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You are here: Home / Just For Fun / A Biologist’s St. Patrick’s Day Song

A Biologist’s St. Patrick’s Day Song

March 17, 2012 By Jay Brooks

ethanol
This is one of the coolest, albeit nerdy, songs I’ve heard since Tom Lehrer was doing the Vatican Rag and singing about the Elements. And thanks to Peter H. for sending me the link. It’s a St. Patrick’s Day song by a biologist, known only as Cadamole, who apparently lives in Washington, D.C. He sings about the biology of beer and … well, just listen to it for yourself. Enjoy!

And below are the lyrics so you can sing along:

In the year of our lord eighteen hundred and eleven
On March the seventeenth day
I will raise up a beer and I’ll raise up a cheer
For Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Here’s to brewers yeast, that humblest of all beasts
Producing carbon gas reducing acetaldehyde
But my friends that isn’t all — it makes ethyl alcohol
That is what the yeast excretes and that’s what we imbibe

Anaerobic isolation
Alcoholic fermentation
NADH oxidation
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

My intestinal wall absorbs that ethanol
And soon it passes through my blood-brain barrier
There’s a girl in the next seat who I didn’t think that sweet
But after a few drinks I want to marry her
I guess it’s not surprising, my dopamine is rising
And my glutamate receptors are all shot
I’d surely be bemoaning all the extra serotonin
But my judgment is impaired and my confidence is not

Allosteric modulation
No Long Term Potentiation
Hastens my inebriation
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

When ethanol is in me, some shows up in my kidneys
And inhibits vasopressin by degrees
A decrease in aquaporins hinders water re-absorption
And pretty soon I really have to pee
Well my liver breaks it down so my body can rebound
By my store of glycogen is soon depleted
And tomorrow when I’m sober I will also be hungover
Cause I flushed electrolytes that my nerves and muscles needed

Diuretic activation
Urination urination
Urination dehydration
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

Filed Under: Just For Fun, Related Pleasures Tagged With: Holidays, Music, Science, Science of Brewing, Video



Comments

  1. Tom Dalldorf says

    March 18, 2012 at 11:22 am

    Ah ha! So THAT’s why I’m drinking so much H2O today. Great find! And, like Tom Lehrer, he’s got some awesome credibility behind the lyric.

  2. Peter Hoey says

    March 18, 2012 at 8:58 pm

    I thought you’d enjoy that Jay. Cheers!

  3. Adam Keele says

    March 18, 2012 at 9:10 pm

    This is wonderful!

  4. beerman49 says

    March 19, 2012 at 12:28 am

    Jay – that’s a hoot & well-done musically to boot! Now I have to find out how to get it – I want to create a CD of beer songs one of these days to distribute to my beer geek friends.

    I’m a Tom Lehrer aficionado who will inherit a 10″ vinyl LP (Songs by Tom Lehrer) on Lehrer Records, released in 1953/4. He re-recorded the same 12 songs (possibly live) when he was under contract to Reprise in the 60’s. My fave is “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, just ahead of “Vatican Rag”.

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