Beer Packaging: What Other Metals Cannot, Aluminum Can

A new brewery opens, or an old brewery rebrands. They announce a new line-up with a regionally appropriate IPA. The internet hums with marketing and social media buzz.

A press release goes out: they’re putting their beer in cans.

This, by itself, is unremarkable. As Tom Acitelli notes in his All About Beer article from 2013, Oshkosh Brewing (no affiliation to the clothing, I don’t think) released a red “craft” lager in cans in 1991. Oskar Blues has been putting its Colorado born beer into cans since 2002. Budwesier has probably the longest (still existing) pedigree for canning beer, as its first cans date back to 1936. In the time it took modern beer to “rediscover” the can, those original cans could have been recycled ~680 times. Canning isn’t exactly hot-n’-trendy in the harsh light of historical accuracy.

The Aluminum Association (yes, that’s a real thing) notes that over 500 breweries are now canning over 1700 products. People seem stuck on this move to pop tabs over bottle caps, perpetually repeating the same canned cliches: cans protect against light and oxygen exposure, are lighter and more portable, are cheaper and more sustainable, and don’t shatter into a million potential wounds when dropped onto a hard surface. These are all good things and I admit I sometimes prefer my beer in cans and hooray for options.

But this focus on how we’re using cans often ignores the fact that cans are incredible. From a scientific and engineering standpoint, at least.

Aluminum (a periodic element; #13 if we’re being specific [which we are]) is the most common metal found in the Earth’s crust (8.23%). That sounds like a geologists smorgasbord until you realize that it is never found in a “free” state, and always exists as a compound of some other junk. Those compounds are called “alums.” Not only do these alums not have to field donation calls from their alma mater twice a month, they also contain trivalent metal ions, which basically means they’ve got metal in ‘um, but the metal is naturally hard to get at.

For most of human history, aluminum did not exist. We had managed to discover many other metals that exist in a free state (gold, silver, copper), and were inventive enough to realize that by melting rocks, we could get at other, less obvious metals. We even got smart enough to start blending them together, which lead to the first alloys, like steel (iron and carbon). Say what you want about our ancestors, but you have to admit they were pretty igneous…sorry, ingenious…when it came to rocks.

Up until 1787, the world relied mostly on nickel and iron for all of its metallurgic needs. But some plucky scientists noticed an unknown substance that appeared in a lot of their samples, and theorized it was another metal that they had been so far unable to extract.

They were correct. Hiding in the middle of potassium and sulfate (or more colloquially, KAl(SO₄)₂·12H₂O) was a metal that would change the world, and eventually house your beer.

The unknown metal postulation wouldn’t be proven for another 38 years, when Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish chemist, managed to isolate aluminum in aluminum chloride. By 1845, a German named Friedrich Wöhler collected enough aluminum to determine its basic properties, and in turn, possible applications. Prior to his research, metal was considered strong but heavy. Aluminum proved strong too, but also incredibly light.

Like Hunahpu and Ann, aluminum could only be found in very small quantities. This made using it for things like cars and airplanes and beer cans notably difficult. Thankfully, by 1886, two enterprising chemists (Charles Martin Hall and Paul L. T. Héroult) discovered a way to extract aluminum from aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃). This chemical advancement, coupled with the discovery of Bauxite (an ore that contains copious amounts of Al₂O₃) lead to a rapid expansion in the availability of aluminum, just like Goose Island after the ABI purchase.

With wide availability came wide use. The engine in the Wright brother’s biplane was made from aluminum, and so were ship components and radar chaff used in World War 2. When Edison first started his electrical transmission network in 1882, aluminum was still rare. He opted to use copper instead, but given its affordability and light weight, aluminum is considered the most effective metal for electrical conduction in modern day applications.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the technology to produce lighter and stronger aluminum alloys (that would eventually be spun into modern beer cans) began during the years leading up to the American Prohibition. The Great Depression saw the creation of the Works Progress Administration, whose work lead to the refinement and production of aluminum for hydroelectric and other civil engineering projects.

With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, breweries saw the opportunity to put their new metallic abundance to use, and the first canned beer (Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale) entered the market on January 24, 1935. These cans weighed nearly 4 ounces; doesn’t sound heavy, but today’s modern, super-thin aluminum cans weigh 14.9 grams. There are 28.35 grams in an ounce. You do the math.

They were heavy because early cans were not usually made from aluminum. Coors introduced a two-part aluminum can in 1959, but the first all-aluminum can was brought to market by Budwesier in 1965. Today, approximately 75% of all beverage cans are made of aluminum alloy. Unlike glass and plastics, they are infinitely recyclable, too, and will often be back on the shelf in as little as 60 days. About 180 billion cans are produced annually, and they remain the single most recycled product in the world.

All that history and science, just to get a beer into your hand. And that’s just what it took to get to the point where we could mass manufacture aluminum cans.

The element itself is incredible, too.

