The inventor of "lite" beer, Joe Owades, died in Sonoma, California, on December 16 at age 86.
Owades was an American biochemist whose chief area of interest originally had been cholesterol. In the early 1950s, however, when work was hard to come by, he took a post first with a laboratory specialising in fermentation science and later one with Rheingold, then among the largest breweries in New York.
Beer is made by the fermentation of sugars obtained from various grains, principally barley. Owades realised that it could be made to feel less heavy on the stomach if many of the excess carbohydrates produced by the brewing process were removed.
