Michael Russell asked:




As you’re growing up as a teenager, there are a number of things that you look forward to; getting your drivers license, graduating from high school, going to your senior prom, having your first date and having your first beer. The problem with this last one is that the drinking age and the thing you want make it something that you just can’t have yet. And still, you want it and will go to any lengths to get it.

Underage beer drinking is certainly no secret and to try to sweep it under the carpet isn’t going to make it go away. But the most odd thing about underage drinking when it comes to beer is that even after kids sneak their first beer, they still want to have another one. If you’re wondering why that sounds so strange then you need to think back to when YOU had your first beer. It was pretty nasty tasting. Let’s be honest, beer is bitter and is an acquired taste. Very few people, if any at all, enjoyed their first beer. Many even get sick after it because of the taste or the fact that they’re not used to the alcohol yet.

And still, they want another. Why?

Well, that all comes down to beer being the “cool” thing to drink when you’re a kid. Most teenagers wouldn’t consider sitting down to a gin and tonic. That’s and “old” person’s drink. Kids drink beer because they see the characters on TV and movies drinking beer. James Bond may have been cool drinking martinis, but let’s face it, most kids wouldn’t know how to make a martini with the directions right in front of them. But how hard is it open up a bottle of beer? Today, with the twist off caps, it’s not hard at all. Beer is convenient. That’s another reason kids choose it over drinks that you have to mix.

And where are they getting their beer from? Simple. They’re getting their beer from their older friends. An 18 year old has no trouble walking into a liquor store or a bar and picking up a six pack. What he does with that six pack, which unfortunately many times involves bringing it to his underage friends, is out of the store owner’s control. The sad truth is, it’s out of everybody’s control. And as a result, this thing that kids want, as bad as that prom date, as bad as that graduation, as bad as that driver’s license, while something they are not ready to have, either legally or emotionally, is delivered, parcel post, right into their underage hands.

Maybe if we didn’t glamorize beer in the movies and on TV; maybe if we didn’t have all these cool sports stars and movie starts promoting it on commercials; maybe if we made kids realize that beer in the hands of a 16 year old is like putting a gun in his hands; maybe we wouldn’t have so much underage drinking going on.

Daniel John Cooper asked:




To label or not to label, that was the difficult decision facing the brewing industry when new European Commission food labelling directives were introduced in 2003. The EC wanted to tighten the labelling legislation surrounding food and drink. What they wanted to achieve was to provide the consumer, especially those with food allergies, with a greater level of information about not only all of the ingredients present in food and drink but also those ingredients or processing aids that were used in a food or drink’s production.

It is widely accepted that the prevalence of food allergies is increasing and with there being no cure for the condition, those who suffer sensitivity to particular foods have to adopt management strategies to ensure that they do not consume even small amounts of the foods to which they react. To be able to do that food allergy sufferers need precise information about the ingredients contained in the food and drink that they are likely to consume.

The labelling of most food and drink in the UK is governed by the provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990 and The Food Labelling Regulations 1996. In addition to these provisions the European directive 2000/13/EC set out more general requirements for the listing of ingredients used in food. However, this legislation contained a number of exemptions that meant that the consumer with food allergies would not have access to the relevant information to make an informed decision about whether a particular product was safe to consume. A particular shortfall was a provision known as the 25% rule which meant that if a compound food, such as a sponge cake used in a trifle, made up less than 25% of the finished food the manufacturer was not legally obliged to label the ingredients that made up that compound food. Understandably there was a high degree of dissatisfaction from a number of consumer groups representing food allergy sufferers who felt that this labelling practice should be changed. Thus a new EC directive was introduced in 2003 requiring full ingredient listings for common food allergens. In all 12 common food allergens were identified as having to be labelled and these included things such as nuts, milk, eggs, and cereals containing gluten. However, also included in the list of food allergens that had to be labelled were ingredients derived from fish which presented the brewing industry with a labelling dilemma.

Beer which is ready to be racked into casks typically contains around one million yeast cells per millilitre. This creates a visible haze in the beer which many drinkers would associate with a beer that is past its best. Therefore the yeast has to be separated from the beer. If the beer is to be brewery conditioned, where secondary fermentation is carried out in conditioning tanks in the brewery, there are a number of methods that can be employed to remove the yeast prior to packaging such as centrifugation and filtration. However, for cask conditioned beer, yeast must remain in the cask after it leaves the brewery to enable secondary fermentation to occur. If a cask of beer is left for long enough yeast will eventually sediment naturally leaving the beer bright and clear. However, thirst breeds impatience, and of course economic realities facing the busy pub landlord require that this sedimentation has to be a lot quicker. To achieve cask conditioning, but also allow the landlord to serve a clear pint of beer, brewers add a wonderful processing aid known as finings, and in particular isinglass finings, to the cask.

Over the years a wide variety of substances have been employed to aid the clarification of beer including oyster shells, chalk and fullers earth. However, before the advent of earthenware, beer and wine was often stored in dried animal skins as well as containers derived from other animal sources such as stomachs and fish swim bladders. It was the Romans who noted that wine stored in just such vessels was much less opaque than wine stored in other vessels. In a more purified form Isinglass, the product of fish swim bladders, was found to be particularly effective at clarifying wine and beer and so when commercial brewing expanded at the end of the 18th century its use became routine to clarify beer in the cask.