Since it doesn’t contain any ferrous compounds, it cannot rust. Instead, aluminum oxidizes, reverting back to aluminum oxide. Unlike rust that eats into and weakens the metal around it, this oxidation actually strengthens and forms a protective layer on the aluminum. Canning companies have to add a lining to cans (debates about the evils of BPA can be directed elsewhere), otherwise the oxygen in the beer would react with the aluminum in the can, and ruin all that lupuliny goodness.

The weight (or lack thereof) is nothing to scoff at, either. As I noted above, the average aluminum can weighs about 15 grams. With ~2.5 times the density of aluminum, a modern steel equivalent (same size and width) would weigh ~37.5 grams. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but 2.5 times the weight on thousands of BBLs of beer would increase logistics costs substantially, which would probably in turn raise how much you had to fork over the for the finished product. Kegs can also be made from aluminum which, while potentially less structurally sound than their stainless steel sisters, are much easier to lug around a cold room.

TL;DR: Aluminum is sort of amazing, you guys.

The next time you slip your fingernail under a tab, and listen to that relaxing exhalation of escaping carbonation, take a second to appreciate that the can you’re holding isn’t just a gimmick, or marketing tool, or some fad in beer. It’s more than just a vessel that sails you off into the weekend unknown. It’s more than just a footnote in a PR campaign.

It’s a time-honored example of human scientific ingenuity. I also hear they’re pretty good for shotgunning too, whatever that means.

This bears repeating

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Yeast 101

Uh oh. Your homebrewing buddy just said something about “brett” and is asking your opinion about buying a stir plate. This conversation is getting dangerously yeasty.

But that’s OK! I’m here to help put the “you” back in “Eukaryote” with a primer about yeast, and why it’s so damn important to beer.

Much like the other posts in this series, this primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a journey to the center of fermentation, check out Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’s book from Brewer’s Publications.

Yeast as a Living Thing

Yeast is literally everywhere. You breathed some in just now. You probably ate some that was resting on your lunch. The little buggers are all up in your shit (literally), and play an important bit part in maintaining your body’s homeostasis. Fret not; it’s an integral part of our immune system and you’d have to ingest a very large amount of it to experience any ill effects (see: auto-brewery syndrome).

Biologically, yeast falls under the Fungi kingdom (here’s a quick reference if you forgot your high school taxonomy). They are technically eukaryotic (meaning their cells contain a nucleus that houses genetic information), but are the only single-cell eukaryote ever described by science. Despite any deeply romantic feelings you may have developed for your favorite IPA, yeast reproduces asexually, through the very painful-looking process of mitosis.

It’s tricky to organize yeast because they don’t all fit under one taxonomic group. But generally (please don’t kill me, biologists reading this) the yeast we use to brew can be classified by species, which are often sold to brewers as strains. Homebrewers and bakers will be familiar with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is probably the mostly commonly used yeast in ale. Lagers use Saccharomyces pastorianus. Then there’s the popular Brettanomyces, which is known for its distinctive and sort of gross qualities.

But that’s just a few, easy to recognize examples. There are ~1500 described strains of yeast, many of which we don’t use in brewing. The yeast in our bodies – often responsible for a number of nasty infections – is called Candida albicans. In healthy humans, this yeast is kept in check by bacteria. Fun fact: lactobacillus, a bacteria use to make some kinds of sour beer and sourdough bread, is one of the natural counter-balances to the yeast that grows in our guts.

Somewhat amazingly, we didn’t even know that yeast was a thing until one very cool French dude named Louis Pasteur described yeast and what is does in 1857. Although a scientist named Leeuwenhoeck (yea, I have no idea how to pronounce that, either) visually saw yeast in 1680, he didn’t really know what is was. Prior to Pasteur’s badass book, “The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and the Means of Preventing Them” some people assumed fermentation was spontaneous, and as White and Zainasheff note in their book, some people even thought it was the work of god(s).

Wooden brewing paddles were passed down through generations of brewers, all of who were apparently oblivious to the fact that wood was porous, and that the yeast from previous batches of beer were hiding deep inside all of their tools, just waiting to inoculate the next batch.

Yeast as a Brewing Ingredient

There’s a classic quote beer writers should know:

“We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.” — Fritz Maytag

Yeast is going to do its thing regardless of what we do. The brewer’s job is more interior decorator than creator: she needs to turn the wort into a welcome, clean, inviting home that the yeast want to move into to start their family. But the yeast aren’t picky; they’ll move into any home that’s got plenty of sugar to eat, even one infested with other nasty tenants of less reputable backgrounds. The brewer has to do everything she can to make sure the yeast and its family are the only ones living in the house, and that they’re as healthy and comfortable as possible.

Yeast can come from third party labs as dry cells, or ready-to-use liquid. While pre-packaged yeast can be used (I’ve used it dozens of times), many brewers will create a yeast “starter.” This is basically a sugary proto-beer that kick starts the growth of the yeast. A starter ensures you’ve got plenty of healthy yeast to begin and maintain a strong primary fermentation. Some companies sell “smack packs” which are a sort of all-in-one starter (that includes an activator) where you just “smack” the bag of yeast to mix up the contents and create a mini early fermentation before pitching it into the wort.

