Chapter 8
[2] In my lab I only take undergraduates and MS students, never PhDs. There are no jobs for PhD students in the brewing industry, with the possible exception of some companies in Japan and China. What the industry is looking for is managers and brewers, not researchers. And very little in a five-year PhD program will prepare one for the night shift. My much-missed late father-in-law, Don Dunkley, would say that to have a PhD was to be “educated to the heighth (sic) of ignorance.” Having said which, he was pretty proud of his son and son-in-law, who had them.
[3] In the spring of 1978, when I was towards the end of my post-doctoral appointment in the Department of Microbiology at Sheffield University, an advertisement took my eye—there was a need for a microbial enzy-mologist. It was exactly up my street, even more so when I scanned through the entry to find that the potential employer was the Brewing Research Foundation. I traveled down to Nutfield, Surrey, for an interview on Thursday, and on Saturday a letter plopped through the letterbox of our Woodseats home to offer me the job. Two days. I thought, “Wow, they want me.” And so I went into brewing.
[5] French president Jacques Chirac was quoted as saying (about the British) to German and Russian leaders in 2005, “One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad.” It seems, though, that he thought Finnish food was worse. Vive la difference, say I. Tolerance, une autre fois.
[6] One unit is 8g or 10mL of alcohol. So, if your beer is 5 percent alcohol by volume, than means that a 12-ounce serving (355 mL) is 17.75 mL, or 1.8 units. In other words, a couple of such beers each day would be the maximum.
[7] Owens, J. E., Clifford, A. J., and Bamforth, C. W. (2007) “Folate in Beer.” Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 113, 243-248.
[8] Probiotics are certain bacteria that are loaded into foods (for example, yogurts) on account of their potential benefits to large intestine health by reinforcing the levels of such organisms naturally present. Prebiotics are substances that these beneficial bacteria can feed on, and so eating foods containing prebiotics is an alternative strategy for boosting the level of these “good bacteria” in the bowel.
[9] Ferulic acid is also the molecule that is converted by the special ale yeast used to make hefeweissen to the substance that affords the clovelike aroma.
[11] In fact, I have concerns about the interpretation of many studies (including my own) that address beer in the context of health. This is not because I doubt their veracity in any way. Rather it is because sometimes desperate and hurting people cling to the hope that they engender. Following the press release on our silica work, I received several heart-wrenching messages from people suffering from osteoporosis, people who confused me for a medical practitioner. It was harrowing stuff, and I felt such regret that they had misinterpreted what we had really done, which was restricted to studying the factors that impact silica levels in beer.
[12] Glycemic index. Classifies carbohydrates according to their impact on the sugar content of blood.
[13] The calorie content of beer is most readily quantified as Calories (kcal/100g) = 6.9(A) + 4(B-C)
Where A is alcohol (% by weight), B is real extract (% by weight), and C is ash (% by weight).
To a first approximation, the real extract is the level of everything from the wort left behind after fermentation except for ash (inorganic minerals). For the most part, this residual material is carbohydrate and protein.