Boing Boing » booze

Five great myths of cocktail chemistry

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:14:11 +0000

There is nothing wrong with adding ice to scotch, writes Kevin Liu at Serious Eats. In fact, a little water can change the flavor profile of the drink for the better. What's more, chilling your scotch won't dampen down the aroma. A chilled drink won't be flinging off scent molecules left and right, but it will warm up enough from your hot breath to get the chemistry of scent where it needs to go — and to give you the flavor experience you want.

Edison cylinder inscribed on a beer-bottle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:00:55 +0000

Mathew sez,

19th Century technology meets 21st Century music over a bottle of beer in the latest extension to the Beck's Record Label project. This time, the art label has evolved, and been replaced by the grooves of Auckland band Ghost Wave. Their new single was inscribed into the surface of a beer bottle which could then be played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison's original phonograph.
The idea originated with creative agency Shine in Auckland NZ, but making the world's first playable beer bottle was a formidable technical challenge. The clever people at Gyro Constructivists first had to design and build a record-cutting lathe, driven by a hard drive recording head. Then they reinvented Edison's original cylinder player, using modern materials and electronics and built to very fine tolerances. The Edison Bottle made its public debut at SemiPermanent in Auckland in May to a standing ovation from the assembled media and design community.

The Beck's Edison Bottle

Spirit Airlines is sure you'll enjoy its new 6% alcohol wine-in-a-can

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:58:44 +0000

Because "Your choices at 30,000 feet are pretty limited."

Vein-shaped wine carafes

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:29:50 +0000

An example of fantastic, whimsical bio-tableware from sculptor Etienne Meneau. Holds a full bottle.

If it looks difficult to pour from or clean, Meneau has an FAQ for that.

Via the good folks at The Annals of Improbable Research

Extreme Bloody Mary, Wisconsin style

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:56:50 +0000

Take a look at this impressive, heavily loaded Bloody Mary, served at O'Davey's Irish Pub & Restaurant in Fond du Lac. (Also known as Davey's.)
This ultimate hangover cure is topped with an extensive beer chaser consisting of pop corn, bacon, peanuts, beans, sausage, pretzel, sliders, a pickle and (this is Wisconsin after all) a cracker and cheese curd. Plus a Brewers flag.

Wildest Bloody Mary you've ever seen creating buzz for Wisconsin [Gitte Laasby/Journal Sentinel]

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Independent Brewers United says they own sixes and nines

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:26 +0000

Magic Hat IP, LLC and Independent Brewers United Corporation filed a remarkably spurious trademark lawsuit against West Sixth Brewery in Lexington, KY. Ben sez:

The suit alleges that West Sixth's own logo, which is a "6" within a circle, infringes upon its trademarked "#9" mark and is "directing Defendant West Sixth to account for and to pay over to Magic Hat all profits realized by West Sixth as a result of its use of the 6 Marks, its infringement of MagicHat's trademarks and trade dress, and its acts of unfair competition" as part of the awards it seeks from this suit.
Magic Hat is owned by North American Breweries, a large, multinational corporation that produces and imports several different brands of beer. West Sixth, on the other hand, is a local startup started about a year ago that strives to give back to its own community through financial donations, environmental stewardship, and community activities, many of which are free for attendees.

Brewer Magic Hat files federal lawsuit against West Sixth Brewing

Dazzle-paint bar

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:42:34 +0000

The basement of the Hôtel Americano in Chelsea, NYC has been done over in dazzle-paint reminiscent of the cubist battleship paint used to confound the enemy in WWI (and dazzle makeup used to fake out face-recognition systems). The work is by German artist Tobias Rehberger, who describes it as a re-creation of Frankfurt's Bar Oppenheimer.

The space, which opens May 10 and will remain open until July 14, dazzles the senses with its salonlike atmosphere, tight dimensions and prismatic black-and-white stripes; it’s also a functional bar where anyone can stop in for a drink during the life of the project.

By Design | A Bar That’s Also a Piece of Art [Rocky Casale/New York Times Magazine]

(via JWZ)

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail of a larger photo by Matthew Cianfrani, viewable here)

Speed-aging bourbon with the power of technology

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:40:28 +0000

When bourbon ages, what's actually happening is that daily fluctuations in temperature are changing the pressure in the barrel, forcing liquid in and out of pores in the oak. At NPR, Alan Greenblatt writes about an entrepreneur who has figured out how to mechanically recreate this process — speeding up the time it takes to age bourbon from months or years, to a matter of days. This may or may not be an appropriate use of technology, depending on your bourbon ideology.