Logistically, yeast is added after the wort has been boiled, hops have been added, and the combined concoction has been cooled. The drop in temperature in very important: yeast are living things, and adding them to hot liquid can easily injure or kill them. To properly reproduce, yeast need oxygen, so wort is aerated. This is tricky, because oxygen is a mortal enemy to fermented beer.

Oxygen before yeast? Good! Oxygen after yeast? Bad!

Yeast’s primary role is to eat the sugars extracted from the base malts during mash, and turn them into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide (C02). That’s an incredible oversimplification though; the amount, type, and length of sugars, the temperature of the fermenting beer, and the type of yeast used all dictate how the yeast will perform. Fermentation is what makes beer taste like beer; you couldn’t just add alcohol to hopped-wort and expect beer. Yeast is responsible for hundreds of other compounds that produce flavors we’re all familiar with (banana and clove and fruit esters, oh my!)

Yeast is the prime mover for the Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG) equation. By measuring the original amount of sugar in the beer, and the comparing it to the final amount when fermentation in done, a brewer can calculate how much sugar is left in the beer, how much was eaten by the yeast, and how much alcohol it created. The amount of sugar the yeast ate is also called the amount of “attenuation.”

The trick to remembering the difference between ale and lager is that they are brewed using different yeasts (see above). Ale yeast ferments “on top” of the beer, while lager yeast ferments “on the bottom.” This is not a perfect rule. Yeast generally moves through the entire body of the fermenting beer, but this describes where “most” of the fermentation activity occurs.

More important than where they ferment is how they ferment; ale yeasts prefer warmer temperatures (55-70° F), while lager yeasts prefer colder temperatures (40° F). Ale yeast would go dormant and sleepy at such cold temperatures, but certain strains of lager yeast can and will ferment at higher temperatures, resulting in estery, fruity lagers a la “Steam Beer.”

Yeast as a Word

Yeast is almost always a noun. While I’m sure some intrepid wordworker could use yeast as a verb (I may be guilty of that), “yeasted” and “yeasting” don’t exist in a traditional vocabulary.

While it can be used as an adjective (yeasty) I’d warn against using it too often, because like “malty” or “hoppy,” it’s not overly descriptive. It functions perfectly well as a general label, but different yeasts perform and taste different, so when describing it, try to pull out words that capture the essence of what the yeast has done to the beer, not just that it is in fact, in there.

Writing about yeast tends to get biological very quickly, so be sure to balance your diction appropriately. No one wants to read a text book, but no one wants juicy scientific details left out either. Above all, respect yeast’s role in making beer, and remember that even though it’s not as glamorized and talked about as hops (or even malt), it’s (arguably) the single most taste-defining ingredient in the entire brewing process.

Don’t believe me? Try drinking straight, uncarbonated wort.

TL;DR – Remember that yeast is the “living” part of beer, ales and lagers are classified as such by their yeast strains, and the scientific names are always italicized.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Malt 101

Hey, I see you there, backing away from that conversation about malt because one person started talking about amylase activity in mash.

Get back in there slugger! I got you covered with this overview of what malt is, how it’s made, and why it’s important.

This primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a deep dive into delicious piles of malt, check out John Mallet’s book from Brewer’s Publications. I heard the guy who edited it is pretty cool.

Malt as a beer ingredient

While consumers may name hops as the most recognizable ingredient in beer (water is always so sadly overlooked), malt does a ton of selfless work in the brewhouse. Loose kernels of malted grain are cracked in a mill then added to the mashtun, where they steep at a specific temperature to encourage enzyme activity, ultimately creating the sweet primordial soup from which all beerish life will eventually emerge: wort.

A beer’s recipe will normally include a combination of base malts and specialty malts.

Base malts are generally pale with high diastatic power (also known as degrees Litner), meaning in layman’s terms that they have the potential to produce more sugar, more easily. They provide the food for the yeast (often called fermentables), and a beer made entirely of a single base malt would be a shade of yellow or gold with a singular complexity.

Specialty malts are added at various points during the mash (depending on the recipe), and contribute to the color, aroma, and flavor profile of the beer. Contrasting the base malts, they tend to contain very few fermentable sugars, and are used primarily for their other gustatory and olfactory qualities.

The length of the sugars extracted by the enzymes in mash dictate much of how the yeast will ferment the beer, too. It may not be as sexy as those sticky pods of lupulin, but malt is incredibly important to brewing (and enjoying) beer.

Malt as a verb

Although “malt” in the brewing industry often manifests as a noun (“what kind of malt did the brewer use in this beer?), the verb form – “to malt” – is more important to understanding the ingredient.

Cereal grains grow tall, and when they are mature, produce seeds. These seeds are like any other; out in the wild, they’d fall to the ground, get covered in dirt and moisture, and begin to grow when the next season came rolling in on Spring sun.

