Chapter 5
[1] I was there to talk to a company about egg white, which we were exploring at the time for its potential to boost the foam of beer and as a means of putting a head on novel alcoholic beverages. (I was known as “Scrambled Eggs” by my friends in Glasgow.) One of our concerns was the potential allergenicity of the albumin—a lot of people in the world are sensitive to it. I went down to Harley Street to talk with one expert. My boss had an extra suggestion: “Peter C. at Runcorn is allergic to egg white. So we'll give him some beer with it in. If he survives, we will use it. If he dies, well, we'll have a memorial brew!” He chuckled but, nevertheless, we did indeed do that very thing. Peter is alive and kicking to this day, but the egg white never did find its way into our beer. Too expensive.
[2] There are three major societies worldwide for professional brewers: the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (www.mbaa.com), the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (www.ibd.org.uk), and the American Society of Brewing Chemists (www.asbcnet.org).
[3] Strange: I can handle (even eat) raw fish. I adore pickled herring. And I am no fussy eater. I've eaten kangaroo, reindeer, sheeps' testicles—and fugu, the Japanese fish that has to be prepared with skill, otherwise you will die from the toxin found in various tissues.
[4] The baked beans must be Heinz. They are very different from the canned beans in the US, which are altogether too molasses-like to my taste.
[5] Cornish pasties. Comprise a pastry case within which is finely chopped skirt steak, onions, potatoes, and swede. Heavily seasoned. And the pastry is crimped— originally a device for the tin miners to hold onto while they ate. My lovely wife is Cornish, but it is not true that I married her for a lifetime supply of pasties (inappropriately, it rhymes with “nasties”). Wherever the skilled tin miners went worldwide, you will find that the pasty culture went with them, so we are fortunate indeed here in Davis, California, to be close to gold country.
[6] Lob Scouse. A type of lamb stew, the word deriving from the Norwegian for stew, lapskaus, and savored by sailors throughout Northern Europe. So, it is a meal to be found in great seaports; for example, Liverpool. Liverpudlians are known as Scousers. Oh, for my Auntie Kathleen's Lob Scouse!
[7] Ploughman’s lunch. A hearty chunk of English cheese (of which there are so many wonderful types, including from my native Lancashire), crusty bread, pickled onions, Branston pickles. The last of these is one of the foodstuffs that expat Britons pine for and that shops selling British foods in the US will stock: It originates in a village four miles south of Burton-on-Trent and is made from diverse diced vegetables pickled in a sauce made from vinegar, tomato, apple, dates, mustard, coriander, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and sugar.
[9] Dipping. When Diane and I lived in Sheffield in the north of England, the butcher would ask us if we wanted the pork dipped. He would lower the meat into a tub of brine. The salt would help ensure that the meat retained its moist succulence during cooking—and also the rind of the meat became especially crisp and tasty.
[10] Curry. The ultimate British food! There are more Indian restaurants than any other type in the UK. The British love affair with Indian food stems to the days of the Raj. There is a distinct westernized bias to the dishes—you won't find chicken tikka masala in Mumbai, for instance. However, there are legendary Indian restaurants in my home country—at places like Brick Lane in east London, where virtually every establishment is a subcontinent diner. This is nirvana. Mention of Brick Lane reminds me of the time that there was a Watney's brewery thereabouts. On visiting there once I espied a tailor's shop with the name: “Manny Cohen; formerly of Savile Row.”
[11] See for example Bamforth, C. W. (2002) Standards of Brewing: A Practical Approach to Consistency and Excellence. Brewers Publications, Boulder, CO, and Bamforth, C. W. (editor, 2008) Beer: A Quality Perspective. Handbook of Alcoholic Beverages series, Elsevier.
[12] Mention of letters after my name reminds me of one Sunday morning in England. A very casually dressed man ambled up to our door in Wisborough Green. In a very posh voice he asked for my son, who I was told had volunteered to mow his lawn when he was away on holiday. “Peter is not here right now,” I grunted, “but I will write down our telephone number and you can call him.” I reached for one of my business cards, thinking “this will impress him.” It read “Charles W. Bamforth, B.Sc., PhD, D.Sc, C.Biol, FIBiol, F.Inst.Brew, Director of Research, Deputy Director-General.” “Oh, thanks awfully,” said the man, reaching into his own pocket and handing me his card. It simply said “Sir David Ratford, Her Majesty's Ambassador to Norway.” My good lady later said, “I think simple cards are so much more effective, don't you?”
