BEER looks stale unless it has a decent head on it. But the foam is fragile
stuff: grease from a packet of crisps, or even lipstick, can destroy it. The
head can even be affected by the weather conditions when the barley used to make
the beer was growing. So brewers in Germany decided to work out how to make a
more dependable head—so long as drinkers are willing to stomach
genetically modified beer.
“The basis of foaming in beer is the LTP1 gene,” says Ulf Stahl of
the Technical University of Berlin. The protein made by the gene…