Simple enough.

But taken out of the natural cycle, cereal grains cannot make beer until they are malted, or more specifically, soaked, germinated, and dried. Maltsters (the people who make malt, shockingly enough) harness the seed’s biological imperative, and trick it into growing. They place the seeds into a bed of water and let them begin to grow roots and breathe. The goal is to allow the seed to change – or modify – sufficiently that it will break down its own internal sugars and release them into the hot waters of the mash to make wort.

When the seed is fully modified (or close to) they halt the growing and modification process by blowing hot air through the grain. After the tiny roots are removed (a process call deculming), the malt is kilned, both to prevent spoilage and create desired flavors through Maillard reactions. All of a beer’s color is derived from its malt; the darker the roast, the darker the beer, from the delicate daffodil of lager (pale bale malt) to the midnight dark of stout (roasted barley).

It’s imperative the grain be malted well before it reaches the brewery; without the malting process the seeds would be dry, rock hard, and lacking the necessary sugars to provide a feast for the yeast. Apparently some attempts at non-malt beer have been tried by the Japanese, but 99% of the time, when we’re talking beer as history and culture knows it, we’re talking malted grains.

Malt as a noun

“Malt” as a standalone makes for a poor noun. It’s far too abstract, as many different grains like rye, wheat, sorghum, oat, rice, and corn can be malted.

While yes, malted barley makes up the vast majority of all malt used in beer making, it’s important to quantify which type of malt you’re referring to, which is why you’ll often see references to “malt barley” in beer writing. Malted barley itself can be expanded out into a huge list of varieties and levels of roast, and many beer recipes use multiple types of malted barley to achieve certain flavors and colors (two-row, six-row, Munich, Carapils, Crystal, patent black, etc). Other beers mix types of malted grains – a rye IPA for example might use both malted barley and malted rye.

“Grain” is equally lacking as a noun. Industry jargon discusses the grain bill of a beer (or the list of malts that went into the mashtun) but the word itself refers to unmalted seeds. Grain exists in the fields; it’s an agricultural term. “Grist” – as in grist bill – reads similar; it implies ground grain (like that used to make bread flour), but makes no reference to whether or not it has been malted. Neither are fundamentally incorrect and both are used widely, but it’s always good to remember exactly what each means.

Malt as an adjective/adverb

In Chapter 2 of his book, Mallet says that he thinks Munich malt is the closet match to quintessential “malt flavor” and I tend to agree. It compares best to malt as it appears outside of beer: malted milkshakes and malted chocolate balls. But other varieties of barley malt taste very different; dark roasted specialty malts, like Special B for example, can have notes of raisins and dates, while some other pale base malts taste like Pillsbury dinner rolls or KFC biscuits. All that to say that while there is a basic malt flavor, varieties of malts can taste very, very different from each other.

“Malt” works perfectly as a traditional adjective: malted barley. Use it with impunity.

It doesn’t work at all as a blanket adverb: “malty.”

“Malty” is lazy. And boring. And uninspired.

It’s equivalent to boiling The Alchemist’s Heady Topper or Ballast Point’s Sculpin down to “hoppy.” A single adjective doesn’t do justice to the complexity and variety our tongue and noses are capable of experiencing. Saying a beer is “malty” is like saying that your steak tastes like meat or your wine tastes like grapes; of course it does, it’s quite literally made of that thing. Every single beer in the world (barring maybe that weird aforementioned Japanese stuff) will in some capacity taste malty.

Use bready or biscuity instead. Or toasted or roasted or burnt. Hundreds of other, more specific adjectives can describe what you’re tasting, so don’t  cop out and go with “malty.” Your future readers thank you.

I understand a lot of people use “malty” as a way to grade the level of noticeable malt flavor when compared to others beers and styles, but it’s still an unimaginative smear of language being used in the place of proper, descriptive prose. If something tastes more malty than something else, say exactly that, but then follow it up with concrete examples of what you’re actually tasting.

Malt is both simple and complex, both obviously present and hiding in the background. Take the time to get to know how malt works in your favorite beers, and you’ll discover a new appreciation for the naturalistic side of beer, and how amazing it is that maltsters have basically bridled and domesticated the Kreb’s cycle. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still beautiful in its own, agronomic way, and deserves to be treated with respect lest it, and your writing about it, be infested with weevils.

TL;DR – to use the term “malt” or “malted” is to imply that a grain underwent a specific process that has been used to make beer for centuries. It’s a verb first, a noun second, an adjective third, and an adverb never.

One million pounds of barley malt drying at the Budwesier malting plant in Idaho Falls, ID.

You’re Allergic to What?

Yeast. Legion eukaryota responsible for bread and beer and wine. They’re quite literally everywhere. In the water you just drank. In the food you just ate. I don’t mean to alarm you, but you’re probably breathing some into your mouth and lungs right now.