[13] Vicinal diketones. There are two of these: diacetyl, with its butterscotch-popcorn aroma, and pentanedione (honey). They are produced as a side product of yeast metabolism during fermentation but are subsequently reabsorbed by the yeast, and this demands that the brewer keeps the yeast in contact with the beer until the removal is complete. Failure to do this makes for a beer that is (to my mind) far less drinkable. Diacetyl can also be made by bacteria (so-called Pediococci) that can live in inadequately cleaned dispense lines in bars. This will have been the problem in the bar in Portland. See also endnote 13 in Chapter 3.
[14] Helsby. A village in Cheshire overlooking the Mersey and the Manchester ship canal, between Warrington and Chester. There is a splendid view from the top of Helsby Hill (which is owned by the National Trust), one which is only marginally spoiled by the oil refineries at Ellesmere Port. I once pointed that out to my old boss (the one who smuggled home yeast and who had the novel idea for testing the allergenicity of egg white) that by night it was quite spectacular to see the flames where they burn off the waste gases. He suggested that the view is probably something similar in Hell.
[15] Buddha in the bubbles. I like Jean-Pierre—and not only because he referred to me as the “Pope of Foam.” In fact, come to think of it, that is not a particularly impressive thing to be. When I was a young biochemist embarking on what I intended as service to humankind, I am sure I would far sooner have aspired to being the Cardinal of Cancer or the Archbishop of Atherosclerosis. But it is what it is, and speaks to rather too many papers on what puts a head on beer. And I now realize that it is merely a metaphor for the Noble Truths. Grab a cold one from the refrigerator and a glass and slip into a comfortable seat. Take a good look at the bottle: brown, green, or crystal clear; you can see the beer in there but not a hint of foam. It does not exist in this moment. It has no inherent reality. Indeed, if we are one of the millions worldwide who have the habit of drinking the beer directly from the bottle, then the foam will never exist. We all know, do we not, that when we do go the extra mile and pour the beer into the glass then the bubbles will come and they will (all things being equal) linger. The greater the vigor of our pour, the deeper the head will become. So do it now: Tip the beer over the center of the glass, cascade the nectar, and admire the whiteness as the foam surges forth. Lashings of lather. Yet, just as was the case before we lifted the bottle, there is nothing there. Not really. Look at your glass and those lovely bubbles. Chances are each of them has a radius of something like 0.4 mm. And so if you fill the glass with foam, then there are 1.75 million bubbles right there. (Go ahead, count them if you don't believe me.) Let's say we were tiny little creatures that could walk all over and around the surface of each and every one of those bubbles. We would be confronted with an area of 35,500 cm2. That's a little less than 40 square feet. Heck, ten bottles of beer worth of foam is tantamount to a pretty decent hotel bedroom! And still there is nothing there. Let's say that the thickness of the liquid wall around each of those bubbles is 10 millionths of a meter. That means that each of those bubbles is 95 percent gas which, of itself, we cannot see. Oh sure, we know that there is carbon dioxide in there, but to our eyes and minds there is nothing but space. And still there is nothing there, even though we are told that the bubble walls are coated in protein, which allows them to linger and survive. It has been estimated that there are 40 billion protein molecules coating every bubble. That is a thousand times more protein molecules as there are people living in California. On every bubble. And can we see them? No. So, still there is nothing there—even though each and every one of those protein molecules comprises thousands of atoms. And each and every atom has its nucleus circumnavigated by electrons. In fact, the nucleus occupies only a tiny space within the overall atom. In an atom of hydrogen, the nucleus (a single proton) has a diameter of approximately 10-15 m (that is one thousand million millionths of a meter), whereas the diameter of the atom itself is 10-10 m, or 100,000 times wider. A hydrogen atom has a solitary electron, with a diameter of less than 10-18 m. How tiny is that in an extremely minuscule scenario! There it is, whizzing around in a planetary orbit about a nucleus that is (relatively speaking) a