Jun. 13, 2012
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The Beer Facts
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marianne on -
Possibly beer and wine have been around for so long because drinkable water wasn't easily available ?
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Permalink Reply by doone on -
Water was bad for you for most of human history, in addition you got energy and penicillin from beer. The Sumerians and Egyptians were healthier being beer drinkers than drinking raw polluted water from the rivers.
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Permalink Reply by doone on
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This goose that had too much to drink
...needs help in remembering last night.
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Permalink Reply by Neo on -
I am a stout and porter man myself. I will leave those light beers for the anorexic baby dolls. I like my beers the same as my women. Blondes with a black dress. That's a reference to Guinness in a curved glass if you didn't get it.
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Permalink Reply by doone on
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Building A Better Beer Head
Science is hard at work:
As any beer drinker can tell you, a tall glass of lager without a white, foamy head on top just doesn't look right. And even if you start out with one, it can dissipate fast. And that's just sad. Now, microbiologists have identified the specific gene in yeast responsible for a beer's head and they say this discovery can lead to stronger, longer lasting, more aesthetically pleasing foam on your favorite brews.
It's called the Carlsbergensis foaming gene, or CFG1:
As [Tom] Villa and his colleagues write in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the gene resides in the yeasts used to ferment beer and it produces a protein that binds to the drink's CO2 bubbles, preventing them from escaping from the glass too quickly. ... Now that we know exactly which gene is responsible for beer foam, Villa says it's possible to manipulate that gene to create beer with foam that lasts longer — potentially for hours and hours...
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Permalink Reply by Davy on -
Hint: it has nothing to do with the beer's flavor.Posted 01.25.2013 at 2:59 pm0 Comments
Beersci Logo Todd DetwilerFor the average beer drinker, the difference between an ale and a lager comes down to how the beer looks, smells, and tastes. Ales tend to be fruity-estery, while lagers are clean-tasting and frequently described as "crisp." But to a brewer, the difference is more fundamental than that. It's not color, or flavor, or aroma, or hop/grain/malt varietals or even water hardness that separates a lager from an ale. Simply put, lagers use an entirely different type of yeast during fermentation. All of the knock-on effects -- from different flavors and aromas to decreased fermentation temperatures -- arise from this difference. You'll hear some beer pedants describe the difference as "top-fermenting" (ale) vs. "bottom-fermenting" (lager) yeast, which is generally accurate, but useless to those who have no interest or experience with brewing.
Lagers are relatively new to the brewing scene. They first arose in Bavarian breweries in the late 15th or early 16th century, then eventually spread to the rest of Europe (most famously to Plzeň, the birthplace of pilsner) and eventually to the rest of the world. All of those beers you think of as "national" brands -- Heineken, Tsing Tao, Sapporo, Kingfisher, Budweiser to name just a few -- those are all lagers. Lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, was first isolated and described in 1904 by the Danish mycologist Emil Christian Hansen while working at the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark. He discovered another lager strain in 1908, which he named Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. These two have since been determined to be the same yeast, now called by the oldest name given, S. pastorianus. (I only mention this because you'll run across people talking about S. carlsbergensis occasionally, and I want to make it clear that the name is now synonymous with S. pastorianus.)
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Permalink Reply by Marianne on
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These are very scientific facts between the difference of ale and lager; I always drink lager and somehow I got thirsty reading this, lol...
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