Normally, that’s no big deal. Our bodies love to play host to microorganisms, especially bacteria and other single-celled-soldiers that keep our homeostasis all homey and stasis-y. To a healthy, balanced body, neither the infection causing candida albicans nor our beloved saccharomyces cerevisiae pose much of a physical threat. Despite populations beyond count, yeast aren’t exactly challenging ebola and influenza for the title of “most dangerous tiny thing in the world.”

When we write and talk about beer and wine, lose ourselves in the revelry of recording good times, it’s easy to forget there are quite a few people out there who don’t drink. Some abstain for moral or religious reasons. Others, while it may seem baffling to me and my kin, legitimately don’t like the taste of alcoholic beverages. Others simply grew up in households without, and as adults, hold a casual indifference towards libatious sorts.

And then there are those who love beer and wine, and would drink it if only they could. Those unfortunate souls who have developed a yeast allergy. Not an alcohol intolerance (which is bad, but not nearly as miserable), but a full-fledged histamine reaction to yeast. They’re the real victims in this crazy kettle of fermented life; willing but not medically able, banished from enjoying pales ales or sandwiches or any products spiked with nutritional yeast, lest they incur the wrath of the anaphylactic gods.

Yeast allergies can be serious and life threatening (like allergies to nuts and bee stings) but they generally present through the antibodies IgG (Immunoglobulin G), which slowly build up sensitivity to certain foods over years of exposure. IgG allergies sneak and snake through your system, presenting very subtly, and getting worse over time. There’s also no (known) genetic marker for a yeast allergy, so in theory, anyone could develop one at any time.

As a beer lover who has woven brewing into the fabric of his being, that’s sort of terrifying.

The symptoms are bad enough: sudden weight gain, complete lack of alcohol tolerance, frequent headaches, dehydration, sometimes even dermal rashes. Worse are the treatments: there are none. Well, no medications. The only real remedy is to avoid foods that contain yeast.

Sounds simple enough, right? Stop drinking beer and wine. There will be a ten minute period where you’re completely inconsolable, but hey, life goes on.

But much like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup have dastardly crawled into more products than expected, yeast can be found in many things you might not have imagined. Cheese fan? Bleu and brie both contain large amounts of yeast. Pretty much all leavened bread? Yeast-city. Many restaurants season broths and soups with yeast, and “nutritional” yeast is a staple in some vegetarian and vegan dishes. Suddenly eating becomes a game of gastrointestinal Russian-roulette, hoping yeast isn’t in the chamber when you pull the dinner-trigger.

It may seem trivial, as yeast allergies constitute a very small percentage of all allergies suffered in the United States. But new research suggests that yeast allergies and intolerance can be linked to celiac disease, the very real and very serious immunological monster that spawned the gluten-free food craze. It’s entirely possible many people who do not have diagnosed celiac but do feel better when they avoid products with gluten – breads, beer, cereal grains – are partially recovering because they’re limiting their exposure to yeast. Both cause your body to reject certain proteins, both present with somewhat similar symptoms.

All medical woes aside, the allergy can also have social impacts for the sufferer. Fellow writer Sheryl Rivett suffers from a yeast allergy she developed in 2007. After years of being a social drinker, her newly developed allergy forced her to dramatically change her lifestyle:

“I’ve found that people often react as if you’re a recovered alcoholic or a teetotaler or even a wet blanket. It can be awkward to explain, “I’m allergic, but please enjoy one for me!” There is such a social element to drinking. Some friends were so uncomfortable with our lack of social drinking that they stopped inviting us to events…I could choose to just drink wine and beer, but I’d weigh an extra 20-30 pounds, I’d never sleep, and my GI system would be my worst enemy.”

The relatively innocuous allergy even changed her plans for the future:

“In the beginning, I had hope that I would one day travel with my husband to Italy or France and drink wine. I still really love the image of the two of us sitting at a Parisian café with glasses of wine in our hands. But as I’ve faced additional health challenges, I’ve come around to embracing a full, healthy life without alcohol…My philosophy, coming through these changes, is that life is to be enjoyed; the trick is to figure out what that life looks like for you specifically. And in my case, it means learning new ways of enjoying life and social situations.”

Yeast allergies don’t command much attention in the medical media, but they’re a serious reality for a lot of people, even if not because of immediate, mortal consequences. Having to remove beer and wine (it should be noted that distilled spirits contain no yeast, so they’re still fair game) from one’s lifestyle may be easier on paper than in practice. It may mean a radical change in behavior and diet. It may mean completely changing activities and groups of friends. It may even mean rebooting what you consider fun, realigning your life in a way that involuntarily but necessarily shuns fermentation.

The good news, as I noted, is that even if you do develop a yeast allergy at some point, you can still drink scotch.

 (It may interest the more beery folks to know that the bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus [the same bacteria that makes some sour beers sour], helps to naturally balance the amount of yeast in our bodies. Sheryl noted that she can eat sourdough without much problem, a bread made with a heaping scoopful of lactobacillus. It also helps facilitate lactose digestion, so if you’re lactose intolerant [like me], it’s basically the most glorious bacteria in the world.) 

