Aluminium content in beers and silicon sequestering effects

Aluminium gives beer a metallic and bitter flavour without any observations on particular aroma compound changes. Besides it has lately been implicated as one of the possible causal factors contributing to Alzheimer's disease.A highly sensitive, selective, rapid, reliable and inexpensive method has been used for direct analysis of free aluminium in thirty-nine samples of bottled lager beer. Differential pulse adsorptive anodic stripping voltammetry (DPAdSV) technique at a hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) without any sample digestion was performed.Thirty nine different commercial beers (dark, pale and alcohol-free) were analysed. The aluminium content ranged between 3 and 15 ppb. The results show that in non-Spanish beers, the aluminium content in alcohol-free beers is lower than in dark and pale beers. Nevertheless, in the case of the national beers –Spanish–, no relation has been observed between the content of aluminium and the type of beer. Since beer also contains silicon which can affect the bioavailability of aluminium. Therefore, the moderate consumption of beer might affect the toxicokinetics of aluminium and thereby limit its neurotoxicity.