Chiller "Pucs" for your whiskey, etc on Kickstarter

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 03:23:35 +0000

An extremely successful Kickstarter project ($41K raised on a $2500 goal, with 36 days left) promises stainless steel chiller pucks to go in your drinks. They're rather nice to look at, and promise not to impart any flavors, nor water down your bevvy. These are rather similar to the (controversial) Coffee Joulies from 2011, and at #8 for 6 "pucs" in a walnut case, it's a somewhat pricey accessory.

Pucs are precision machined from solid 304 stainless steel - the same material used in most medical, dental and kitchen tools. For that reason they are 100% inert, will not add or subtract from the flavor your drink in any way, will not absorb smells or flavors from your freezer, will not rust, oxidize, degrade, discolor, leak, pit, chip, flake, crack or dissolve. They're impervious to every drink imaginable, can also withstand tons of pressure and have a melting point of 1450°F! Pucs are completely dishwasher safe - either clean them with soap and water or give them a quick ride in the dishwasher, then send them to the freezer to re-chill.

Pucs: rechargeable ice! (via Yanko)

Tiki Room mugs

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:59:28 +0000

Designer Kevin Kidney's posted more of the awesome Tiki Room stuff he and Jody Daily designed for the Disneyland Tiki Room 50th Anniversary event this summer (he posted his Luau Bowl earlier). This time around, it's a pair of lidded mugs paying homage to two of the idols of the tiki garden outside the Tiki Room in Disneyland: Pele and Tangaroa-Ru.

New Tiki Room Collectibles Coming to Disneyland This Summer (Part 1)

The classy and fascinating back story behind pink champagne

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:29:01 +0000

This article at Lapham's Quarterly by Peter Foges has me rethinking my biases against rose champagne — a drink I tend to associate with undergrads and poorly conceived 7-Up cocktails. Turns out, the history (and the chemistry) of rose are totally fascinating. Traditionally the quaff of queens (and really, really, really high-class hookers), real rose is surprisingly difficult to make, relying on a process that could, with just a small error, go wrong and leave you with a drink that is red, brown, or even blue.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's long history of public drunkenness and brawling

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:27:17 +0000

Two weeks ago, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was accused of drunkenly groping and propositioning former mayoral race rival Sarah Thomson at a Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee charity event. He denied it, and smeared Thomson on his radio show.

Now, many people have come forward to say that Ford had become drunk and disorderly at military charity event called the Garrison Ball. These are just the latest in a series of incidents of public drunkenness for the mayor, who is a horrible embarrassment to the city of my birth.

The Toronto Star has a long account of Ford's frequent bouts of public drunkenness and brawling, including events that he lied about at the time and later had to apologise for.

However, over the next hour, people in attendance noticed that the mayor seemed impaired. According to interviews, he was “incoherent,” “stumbling,” “rambling,” “intoxicated,” “slurring,” “seemed to be drunk,” “was nervous, excited, sweaty, out of it.”
Military guests were offended at the mayor’s behaviour, according to guests interviewed by the Star. “It felt disrespectful to the event,” said one organizer.
The six guests who provided accounts of the mayor’s condition spoke on condition of anonymity. The Star found that while these guests were concerned with the mayor’s condition, they did not want to be identified for two reasons. First, they did not want to be linked to a story that would cast a poor light on the annual Garrison Ball, which raises money for Wounded Warriors, a federally registered charity. Second, these guests, who all have prominent positions in the community, feared they would somehow be blacklisted for speaking out about the mayor.

Rob Ford: ‘Intoxicated’ Toronto mayor asked to leave military ball [Toronto Star/Robyn Doolittle & Kevin Donovan]

Muzzle-suppressor shot glasses

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:56:44 +0000

A mere $200 gets you this pelicanoid case with four of Muzzleshot's muzzle-suppressor-shaped shot-glasses, machined from solid aluminum and covered in a matte black anodized finish.

Muzzleshot (via OhGizmo)

Beautiful booze-trailer for sale

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 22:58:12 +0000

From the Neiman-Marcus gift catalog, a trailer that converts into an elaborate, beautiful bar, and comes with a year's supply of Bulleit bourbon and rye. There are two for sale at $150K each, with 10 percent going to an HIV/AIDS charity.