Many thanks to Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff for their literary help.

Death of a Man, Birth of a Star

My father died around 3:00 on August 12, 2013. He was 61 years old. He lived more in those six decades than most men could in twelve. If life is measured by brightness and intensity – with weak men an ember smoldering on a stick of incense and great men a blaze feeding on a forest – my father was a supernova.

As his light faded, liver and kidneys unable to hold the battlements against the three year siege from Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia, he saw things. Things that some may attribute to heightened brain activity near death, or hallucinations caused by elevated ammonia levels, or delusion caused by prolonged time in the ICU. Things that others may attribute to gods, or the God, or that shining pre-glimpse of the afterlife pointing the way to the next world.

Some of what he saw scared him. Monsters snarling over his head. Some of what he saw angered him. A mocking, morphing clock. Some of what he saw comforted him. His whole family standing next to him, holding his hands.

But the last thing he saw, that he pointed to with bright eyes, his brown shifting from my blue to the empty space behind me in the sterile sadness of the ICU, is what will twinkle in my memory forever.

He saw stars. Galaxies. A whole universe inside of a tiny room.

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. As we reassured him that he could rest and his pain was over, there came a moment where he ceased to be my father, and became only the body my father had inhabited. The energy of his body will return to the Earth, continuing the cycle of growth and decay, forever part of the beauty that blooms and incredulity of the natural world. But if energy cannot be destroyed, where did his mind go? Where is that brilliant soul so full of passion and compassion that was so much more than the sum of his skin and hair and organs?

My wife and I have discussed the “spark” – the flash in the eyes of someone alive and proud and rhapsodic – and what happens to that energy when it “leaves” a dying body. I’m sure that Heaven or Nirvana or perhaps even Valhalla are popular destinations for the purest of spirits, but I’ve never been the religious type. My love of science and tangible empiricism are directly inherited from my father.

Carl Sagan is often quoted for his nod to the idea of cosmic cohesion: “We are made of star stuff.” He meant that our basic elements – the hydrogen and oxygen and carbon – are the same as those found in the sprawling void. But I take it to mean that we’re all connected to each other in ways we might not understand, that our energies echo on in explicit physical ways, imbued in the things we touch and love, on paths that aren’t necessarily visible or measurable by what we currently know but exist in our reality all the same.

The same day he passed, and all that energy dissipated into unknown space, a new shining spot of light appeared in a previously dark area of space. Just north of the constellation Delphinus, just west of the star Altair, a nova burst into life, flaring with such intensity that it can be seen with the naked eye if you look to the northeast on a clear night.

I’d like to think that his energy was the final push this little binary system needed to blast its light across the limitless distance down into our eyes, into our minds.

I’d like to think he’s forever there, winking and smiling, part of a massive power that while impossibly distant, is right there for me to look at every night.

I’d like to think that the best people go on to be more, their energy taken in death, to be reused in birth.

(A full article about the nova can be found here)

RA 20 h 23′ 31″, Dec. +20 deg. 46

Beerology: Who are you, Brew?

From an outside perspective, brewing beer may seem pretty simple. Heat water, mash malt, boil wort, add hops, cool, pitch, wait, bottle. And to some extent that’s true. As the former owner of Anchor Brewing, Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag, said, “We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.”

Our job is to make the wort. The microscopic chomping of the yeast does all the hard work. But within the simple verb and direct object of “make the wort” is a very large field of scientific study with lots of measurements and experiments and graduated cylinders containing many different colored liquids covering the full range of the SRM beer color spectrum.

My new series, Beerology, will ask questions about craft beer and then attempt to answer them using as much science as a guy who has an undergraduate degree in English can muster. I will attempt to be as academically rigorous as possible, but I apologize now to all the real scientists; I’m still working towards my honorary degrees in Hoplogy, Maltography, and Yeastometrics.

I’m sure a lot of these questions could be answered with some creative Google-voodoo, but that’s not the point. Science! And stuff!

Oliver Gray, Beerologist

The Question: If a bottle somehow lost its label and all other defining marks, could the beer inside be correctly identified?

The Beer Babe asked this question a few weeks ago, and it got me wondering. How can we really identify beer? More importantly, what is the level of consistency between batches of the same beer? Maintaining the same exact recipe and correctly controlling all of the variables is one of the biggest challenges for homebrewers, especially those trying to continually reproduce the same beer over and over again.

While I would have loved to have analyzed the beer under an electron microscope and reported my findings about sugar length and alpha/beta amylase activity, I’m just a normal guy who lives in the suburbs. My “lab” is a tool closet in my basement. I had to get creative with how to test the consistency of these beers.

I chose to compare the very basics – appearance, smell, and taste – and then add in two other markers – pH and specific gravity – of three different batches of three different commercially available beers: Sam Adams Boston Lager, Goose Island Honker’s Ale, and Harpoon IPA.

