Science of Brewing

Most Complete Beer Proteome Found

September 29, 2010

The American Chemical Society has announced that the most complete beer proteome has been found. The journal article in the ACS publication Journal of proteome Research, The Proteome Content of Your Beer Mug was conducted in Milan, Italy by two area university departments from the Politecnico di Milano and the Universit degli Studi di Milano [...]

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A Fermentation Question

January 6, 2010

I preordered Michal Pollan’s new book, Food Rules, so it arrived on the day it was published. At 112 sparse pages, it’s really more of a pamphlet but I’ve been enjoying reading it off and on for the last few days. When I reached Rule #33 (of 64) it stopped me in my tracks, and [...]

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Good For Your Bones: Beer

August 15, 2009

A study recently conducted in Spain revealed that women who drink beer daily, or nearly so, have stronger bone density and have a lower risk of developing osteoporosis later in life. The study, published in the June edition of Nutrition, speculates that “the high level of silicon in beer slows down the thinning that leads [...]

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World’s First All-Rye Beer

January 23, 2008

Most rye beers that I’m aware of use only around 10-20% rye with the rest being the more traditional barley. I’ve always liked that little something that rye adds to the beer and was in heaven over ten years ago during that year or so when it seemed like almost everybody was making a rye [...]

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The Yeast of Immortality

January 14, 2008

Though it appears the focus of this new discovery, at least as reported in Live Science, is mostly about the vain hope of immortality, it does involve beer yeast. Research scientists from USC “have extended the lifespan of yeast, microbes responsible for creating bread and beer, by 10-fold. That’s twice the previous record for life [...]

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Van’s Ned Flanders

December 4, 2007

John Foyston had a nice piece in the Oregonian yesterday about one of my favorite — and perhaps most underrated — beers to be poured at the Oregon Brewers Festival. It was certainly my favorite the year it appeared, 2006, and as this story attests, people are still talking about it. The beer is Ned [...]

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Quick Chilling Beer With Dry Ice

November 15, 2007

The New Zealand Herald reported Tuesday that a Massey University student in Auckland has invented a novel device to quickly chill beer in a fraction of the time, potentially allowing people to leave the cooler at home. It’s one of thirty inventions being exhibited at the three-day Design Exposure 2007, which began Wednesday, at Massey [...]

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Chocolate’s Popularity Began With Beer

November 15, 2007

A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a government journal, has determined that ancient Mesoamericans, as long ago as 3,100 years, were using cacao — the stuff chocolate is made from — in a beverage that bears a remarkable similarity to beer. Pottery vessels not unlike the one below recently [...]

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Fungus Amungus: Microbes in the Tailoring of Barley Malt Properties

August 27, 2007

This Friday, August 31, Research Scientist Arja Laitila will be defending her thesis, Microbes in the Tailoring of Barley Malt Properties, at the University of Helsinki, in the hopes of being awarded her PhD. Arja Laitila Her goal? Microbes – bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi – have a decisive role in the barley-malt-beer chain. Microbes [...]

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Beer To Cure the Oil Crisis

August 27, 2007

Alright, it’s possible I may have exaggerated just slightly with my headline claim that beer will cure the looming oil crisis. But it’s not impossible so therefore it’s technically achievable, however implausible. Anyway, here’s the idea in a nutshell. Scientists working at new project, a part of which is the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems [...]

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Kirin Discovers Anti-Oxidizing Yeast

August 16, 2007

Kirin Brewery, along with the Keio University Institute of Advanced Biosciences have announced the discovery of new yeast strain found by analyzing the metabolic byproducts that brewer’s yeast synthesizes. What they found was that brewer’s yeast creates large quantities of “hydrogen sulfide when processing a tiny number of metabolites of the amino acid asparagine.” The [...]

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Searching For the Holy Aroma

July 9, 2007

According to Wired Science, scientists from Down Under (the Department of Food Science, University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand, and the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science, Department of Applied Chemistry, RMIT University, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia more specifically) have published a paper identifying the chemicals creating the spicy aromas in noble hops [...]

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Math and Beer Bubbles

April 29, 2007

A new study published in the new issue of the journal Nature could have ramifications for your next pint of beer. Well, maybe not your next, but at some point in the future it may change the way brewers think about brewing their beer. The article, by mathematician Robert D. MacPherson of Princeton’s Institute for [...]

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Sierra Nevada’s New Pry-Off Cap

April 10, 2007

I made a trip up to Chico, California last week to interview Ken Grossman for an article I’m working on and fortuitously happened upon a new innovation that Sierra Nevada Brewing just launched. They’ve discarded the twist-off crown in favor of a new one they’re calling a “pry-off cap.” They’re using up their old stock [...]

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Coors’ Ice Cold Obsession

April 9, 2007

All of the big beer companies and many of the bigger imported ones have at one time or another emphasized “ice cold” as the ideal temperature to enjoy their products. It’s no secret that the closer to freezing you serve your beer, the less of it you can actually taste. So they’re quite right to [...]

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Laughing Beer?!?

April 1, 2007

Okay, this one is just too weird not to mention. An Israeli company has figured out a way of infusing beer with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. They’ve gotten aproval from Israel’s Ministry of Health to sell it after the process has been patented. Real story or April Fool’s prank? It looks real, [...]

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