A chorus of cheers rings out the minute you pull up. Tailgating will never be the same now that your Bulleit Frontier Whiskey Woody-Tailgate Trailer is on the scene. Designed by interior designer Brad Ford, it's impressive on the outside, but what's on the inside truly astounds: sleek leather furnishings and details from Moore & Giles, rich wood finishings (handcrafted from reclaimed Bulleit Bourbon casks), elegant glassware, and a top-notch entertainment system, including a flat-screen TV, Blu-ray Disc™ player, and a state-of-the-art sound system, plus a one-year supply of Bulleit Bourbon and Bulleit Rye*. You park, open the hatch, and slide out the bar—cocktails anyone?

Bulleit is delicious bourbon, but I recently bought a bottle of Elmer T Lee Single Barrel and holy cats, is that stuff astounding.

BEST GIFT, BAR NONE! & BULLEIT TO GO (via Neatorama)

Kickstarter for a cocktail-dispensing robot

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 03:06:11 +0000

Robert Kaye sez, "Among the many standout cocktail-pouring robots on display this weekend at BarBot in San Francisco was Bartendro, the latest creation by Robert Kaye and Pierre Michael of Party Robotics. (They're also the creators of the Water to Wine watercooler gag featured recently on Make.) If you've ever wanted an open source robot to help you refine your recipe for the perfect margarita, or needed an extra hand serving drinks at a party, they've now launched a Kickstarter for the first production run of Bartendro. The duo also released the source code and hardware designs to their creation on Github for hackers to improve upon the design or create something new. As a Kickstarter backer, you can get a finished bot in a variety of sizes, or just the parts to try your hand at a different enclosure, or make your own custom dispenser for reef tank chemicals, epoxy, pancake batter, or almost any liquid."

Bartendro - A Cocktail Dispensing Robot (Thanks, Robert!)

Wasa: the psychedelic animated overlay that "Whassup?" needed all along

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:23:11 +0000

Mathias Lachal remade the classic Budweiser "Wassup" ad. The new video, dubbed "Wasa," is a gorgeous, psychedelic animation triumph that must be seen. This is exactly what this video needed all along.

Wasa (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Flapper slang

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:36:51 +0000

From a 1926 volume of Glamordaze, 10 sarcastic pieces of flapper slang:

The Top 10 most sarcastic Flapper slang words.
1- Umbrella- young man any girl can borrow for the evening.
2- Rock of Ages- any woman over 30 years of age.
3- Face stretcher- old maid who tries to look young.
4- Cellar Smeller- a young man who always turns up where there’s free liquor to be had.
5- Corn Shredder- young man who dances on a girl’s feet.
6- Being Edisoned- getting asked a lot of boring questions.
7- Finale Hopper- a young man who arrives after everything is paid for.
8- Mustard Plaster- unwelcome guy who sticks around.
9- Potato- a young man shy of brains.
10-Rug Hopper- young man who never takes a girl out. A parlor hound.

Top 10 most sarcastic Flapper slang words

Why your mixer matters

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:34:52 +0000

Getting tipsy is more than just a simple equation of "Insert booze, receive stupid behavior". There's some complicated chemistry at work — especially when you begin to factor in the stuff you mix your alcohol into. For instance, the sugar in soda actually prevents your blood stream from absorbing as much alcohol as it otherwise would. Which means, as Allison Aubrey explains at NPR, your choice of mixer could be the difference between a blood alcohol level that is within legal limits and one that is most decidedly not.

Kegs and cans have an advantage over glass

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:52:49 +0000

The science of skunked beer — or why clear glass bottles are the bane of brew.

Deco tiki drinks cabinet

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:08:39 +0000

A couple of cities back, in another century, I lived in a giant, illegal warehouse loft with tons of space, and in that loft, I built a most wonderful tiki-bar, with novelty bottles and stools that looked like bongo-drums and pennants from defunct cow-colleges, and swizzle sticks from bygone eras and more besides. I no longer have room for anything of the sort, but I still find myself seizing up with lust when I see something that would have fit it perfectly, such as this stonking 1959 deco tiki cocktail cabinet, for sale on eBay. I tried to convince myself to bid on it last night, tried to think of a place to put it, but honestly, there's nowhere for it. Plus there's no way I could ship this from southern California to London. But still.