The Experiment: After excavating the deep, forgotten coolers and shelves of several nearby beer stores, I managed to find SA Boston Lager from two different production batches, as evidenced by the “Enjoy Before” dates:

I used two six-packs from the same group (to measure consistency within the same batch) and one from a different group (to measure consistency between different batches). We’ll call them “Control Group March” and “Control Group July” because that sounds really professional and sciencey. I know this isn’t the greatest sample size, but given the blog-budget (which is currently zero dollars), this was the best I could do.

Before I started, to eliminate any extra variables, I let all the beer warm to room temperature and then go (nearly) flat. I know, I’m so sorry. I feel dirty. I hope the beer gods can forgive me one day, for I only did what I did in the name of progress!

I did the crude taste test first. Each glass of Boston Lager tasted pretty much the same, except the version from Control Group March had a bit of a stale, old-french-fries twinge, which is to be expect from a lager that is nearly 4 months old. They all smelled roughly the same, except again, the beer from the older batch had a little more “been in your uncle’s basement too long” mustiness compared to the fresher stuff.

At a glance, they all appeared exactly the same, too. Same head retention, same color. The magic of Photoshop validates my eyesight too: all three glasses had the same approximate/average hex color (which is #863903 for anyone who wants to make a very true-to-life Sam Adams birthday collage for Jim Koch or something.)

Because I’m bad at math, I poured the third one first. That’s why it has less of a head.

So far so good; you could in theory identify this beer with nothing more than your tongue, nose, and eyes. But let’s swim deeper into the sea of science.

I pulled out my fancy pH meter and began taking measurements:

There was a pretty wide variance in the level of pH from beer to beer in Control Group March. This surprised me, as I excepted, given the similarity in taste, that the pH would be nearly identical. The lowest measurement I took was 4.18, and the highest was 4.41. The average for the three groups was 4.3, 4.2, and 4.21; close enough to say that Boston Lager has a pretty stable final pH of something like 4.25.

As a point of reference, water is ~7, Coca-cola is ~3, and the inside of a normal human mouth is ~5.5-6.5. All of the measurements were still within the normal, healthy range of a lager (which can be anywhere from 3.8-4.5 depending on which chemist you ask or website you read) so it may just be that time in a bottle and location in the batch at bottling can cause fluctuations in the acidity of the final beer. The pH differences between the two July control groups were negligible.

I also tested the specific gravity, using my trusty old, fragile-as-hell hydrometer. If anyone wants to contribute to the “Oliver needs a refractometer and a high powered laser for reasons he won’t explain” fund, please shoot me an email.

The results from the specific gravity tests were as consistent as an old, well cared for Toyota. I won’t even bore you with an analysis of the results. Let’s just say that if there were any differences, they were too minor for the gentle bobbing of a stick of glass in a tube of beer to measure.

The full spreadsheet of my test data can be found here.

The Conclusion: Commercially available craft beer is pretty damn consistent within batches and between batches, but age may cause some changes or instability. As long as you had a fresh example to compare against, you could identify a non-labeled, large-scale production beer based on the taste, smell, color, pH, and specific gravity alone. You wouldn’t even need any fancy sugar or “beer-DNA” analysis. I’m sure they’d corroborate my super scientific findings, though.

This probably only applies to beer that has been filtered and carefully controlled during brewing, meaning you’d have to throw all of this out the window when trying to identify a bottle conditioned or homebrewed beer.

Want more beer science, beertography, and irreverant mumblings? Follow me on Twitter! @OliverJGray

How to Survive a Transatlantic Flight When You’re Stuck Next to a Certifiably Insane Woman

After a hellish layover, you are really looking forward to cramming your ass into a Delta economy seat for six plus hours. You’ve been up since 4 AM local time, and want nothing more than to eat your meagerly portioned vegetarian lasagna in peace.

You trudge down the aisle towards your seat: 34G. It’s the window, which you like, since you can watch the patchwork of farms and suburbs shrink as you leave and grow as you arrive. You can also rest your head against the bulkhead in hopes of pulling down some much needed unconsciousness.

But sitting in your seat is another. She looks like a skeleton who got into a Maybelline factory and just went nuts. Her eyes are huge and wild, never blinking, and her overly sticked lips are cracked and dry.

“Hi, I’m 34G.”

“OK. Guess that means we’re together.” She makes direct eye contact with you. You know this is going to be bad.

She seems completely content with staying in your seat, so you take the aisle instead. It’s not ideal, but best not to start the flight with some petty drama over a seat. As you sit down and remove your coat, bending down to shove it uncerimonious underneath the seat in front of you, you notice the smell. Cheap au de toilette and the unmistakable smell of aloe vera and lidocaine.

Before you’ve even taken off your hat, she asks what you do for a living.

“I’m a writer.” You try to keep the conversation terse, as you’re exhausted and not feeling particularly chatty.

“I am a scientist.” Her voice is harpy-like, tainted by the cringe inducing elements of a thick, Minnesota accent.

