Research articles
Research
Original research, letters and reviews from this issue and recent weeks. The register follows Nature: abstract, main text, methods, data availability and references.
ArticleCoverOpen Access16 September 2026A complete census of beerhouses in Lixia District reveals a spring-driven night-time consumption geographyGround-truthing of 412 beer-serving venues across Lixia District, Jinan, shows that a one-kilometre buffer around the spring clusters holds three-fifths of supply. An old-town barbecue belt and an eastern craft-beer belt form a stable dual core.
Bochun Zhang, Shuyao Lin et al. · Urban night economy
Article9 September 2026Activation energies of hop α-acid thermal isomerization constrain transferable prediction of bitterness unitsWithin the industrial wort-boil window, iso-α-acid yield is given by an Arrhenius relation that can be decoupled from water chemistry.
Yu'an Han, Elise Moreau et al. · Hops and raw materials
ArticleOpen Access9 September 2026Mineralization of North China groundwater constrains the reproducibility of Pilsner styleSetting Jinan spring water beside the Plzeň aquifer shows that “style” is first a water-chemistry recipe.
Jiashu Shen, Pavel Novák, Qinghe Lü · Water chemistry
Article14 September 2026Ecological succession of Saccharomyces and lactic acid bacteria in open fermentation follows a predictable pH trajectoryOpen fermentation is not random contamination but a succession path locked by hop bitterness and acidity.
Jibai Fang, R. J. Bokulich, Wei Song · Microbes and yeast
Article15 September 2026Sensory compensation in low-alcohol beer: dose responses of esters and hop oilsDealcoholization is not subtraction. At 0.5% ABV, a narrow window of isoamyl acetate and linalool can rebuild “beeriness”.
Nanxing Pei, Ingrid Berg, Muzhi Zhou · Sensory science
ArticleOpen Access9 September 2026Vulnerability of the global hop supply chain to heatwaves is amplified by producing-region concentrationSynchronous heat in Germany, Czechia and the US Northwest is enough for a craft recipe to lose its aroma skeleton in a single season.
Wangshu He, Clara Hofmann, Qianli Ma · Hops and raw materials
Letter15 September 2026Metabolic engineering of diacetyl shortens industrial lager maturation to four daysKnocking out an ILV2 bypass and overexpressing BDC1 means cold storage is no longer a time tax on lager.
Yu Qian, Beichen Zheng, Lena Vogt · Microbes and yeast
Article14 September 2026Migration of microplastics from can linings into beer is accelerated by pasteurizationOne 60 °C, 15-minute tunnel pasteurization is enough to raise lining-fragment concentrations by an order of magnitude.
Qingyue Wu, Xia Lin, D. M. Mitrano · Packaging and safety
ArticleOpen Access9 September 2026Malt-fermentation residues in Neolithic ceramic vessels from the lower Yellow RiverProteomics moves a Longshan site east of Jinan into the earliest East Asian evidence of malt fermentation.
Shuchi Liang, Qiaomei Fu, Cen Gao · Archaeology and history
- Letter15 September 2026A barley HvMYB10 allele sets the roast-aroma intensity of ale malt
An anthocyanin transcription factor turns out to be a switch for caramel malt.
Tai Yin, Robbie Waugh · Hops and raw materials
Review16 September 2026The craft taproom as a third place: a comparative ethnography of Asian citiesFrom Kuanhouli in Jinan to Ponto-chō in Kyoto, the taproom is rewriting where people go after work.
Guyan Chen, Ken Sato · Urban night economy