At that time isinglass was sourced from the sturgeon, a common large fish found in many of the rivers surrounding the major brewing cities. Today isinglass is generally obtained from the swim bladders of fish such as catfish, drumfish and threadfins caught in tropical and sub-tropical waters. The swim bladder, located in the dorsal portion of the fish allows the fish to control its depth without having to expend energy by swimming. The size of the swim bladder and its quality as a fining agent varies between fish species and can also be affected by where the fish are caught. Thus the dried bladders have gained rather exotic names such as Long Saigon, Pennang and Brazil Lump and some brewers may insist on using isinglass finings made from a particular type of swim bladder.

So how are isinglass finings prepared and how do they work?

To prepare finings suitable for brewery use the isinglass is removed from the fish and dried naturally, if dried too quickly a lot of the clarification potential can be lost. Once dried the finings are cleaned, sterilised and “cut” in acid. The “cutting” process results in a white liquid or emulsion of isinglass which is ready to add to beer.

The mechanism by which the action of fining beer works can be explained by a mathematical formula derived by George Gabriel Stokes in 1851. Stokes was interested in how particles moved in fluids, particularly how they settled or sedimented at the bottom of a liquid. Rather unsurprisingly Stokes observed that one of the key factors that determined how quickly particles settled was their size. The bigger the particle the quicker it would settle. Therefore if you can get small particles to somehow coalesce and form bigger particles they will settle quicker. That is the principle that underpins how isinglass works in beer.

The important constituent of isinglass that makes it effective as a fining agent is collagen. Collagen is a protein that has a helical shape rather like the structure of DNA but whereas DNA has a double helix collagen has a triple helix. The triple helix of collagen winds itself together to form a complex mesh or net like structure. Furthermore Collagen contains numerous sites within that helical structure which are electrically positively charged in beer and are a key factor as to why isinglass is so effective at clarifying beer.

When added to beer, it has been proposed, that isinglass passes through beer, if you can pardon the analogy, rather like a fishing net. The yeast cells simply become enmeshed in the net like structure and an electro-static interaction between the positively charged sites on the collagen molecule and the negatively charged surface of the yeast cell creates a tight bond between yeast and isinglass. This newly created particle has a vastly increased size and so sediments out of the beer far quicker than the yeast would naturally and the pub landlord now has a cask of clarified ale ready for serving.

Isinglass finings are a tried and tested method of clarifying beer and so it came as a great relief to traditional cask ale brewers when the EC, last year, introduced an amendment to the 2003 labelling directive. The brewing industry successfully argued that as a processing aid, not an ingredient that would be consumed, and with a long history of use with no recorded incidents of an allergic reaction there was a good case for isinglass to be exempt from the directive and the future of isinglass as a brewing aid secured.

Joey Pebble asked:




Beer is the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, and was one of the first drinks ever produced by human beings. It is estimated that it may date back to as early as 6000 BC, and it is mentioned in the recorded history of the most ancient human civilizations, including that of Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and ancient Egypt.

Since beer can occur naturally, through the fermentation of any substance containing carbohydrates, the beverage was probably discovered before it was invented. This also means that the secret of producing it was probably learned in many different locations, independent of one another. The earliest archaeological evidence for the consumption of beer that we have is from chemical remains dating back to about 3500 BC.

Some archaeologists have theorized that civilization was developed, to give people the tools necessary to produce beer on a large scale, for entire populations.

We know that the production and consumption of beer in Europe dates back as far as 3000 BC, carried by Germanic and Celtic Tribes.

Early forms of beer would not be recognizable by today’s standards because they did not contain hops, and were often made from a variety of fruits, honeys, and various plants and spices. Many beers were also made using various hallucinogenic and narcotic substances found growing in local areas.

The first mention of the use of hops comes from a Carolingian Abbot in the year 822 AD, although it certainly could have been in use before that time. The use of hops in beer production was also mentioned later by writings of the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen.

Most pre industrial beer was produced on a domestic scale, town by town, or household by household. However in Europe during the Middle Ages monasteries did start to produce the beverage on a larger scale.

The industrial revolution changed the way that beer was made, turning it into a large scale business. This would eventually put an end to most significant domestic and small scale production, in favor of mass produced corporate beverages manufactured in factories and exported worldwide.

Today beer is produced in countries around the world. While there are several larger companies that dominate the market, there are also a wide variety of smaller niche brewing businesses that range the gamut in size and product. There are also a wealth of small individual pub breweries and cottage industry manufacturers.

Michael Russell asked:




In a previous article we started a discussion of some of the things you can learn about beer. We covered some of the basics. But beer goes way beyond basics. Maybe that’s why over 100,000 people each month do Internet search engine lookups on beer. Ready for some more things you can learn about beer? Great! Let’s begin!