“OK.” You look down, fumbling for something to serve as a distraction.

She proceeds to tell you that not only is she a scientist, but she is a bionanotechnologist. You nod. Her eyes flash with eccentricity bordering on full blown insanity. She explains that she is working on something that will “literally change the face of science” but no one respects her findings because she’s a woman. She tells you for the first of about thirty times during the flight that she is fifty-two years old.

She promises to show you her data via a PowerPoint after she’s gone to the bathroom. You politely decline, but she demands you see, as it is apparently very important. As she gets up, you notice her outfit for the first time; a saggy white tank top with the word “Cardio” in bright pink, written in stylized characters. Her ill-fitted yoga pants match.

The woman across the aisle shoots you a sympathetic look. You look around in a panic for a free seat, but this appears to be a full flight. You’re stuck next to the nanobiotecnolometerologist for the next six hours, and there ain’t shit you can do about it.

When she returns, she doesn’t give you a chance to stand up, and instead awkwardly squeezes by you, forcing your laptop up into your face. She sits down and rummages in her bag, pulling out dozens upon dozens of tiny bottles, all filled with unidentified liquids. You are pretty sure she shouldn’t have gotten through security with all of that, but you say nothing.

She proceeds to slather green aloe vera gel all over her shoulders. Before you can ask, she leans in closer than appropriate and proceeds to show you the soft tissue sarcoma that has blown a crater into her shoulder. She is applying the aloe vera to combat the targeted radiation she had that morning and tells you that it is like the worst sunburn you can imagine. You pray for deliverance or death, whichever comes first.

She doesn’t stop talking. After she orders her first glass of pinot grigo, she starts swearing profusely, claiming that, “we’re all fucked” and “don’t even know that we’re fucked.” She also manages to casually slip in several blanket racial slurs, mainly directed at the “dirty” Russians and the “scheming” Chinese.

By now, she has pulled out her MacBook; a filthy thing with more specs of crap on the screen than you’ve ever seen. She has sticky notes stuck on either side of her touchpad; the are penned in some arcane language, or at least by someone who doesn’t understand how to communicate with other humans.

As she goes through slide after slide after slide after slide, of images of metastasised mouse tumors, she points out how her sub 50 nanometer biocapsule is the solution to every problem in the world, including cancer, heart disease, and somehow, Downs Syndrome. She gets to a slide with human test samples, which she not-so-subtly mentions came from her living tissue. She also let’s you know in disgusting detail how she has injected herself with her own, unproven, untested nanocapsules, and that, “they totally worked.”

The technology she is describing is actually sort of fascinating, so you start to write it down in your notebook. You’re thinking, “maybe I can get a bitchin’ SciFi story out of this torment.” She eyes your journal suspiciously and asks if you’ve ever been to Iran. You say no and stare at her blankly. In the dim cabin of the C767-300ER, her crumpled, thin hair makes her look like an extra from Hellraiser.

When the horrific nightmare that is the sub-50 nanocapsule presentation is over, she finally asks why you’re travelling. You explain that you are on your way to meet your wife for an adventure in Ireland. An Emerald Isle Honeymoon, if she will. She won’t. She tells you she is going to meet her younger sister, if the plane doesn’t crash into the middle of the Atlantic while we’re all asleep.

With no conversational transition, she tells you how her marriage has been destroyed because she’s going to be dead in a few years, and how it is important that you and your significant other “test” your relationship by going through some physical hardship. I bite my tongue to keep from suggesting that perhaps her unbridled maniacal monomania might possibly kind of sorta have something to do with her problems.

You’ve tried everything at this point to politely get her to shut the fuck up. When you pull out your Nintendo DS to appear otherwise occupied, she tells you that she is old enough to be your mother, and that video games are “a fucking waste of time.” She tries to read to you from her “Hinduism for Dummies” book. You can’t decide which would be easier: killing her or killing yourself.

The next three hours are like a fever dream; she mentions that she is an incest survivor (you can only guess what that means, and that guess is terrifying), slaps you on the thigh with her emaciated arm at one point after she tells a joke, and explains how she shouldn’t really be running a $100,000 chemistry lab in her basement and injecting her cats with experimental drugs, but the EPA doesn’t give a big enough shit to do anything about it.

Every time you try to fall asleep, she leans in and says something completely asinine like, “think we’re still over the water?”

When skeletor asks you what all those green things lining the outsides of the farms are, use one or two word responses, and feign (or just give into) exhaustion. Keep responding to keep her looking out the window.

“Trees.”

“Soccer field.”

“Rocks.”

“Runway.”

When the plane finally lands, grab your things, and start talking to the couple behind you. Doesn’t matter what you talk about, just talk. 

Bolt for customs. Prey some unnatural evil doesn’t give her strength. Clear customs, escape into the wilds of Ireland, bereft of sanity, haunted by the smell of Banana Boat after burn lotion and poorly applied lipstick.

Appropriate picture from the trip is appropriate.