, a micronutrient found throughout beer and other beverages that promotes spoilage when exposed to light.

It all has to do with where the cow was milked. "Organic milk often has to travel thousands of miles to reach distribution points," says Dean Sommer, a cheese and food technologist at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin. To survive the journey and leave time to spare in the fridge, farmers pasteurize organic milk at higher temperatures than conventional milk.