distant speck. Take a moment to think about it: This solitary hydrogen atom is, to all intents and purposes, just emptiness, with only a fraction occupied by anything “solid.” Work it out for yourself: The volume of the hydrogen atom is 5 x 10-31 m3. The volume of the nucleus is 4 x 10-45 m3. In other words, the volume of the hydrogen nucleus is vastly less than a millionth of a millionth of the total volume of the atom. And the electron is even more insignificant. Although atoms of other elements have many more electrons and, in turn, bigger nuclei, packed with more and more protons and neutrons, they too are merely space. Even the biggest atom is, for the most part, nothingness. And if we apply the modern-day atomic physics, which says that particles are merely waves of energy and have no particle nature at all, then this emptiness is even more complete. So all those atoms in all those proteins make for nothing more than emptiness. There is nothing there. And even if we insist, despite all this, that the foam is right there, in our eyes, an indisputable reality, then let us dissuade ourselves from any notion that even if we weren't to touch a drop of the liquid, the foam would be there for all time. It will sooner or later collapse, returning whence it came to the body of the beer. Easy come, easy go.
[16] The Weights and Measures (Beer and Cider) Bill (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmbills/cmbills/026/1997026.htm) of 1997 declares in section 43: “Any reference to a quantity of beer or cider in any provision made under section 22 above in relation to the sale of draught beer or cider shall be construed as a reference to that quantity disregarding the gas comprised in any foam on the beer or cider.” In other words, a pint is a pint of liquid and the foam needs to be atop that. Thus the presence in the North of England of “oversized” glasses in which a line indicates where the liquid should be dispensed to, leaving 1-2 cm on top for the foam. In London, chances are the glass will literally be exactly one pint, because at most there is a solitary layer of bubbles on it.
[17] Briton. The proper term for someone who originates from Great Britain. I cringe when someone calls me a “Brit.” They would not, for example, come face to face with someone from Japan and call them… you get the point? Anyway, I prefer to say that I was born English.
[19] You can read about these studies in (a) Bamforth, C. W. (2000) “Perceptions of beer foam,” Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 106, 229-238; (b) Smythe, J. E., O'Ma-hony, M., and Bamforth, C. W. (2002) “The Impact of the Appearance of Beer on Its Perception.” Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 108, 37-42; (c) Smythe, J. E. and Bamforth, C. W. (2003) “The path analysis method of eliminating preferred stimuli (PAMEPS) as a means to determine foam preferences for lagers in European judges based upon image assessment.” Food Quality and Preference, 14, 567-572.
[20] See Roza, J. R., Wallin, C. E., and Bamforth, C. W. (2006) “A comparison between the instrumental measurement of head retention/lacing and perceived foam quality.” Master Brewers Association of America Technical Quarterly, 43, 173-176.
[21] The equipment was loaded into a U-Haul, and I drove it back across the country, accompanied by my son Peter riding shotgun. 1,992 miles.
[22] Pom. I love the Aussies (and the Kiwis of New Zealand) despite their insistence on calling us “poms” or “pommies.” The origin is uncertain. For some, it refers to “Prisoner of Mother England” and the early westerners who settled in the colonies at the “invitation” of the courts of England and for crimes such as, well, stealing a chicken. Others believe it refers to the fact that fairskinned Britons turn the color of a pomegranate in the baking heat of the Antipodes. Regardless of the etymology, I really don't mind the name. So much better than being called a Brit.
[23] There are several other sources of haze and sediments in beer, including microbes (dead and alive), starch, other complex polysaccharides from grain, and oxalic acid—which is the same stuff that is in rhubarb and which makes your tongue furry.
[24] I recall being invited onto a well-known television news program once that was anchored by a famous husband-and-wife tandem. I arrived early and spent a very convivial few minutes talking to the man about his love of beer. “And does your wife like beer,” I asked. He shook his head. “No,” he said, “she says it fills her up too much.” “Oh,” I replied, “gas.” “No,” he deadpanned, “it's the sausages that cause that.”