We are pleased to present this vintage George Zee Cocktail Bar for your consideration. Manufactured in Hong Kong, this gorgeous piece opens to reveal a spacious Cocktail Bar that is loaded with storage. There are four (4) hidden compartments at the sides for stemware. Double doors on the front open to reveal two (2) drawers plus two (2) shelf areas. The front folds down to create a counter space, and the hinged lid opens to reveal a large compartment with a removable bottle holder.
In addition to plentiful storage space, high relief carvings of a Bamboo design are found on the door fronts and inside the top lid. What a great piece to compliment your Tiki or Hawaiiana themed room! Made from solid Mahogany with a blond color, we date the piece to 1959.

GEORGE ZEE Carved COCKTAIL BAR CABINET Vintage TIKI HAWAIIAN Polynesian ART DECO

Moms, booze, and why social science is so damn hard

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:30:29 +0000

In the past year, I've had multiple social scientists tell me that people are the hardest thing to study. Sure, you don't need a Large Hadron Collider. And the chances of suddenly requiring a HAZMAT suit are pretty slim. But people almost never give you the kind of solidly reliable data you can get out of subatomic particles or viruses. The hard part isn't doing the research. The hard part is getting trustworthy, universal answers for anything. If you want to see a good example of those problems in action, check out this great piece on drinking during pregnancy, written by Melinda Moyer.

Jello shot orange slices

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:59:08 +0000

I am currently mesmerized by these mimosa jello shots, served in the peels of the oranges juiced to make them. They are absolutely ridiculous and I love them. A little something for New Year's Day?

What to drink this winter — according to Smithsonian

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:01:49 +0000

Smithsonian's Food and Think blog has a (Northern-hemispherically biased) list of ideal Christmas/wintertime drinks — along with some cool history about where those drinks come from and how they're made. For example, Imperial Stout beer was invented in the late 1690s as a way to help delicious English stout beer survive frigidly cold Russian winters. Raise the alcohol content — and bam! — beer fit for a czar.

Great moments in pedantry: How do you grow wine in a land without predictable seasons?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:25:13 +0000

Winter is here. Which means it's time once again to start science-wanking the climate of George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" series. Back in May, i09 had a great piece on possible astronomical explanations for Westeros' weird seasons, where Summer and Winter can each last a decade. The hard part (which prompted lots of great conversations here) is that the lengths of the seasons are apparently totally unpredictable. Here's an eight-year-long Summer. There's a Winter that lasts five years and another that lasts a generation. The implications for food storage, alone, are enough to drive one batty.

Word of Martin says this is magic. But it presents so many science-related questions that it's really, really fun to speculate about how you might explain the differences between that world and ours in purely naturalistic terms.

Now, at The Last Word on Nothing, Sean Treacy brings up a different sort of food-related problem that I'd not even considered while I was busy trying to figure out the volume of the average Westerosi grain silo. How do you grow wine grapes without predictable seasons?

... grapevines have a life cycle that depends on regular seasons. In winter, grapevines are dormant. Come spring they sprout leaves. As summer begins, they flower and tiny little grapes appear. Throughout the summer the grapes fill up with water, sugar and acid. The grapes are finally ready for picking in early autumn, then go back to sleep in winter. This cycle is why wineries can rely on a yearly grape yield. Obviously, in Westeros, something must be different about how grapes work.

But it turns out there is a real-world way to produce wine throughout an endless summer. São Francisco Valley is a wine-growing region in tropical Brazil that is only about 600 to 700 miles south of equator. Despite the constant warmth, they pump out two and sometimes three grape harvests a year. How? By depriving the vines of water and removing their leaves after every harvest, which forces them to hibernate. “They trick the plant into thinking it’s wintertime,” Busalacchi said.

The whole post is really interesting and you should read it. Who knew that the Arbor would lead me to be more educated about real-world booze?

Image: Wine, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from isante's photostream

X-Wing fighter made from beer-cans

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:19:54 +0000

Tamás Kánya's "X-Wing Beer Can," lovingly documented on Flickr, is a boozy tribute to interstellar combat.

star wars x wing beer can (via Neatorama)

Labatt beer-drinking songbook from the 1930s

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:42:22 +0000

Tom Megginson posted this 1930s Labatt Employee Drinking Songs book to Retronaut. It looks like it'd improve drunkenness immensely.

I found this artifact at an antiques sale in Kingston, Ontario. I estimate its age based on the label on the IPA bottle on the front cover, as well as by the design. Note that many of the popular folk and drinking songs have had their lyrics modified to make in-jokes about beer, brewing, and the Labatt family. Also, cringe at the casual racism (“darkies”) of the time. An interesting peek into early 20th century morale-building HR campaigns from one of Canada’s major beer brands.

