The Beer Tap

"The Device"

This is a classic example of having too much time and money on your hands.  Or maybe just being a gadget kind of person.  John Carnett, a staff photographer at PopSci, has built an all-in-one beer making and serving device.  It allows you to brew, ferment, store and serve all on one easy mounted skid.  Not exactly how I would go about spending money on brewing equipment, though.  I would compare this to a bread making machine...functional but lacking in the fun department.  Too much automation and its hard to claim "hand crafted" any more.  (Note: I am hardly one to talk about spending money on brewing equipment, so I won't knock them too much in that department.  I just think it would be more beneficial to buy something like a kegerator.  The beer keeps much longer when stored cold and not in room temperature kegs!)  Total bill for the project?  $4,315.  Yep...that's a decent chunk of change.  But as MasterCard would say...somethings are "priceless".

There is also a You Tube video out there, but I did not want to embed a link.  The details on the brewing process are presented in a manner that I think could lead to confusion.  Watch it at your own risk!  I found the story over at gizmodo.com through a Google search.  Thanks to Matthew Sparkes for posting the story.

Bitterness and the Tongue

Every day or two I make a lap around some of the other beer blogs out there to help round out all of my beer related news reading.  Today I found a very interesting post by the guys over at Hop Talk about hop bitterness and how it is perceived on the tongue.  They reference an article that was originally posted by Eric Trimmer over at Trouble Brewing which quotes one of Trimmer's scientist friends who spent a year studying beer.  I won't rehash the article here, but the basic gist is that hop bitterness (from iso-alpha-acids) is perceived on different parts of the tongue than other food bitterness.  It even includes a do-it-yourself home experiment so that you too can experience the difference.  Drinking beer in the name of science.  Nice!  Check out the article to learn more and impress your beer drinking friends with this bit of trivia.

Do I Smell a Terpene?

Aaron Rowe over at the WIRED Science blog forwarded me an article that he wrote about research into the chemicals responsible for the spicy aromas associated with noble hops and I thought it worth sharing.  It includes a couple of complex chemical names, but the article itself is very easy to read.  So don't freak out if you are not versed in the complexities of organic chemistry and analytical methods.  Still a little worried?  Here's a quick cliff notes version:

Researchers in Australia and New Zealand used a complex analytical method to separate all of the chemicals found in hops and then asked evaluators to match what they smelled against a list of descriptors.  According to the author, a similar method has been used in the evaluation of wine, coffee, and even manure (I hope they paid them well for that one!)  Just think of it as smelling hops one chemical at a time to figure out exactly what chemical causes fruit vs. floral vs. spicy aromas.  Turns out 5 different chemicals stood out from the others and they all happened to be from the same class of chemicals, terpenes.  Where was this experiment when I was in college doing one of what felt like hundreds of labs?!?!?  I guarantee I never did one anywhere close to "What does my beer smell like?"  Although a few were probably sub-titled "Written while drinking beer".

So what does this mean for brewing?  An area to focus on for producing new hop varieties most likely.  Many of the hop varieties used today are genetic mutations of previously used varieties.  Scientist may now be able to modify a hop variety to increase or decrease the production of a particular terpene.  In doing so, a brewer will be able to better control the aroma of a finished beer by using this new hop.  So don't go adding pine sap to your brew just yet (its high in terpenes)!  I'd wait and leave the terpene modifications to the real professionals.  And please, no matter how tempting, do not even think about using words like Eugeneol and Beta-ionone to describe the aroma on a beer. (Yes...someone out there will do it at some point.  Absolutely tragic!)