Counting bubbles

How many bubbles in this beer foam?

I recently wrote a story about beer foam for Brewing Industry Guide (“Foam Loves Hops (Except When It Doesn’t”). As happens, I had to leave a few darlings on the cutting room floor in order to have room for some key information. Such as, Dry hopping with Cascade pellets resulted in a near-linear decline in foam stability using the Nibem method, a standardized way of measuring foam stability over time.

This was one of those paragraphs:

There is more to monitoring beer foam than counting bubbles, although they are the foundation. They result from nucleation, and as those bubbles climb to first form or then replenish the foam head, proteins and bitter substances are carried into the bubble wall, forming a matrix that holds the skeleton together. In his doctoral thesis, “Beer Foam Physics,” A. D. Ronteltap calculated that a foam 3 centimeters high (a bit less than 2 fingers) in a glass 6 centimeters wide (a bit less than a Willi Becher) made up of bubbles with an initial radius of .2 mm (twice the width of a human hair) would contain 1.5 million bubbles distributed over about 100 layers.

What does it mean to grow ‘more’ hops?

Roadkill -- as seen during hop harvest in Oregon

Hop harvest has begun in Oregon (where I’ll be in two weeks). This is roadkill from a previous harvest.

Perhaps I will try to make “fun with numbers” a semi-regular Friday feature. We’ll see.

When I received an email last week declaring “Oregon Retakes No. 2 Spot for U.S. Hop Crop” I was en route to Argentina, so wasn’t inclined to do some necessary math. Several sites have since posted the information.

It is a fact that Oregon farmers strung 5,421 acres for harvest and Idaho 5,109. But . . .

Last year, average yield per acre was 1,732 in Oregon and 2,273 in Idaho. If yields are identical this year (they won’t be) then Oregon farmers will harvest 9,389,172 pounds of hops and Idaho farmers 11,612,757. In my mind, more pounds of hops trumps more acres.

This is not to say that the difference in yield will be as large this year. Idaho farmers will harvest far fewer acres of Helios this year (the USDA has withheld the numbers to avoid disclosing data for individual operations) and last year the average yield for Helios was 3,092.

Expect ad update in December, when the USDA posts final results of harvest.

Women’s sports bars, and maybe even brewery taprooms

Message on the entry door at Lady Justice Brewing in Englewood, Colorado.

The photo above is from the entrance of Lady Justice Brewing in Englewood, Colorado (think of it as Denver extended). They aren’t included in “The Rise of Women’s Sports Bars in the United States” by Ruvani de Silva, but they would fit in perfectly.

“Community, safety, inclusion and accessibility are at the core of the women’s sports bar ethos. ‘People are tired of not seeing themselves reflected in traditional sports bars,’ says Chelsea Fishman, owner of Atlanta’s recently opened Jolene Jolene. ‘Women’s sports bars are answering that call by creating inclusive, intentional spaces for fans who’ve always been here but haven’t always felt welcome.’”

Read more.

Categories DEI

‘Median’ German drinks 20% less beer than 2005

The story is behind a paywall, but you can get a look if you share your email address.

“In 2005 the median German quaffed 112 litres of the stuff. The figure is now less than 90. Germany remains the sixth-biggest beer market in the world. But whereas Germans once downed more than anyone bar the insatiable Czechs, they are now eighth in the per-person league table. Worse, the decline is gathering pace. ‘Panic’ has gripped some breweries, says Gerrit Blümelhuber, a consultant.”

A noble point of order

It’s Monday, so what the heck . . .

– Last week, Jeff Alworth endeavored to shame 10 beer myths. He chose “noble hops” as one of them. I certainly prefer the term landrace hops and I agree that marketers amplified “noble” to sell their hops. However, the origins go back to the 19th century. I’ve written more extensively about this in print, but here is a short version of the story.

What bothered me more was the discussion of cohumulone. Arguments about co-eightch, as is known among both friends and foes, have centered on if hops with higher levels impart a harsher bitterness. Research at Oregon State University pretty much debunks that. And as far as “IPA hops” go, an average lot of Simcoe will have a lower level of COH than an average lot of Saaz.

A big difference between landrace varieties and modern bred varieties is the alpha to beta ratio. One reason that Coors stepped up to support Cascade hops more than 50 years ago was that Cascade had a ratio of about one to one, more like the landrace varieties large brewers were using at the time. It turned out that Cascade had other qualities (like plenty of geraniol) that didn’t quite fit in their beers. It’s not necessarily the a-to-b that makes the difference, but it serves as a marker for auxiliary bitter compounds.

Father Martin, Benedictine Brewery

– Father Martin has a new hat. We are traveling, so access to my photo archives is limited. Otherwise I would also post a photo of Father Martin wearing the Benedictine Brewery “dad hat” he was wearing the last time time I saw him almost two years ago. If you visit the brewery “our story” page and scroll dad hat you’ll see him with the old hat, which was black in its youth and gray in later years.

The story is about a 50-year partnership between the abbey at Mount Angel, Oregon, and Coleman Agriculture. Previously, the monks tended to hops grown on the land that Coleman Agriculture now leases. The beer to celebrate their partnership is brewed with Simcoe hops, grown in a field across from the the brewery tasting room.