Labatt Employee Drinking Songs Booklet

Beautiful art from used glasses of Scotch (Plus some nifty fluid mechanics)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:55:54 +0000

After you drink some Scotch, there's usually a thin film of the liquor left clinging to the bottom and sides of the glass. If you leave it out overnight, it'll dry and be a pain to wash off in the morning. But the same dried booze leavings can also be the beginnings of some really lovely art.

Ernie Button takes photos of the waving, swirling patterns left behind on Scotch glasses. This one — part of a series called Vanishing Spirits — is a picture of glass that once held a nice measure of Balvenie.

The idea for this project occurred while putting a used Scotch glass into the dishwasher. I noted a film on the bottom of a glass and when I inspected closer, I noted these fine, lacey lines filling the bottom. What I found through some experimentation is that these patterns and images that can be seen are created with the small amount of Single-Malt Scotch left in a glass after most of it has been consumed. It only takes a very thin layer of Scotch to create; the alcohol dries and leaves the sediment in various patterns. It’s a little like snowflakes in that every time the Scotch dries, the glass yields different patterns and results. I have used different colored lights to add 'life' to the bottom of the glass, creating the illusion of landscape, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.

Interestingly, there was a recent article that was published in the Journal of Nature (I think) by Dr. Peter Yunker on the Suppression of the Coffee-Ring Effect by Shape-Dependent Capillary Interactions i.e. how are coffee rings made. I contacted him to see if he could see any obvious connection between the two liquids and the rings / patterns they create. He got back to me and unfortunately could not explain what was happening with the Scotch.

That paper Button mentioned was published in 2011. It explores the physics of particles suspended in liquid — not just coffee, but lots of things. Turns out, if you put a drop of liquid on a solid surface, it will tend to dry in a circular shape. As it dries, anything suspended in the liquid will migrate to the outside of the circle. If you put a drop of coffee on a table and leave it to dry, what you'll get is a round spot ringed by a narrow band of dark coffee gunk.

Why does the gunk form a ring, instead of evenly covering the whole circle? Yunker's research showed that it has to do with the shape of the particles that make up the gunk.

In this video, you can see those microscopic particles and how they behave.

The video is divided into five parts.

In the first, you can watch a "coffee ring" form, as spherical particles move toward the outside edge of a drop of liquid and stick there.

In the second part, ellipse-shaped particles form little blobs throughout a drop of liquid. Some of them migrate to the edge, but not all. Not even most. If this were a drop of coffee on a table, you'd get a solidly brown round spot — no coffee ring.

The third part of the video gives you a closer look at the edge of a drop of liquid filled with ellipse-shaped particles. You can see the particles clump together and move away from the edge.

The fourth part is the close-up of spherical particles as they rapidly pile up on the edge of the drop, forming a ring.

In the final part, Yunker's team shows that it's possible to get the ellipsoid particles to form a ring at the edge of the drop. The key: Using a surfactant to decrease the surface tension between the particles and the liquid. Spherical particles move right to the outside edge because the attraction between particles is weak (relative to the elliptical particles). As liquid moves to the outside edge, it just pushes the spheres along with it. Normally, the elliptical particles are attracted to one another strongly enough that they don't get swept along with the current, so to speak. But the surfactant reduces that attraction and, like the spheres, they go slip sliding away.

Button is right that this particular paper doesn't offer much of an explanation for the shapes he sees in his Scotch glasses. They aren't all as circular as the the picture at the top of this post. Some look more like undulating hills and valleys, rather than coffee rings.

This paper of Yunker's certainly suggests that there's some interesting fluid mechanics at work here, though. I'm going to look into it and will report back on what I find.

Read Peter Yunker's full paper on the "coffee ring" effect

Check out Ernie Button's full series of Scotch glass photos, called Vanishing Spirits.

Long Now building a new bar/coffee shop, raising money with long booze

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 16:08:28 +0000

Jeffrey 'Toast' McGrew sez, "The ever-amazing Long Now Foundation hired us to help them transform their somewhat-boring bookstore / gallery into an amazing library / event space / coffee & cocktails bar. But the really cool part is that they are selling bottles of fancy spirits to raise the money. Gin made from 5000 year old pine needles, from the clock site itself! Whiskey you'll get to taste over the next 15 years! It's crazy and we're honored to have been part of it, and thought y'all might want to know about it too."