Everybody talks about ABV or alcohol by volume. Every beer drinker should know his ABV or he’s going to be in a lot of trouble if he wants to keep from getting too sloshed out of his mind. ABV simply means what portion of the total amount of liquid in the bottle of beer is alcohol. Why is this important? Very simple. The more alcohol by volume, the more actual alcohol that you’re drinking. That’s why you can drink three bottles of one beer with an alcohol by volume of say 9% and feel nothing, while at the same time drink only two bottles of a beer with an alcohol by volume of 20% and get rip roaring drunk. It’s not the number of bottles of beer. It’s how much alcohol is in each one.

What about freshness? Did you know that beer can go stale? Sure can. Well, no need to worry because you can also learn how to tell the freshness of your beer and how to keep your beer fresh. These tips include things like buying your beer right from the cooler to begin with, checking the freshness or package date, checking for dust (sure sign of stale beer), not buying beer that’s stored in direct light and not buying beer that is on sale. Sale beer is stale beer.

You can even learn proper etiquette on tipping for a bottle or glass of beer when at a bar. After all, you tip your waitress when you order food, so why not tip your bartender when ordering a beer. You should always keep some spare change in your pocket for doing this. Even if your bottle of beer is only a couple of bucks, throw the bartender two bits. You’ll feel much better for it.

What about home brewing? Well, believe it or not, if you look hard enough, you can actually find articles on how to brew your own beer, from picking the ingredients to how to mix them to the type of equipment you’ll need. There’s a lot to learn about brewing your own beer. Just make sure you check with the local laws to ensure that you’re not in violation of any town ordinances.

And if all that isn’t enough, there is always the history of beer itself. You can learn when the first beer was made, when the first major manufacturer of beer came to be and who it was. You can even learn about the history of every company that ever sold beer on this planet. It’s enough reading to keep you busy for years. Oh and in case you’re wondering, the first beer brewed in the United States was brewed by the colonists in Virginia in 1587.

See, there’s a lot you can learn about beer besides how to burp after a good swig of it.

asked:




Beer is one of the oldest and probably the most popular alcoholic beverage in the world. It is sometimes even referred to as “liquid bread”. Brewer’s yeast, one of the beer’s main components, is known to be a rich source of nutrients and this means that beer may have some health benefits. But on the other hand, beer contains alcohol, which is known to cause some serious negative effects on our health.

First, let’s look at the beer’s benefits.

Source of vitamins, minerals and flavonoids. Beer is rich in many vitamins of the B group and in minerals such as magnesium. Barley and hops used in the production of beer are rich in flavonoids, which have powerful antioxidant effects.

(Mobile Themes)

Coronary heart disease (CHD). There is quite strong evidence that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has cardio-protective properties. Many research studies demonstrate a lower coronary heart disease incidence among moderate beer drinkers. Moderate drinkers are at lower risk of CHD-related mortality than both heavy drinkers and abstainers. Vitamin B6 in beer also seems to prevent the alcohol-induced rise in blood homocysteine, a probable heart disease risk factor. Cholesterol. Moderate alcohol drinking affects many processes in the body, one of which is the significant increase in HDL cholesterol – the good cholesterol. There is supporting evidence for beer’s cardio-protective effect and for its help in altering the ratio of beneficial HDL cholesterol to the LDL cholesterol. Kidney stones. Beer consumption may reduce the risk of developing kidney stones. Finnish researches found that there was a 40% lower risk of kidney stones in beer drinkers. X-Rays radioprotection. Japanese researchers found that beer helps reduce chromosomal damage from radiation exposure.

asked:




Alright so I just finished reading over the Home Beer Brewing Secrets eBook. This guide is actually the best one I have purchased on this topic. It was filled with explanations and a full step by step guide that I needed.

There were many sections to this eBook. It starts off with the explanation of what is in beer and how beer tastes like it does. The book also goes over how many home beer brewing kits fail to even make beer. The eBook does talk about one tool in particular that will help stop your beer from spoiling, and it’s so simple you’ll laugh when you read it. I honestly didn’t even realize it. I’m not going to tell you here obviously but you will find out when you read Home Beer Brewing Secrets.

expertvillage asked:

Get to know all about the different styles of beer you can home brew, including brown ale beer; learn more about how beer is made in this free instructional video. Expert: Mark Emiley Contact: www.wahomebrewers.org Bio: Mark Emiley has been homebrewing since 1998 when he cooked up his first batch of porter. Filmmaker: Mark Emiley

expertvillage asked:

How to measure the hops to home brew brown ale beer; learn more about how beer is made in this free instructional video. Expert: Mark Emiley Contact: www.wahomebrewers.org Bio: Mark Emiley has been homebrewing since 1998 when he cooked up his first batch of porter. Filmmaker: Mark Emiley

RomSpb asked:

Home brewery

cooperbl7 asked:

A song about good hoppy homebrewed beer, written and recorded (sort of) by Brian and Jimi Cooper in an apartment in Pleasanton, CA. Cheers! the Cooper bro’s. Lyrics: The Hoppy Beer Song This is a song about beer… I like beer… So much I brew my own… I drank a…