St. George Spirits in Alameda has created two exclusive spirits for Long Now, each truly a distillation of long-term thinking. The first is an aromatic gin made with juniper berries harvested by hand among the 5,000-year-old bristlecones from our site in eastern Nevada.
The other spirit is a whiskey made from a tailored selection of grains, fermented and distilled in such a way that it will be delicious without aging, while growing more intricate and complex every year. We will bottle a small amount each year for the next 15 years, allowing you to taste its annual progression.

We invite you to help The Long Now Foundation build a new salon space... (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Sequencing of barley genome could have implications for home brewers

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:23:46 +0000

When scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany sequenced the genome of barley, they were thinking primarily about the impact on food. Understanding the genetics behind certain traits could help us breed barley varieties that have built-in resistance against disease, or that contain more fiber. (Contrary to popular understanding, there's actually a lot of overlap between what we might think of as genetic engineering and what we might think of as breeding. Crop researchers can use genome maps to select specific plants to cross pollinate, enabling them to reliably breed a trait into a new variety much faster than was previously possible.)

But, this is barley. And we don't just eat barley. With this plant, sequencing the genome also has implications for the way we brew beer. At Popular Science, Martha Harbison explains what we're learning about barley's genetic code and why it matters in beer making. In particular, she says it's significant that the researchers sequenced the genomes of more than one variety of barley.

Why should aspiring homebrewers care? Because two-row and six-row barley behave slightly differently in the mash, which can have profound effects on brewing efficiency and characteristics of the finished beer (a complex phenomenon I'll get into in a future column). I figured anyone nerdulent enough to want to know about genetic differences of cultivars would be curious as to which kind of barley was used in the single-nucleotide-variation study.

Read the rest of the story at Popular Science

You can read more about the surprisingly complex world of plant breeding in two articles I wrote — one for Popular Science, and one for Discover.

Image: Beers and Glassware, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from cambridgebrewingcompany's photostream

How a multinational beer giant is making bank by destroying the world's beer and laying off the world's brewers

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:08:39 +0000

In "The Plot to Destroy America's Beer," Businessweek's Devin Leonard chronicles the rapacious AB InBev, a multinational, publicly traded giant corporation that is buying up American (and European, South American and Asian) family owned breweries, cutting them to the bone, lowering the quality of the ingredients used, shutting down breweries that have been running for more than a century, laying off thousands of workers who've given their lives to the companies AB InBev acquired, and changing the recipes to make all the different sorts of beer once on offer taste more or less the same.

InBev was never a sentimental company. Shortly after the merger, it shuttered the 227-year-old brewery in Manchester, U.K., where Boddingtons was produced. It encountered more resistance in 2005 when it closed the brewery in the Belgian village of Hoegaarden, from which the popular white beer of the same name flowed. InBev said it could no longer afford to keep the brewery open. After two years of protests by brewery workers and beer aficionados, it reversed itself. Laura Vallis, an AB InBev spokeswoman, says Hoegaarden exports spiked unexpectedly. “The brand’s growth since is positive news for Hoegaarden and for consumers around the world who enjoy it,” she says.
Yet some Hoegaarden drinkers say the flavor of the beer changed. “I think now it’s not as distinctive tasting,” says Iain Loe, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale, an advocacy group for pubs and beer drinkers. “You often see when a local brand is taken over by a global brewer, the production is raised a lot. If you’re trying to produce a lot of beer, you don’t want a beer that some people may object to the taste of it, so you may actually make the taste a little blander.” (Vallis’s response: “The brand’s commitment to quality has never changed.”)
Despite occasional setbacks, Brito’s assiduous focus on the bottom line produced the intended results. InBev’s earnings margin (before taxes and depreciation) rose from 24.7 percent in 2004 to 34.6 percent in 2007. Its stock price nearly tripled. Then he started running out of things to cut. In early 2008, InBev’s results plateaued, and its shares stumbled.
Investors hungered for another deal. Brito complied with the takeover of Anheuser-Busch. He had intimate knowledge of his target: America’s largest brewer had distributed InBev’s beers in the U.S. since 2005. Anheuser-Busch’s CEO, August Busch IV, the fifth Busch family member to run the company, was no match for La Máquina and his mentor, Lemann, who was now an InBev director. Anheuser-Busch’s board of directors accepted InBev’s bid of $70 a share on July 14, 2008.

The Plot to Destroy America's Beer (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)