Scientists Unlock Secret To Thick, Stable Beer Foams (arstechnica.com) 72
Swiss researchers have determined that fermentation degree controls beer foam stability after seven years of study published in Physics of Fluids. Triple-fermented Belgian beers maintained the longest-lasting foam while single-fermented lagers produced the shortest duration. The team tested six commercial beers including Westmalle Tripel, Tripel Karmeliet, and Swiss lagers Feldschlosschen and Chopfab.
Surface viscosity dominated foam stability in single-fermented beers. Marangoni stresses from surface tension differences stabilized double- and triple-fermented beer foams. Lipid transfer protein 1 underwent progressive denaturation through successive fermentations. Single fermentation produced small round protein particles. Double fermentation created net-like protein structures. Triple fermentation broke proteins into hydrophobic and hydrophilic fragments that function as surfactants. ETH Zurich's Jan Vermant said breweries can now improve foam using these specific mechanisms rather than adjusting multiple factors simultaneously.
Surface viscosity dominated foam stability in single-fermented beers. Marangoni stresses from surface tension differences stabilized double- and triple-fermented beer foams. Lipid transfer protein 1 underwent progressive denaturation through successive fermentations. Single fermentation produced small round protein particles. Double fermentation created net-like protein structures. Triple fermentation broke proteins into hydrophobic and hydrophilic fragments that function as surfactants. ETH Zurich's Jan Vermant said breweries can now improve foam using these specific mechanisms rather than adjusting multiple factors simultaneously.
Hegseth especially upset (Score:3, Funny)
The only research DOGE regrets cancelling.
Seven years studying beer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in the wrong job...
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"I want to be part of the peer review!"
"OK, you need to go to Kansas City."
"Is that where they're doing the review?"
"No, that's the back of the line..."
No surprise (Score:2)
What? (Score:3)
I'm all for science and research for it's own sake, but who actually wants foamy beer?
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you English by any chance ? Belgians don't want warm flat dishwater.
I'm American (Score:2)
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It's a shame Japan's entire beer industry is modeled after budweiser (but higher quality) of course. For a country that has fantastic cuisine and plentiful high quality, cheap food.. I wish they had a better micro brew scene with variety.
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Japan may have bad beer, but they have some fantastic whiskey.
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Of course the only ones with an international presence are the bad ones.
In my experience they're generally what was hot in the 90's when American craft brew was just getting going and was still getting its legs under itself. Our craft beer industry has evolved a lot since the 90's.
Prohibition killed out domestic beer industry and while it's taken ages to make a come back I agree with you, I feel our beer is pretty good nowadays although that might depend a bit on where you are in the country.
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They also excel at a drink called chu-hi. Basically a canned shochu highball. Lots of variety and quite refreshing. Shochu is the other traditional Japanese alcohol in addition to saki. It’s distilled from either sweet potato, barle
Beer "quality" (Score:2)
(but higher quality) of course
I was at a Lambic brewery in the south of Brussels where I was getting a guide to how they blend spontaneously fermented beers to taste and the brew master turned around gave us an English lesson:
"You English speakers don't know how to use your own language. You think quality means good. Quality doesn't mean good, quality means you can do the same thing every day. If I come to work sick tomorrow and blend these beers it will taste different than it does today. We don't make a "quality" beer here, we make a
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American beer is fantastic, if you stay away from the national breweries. Of course the only ones with an international presence are the bad ones.
It's a shame Japan's entire beer industry is modeled after budweiser (but higher quality) of course. For a country that has fantastic cuisine and plentiful high quality, cheap food.. I wish they had a better micro brew scene with variety.
This is pretty much true for any country. Mass produced piss-water is just that. You've got to get to the smaller breweries to get decent beers.
Asia I've found is particularly bad at producing any kind of beer, South America on the other hand has quite a few decent breweries. Colombia off the top of my head has 20 Mission, 3 Cordilleras and Bogata Beer Company (BBC). Sure it's all lager style but the climate is too hot to make ales. Mexico is good also I have been told, it's more than just Corona.
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I live in the US, though I can't stand "regular American" beer, which is mostly crappy "pilsner" at best, though there are a few good ones from Canada. I like German-style (dry, crisp) pilsner, and enjoy a hefeweizen from time to time. There is good Belgian beer, though I've not experienced it as particularly foamy. The English make ale I like (Bass for one, though I don't like it above 10C) and I like a good heavy porter or stout with dessert sometimes, but I mostly drink a locally brewed IPA or two with
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10-20 years ago, there was a craft beer (mostly IPA) renaissance over here, and man were there some great IPAs, though unfortunately that has faded, as many of the good craft breweries get bought up by Inbev or other huge conglomerates and ruined. There are still a few good ones left, but at some point I'm probably going to have to start brewing my own.
Where I live the IPA thing was WAY over done. I like IPAs and all but there was a period where I'd walk into a bar and go "Oh good, they have 20 beers on tap. Great variety!" only to discover 16 or so were all IPAs. I'm glad that fad is done now, IPAs are great but so are a ton of other types of beer. Variety is good.
Re: What? (Score:2)
The number of times I've been to a microbrewery with 20 IPAs and 0 reds essentially turned me off of craft beer for good.
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Ha, yeah, I found it off putting too. It does seem better nowadays though. At least where I live.
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Variety is good.
IPA is a macro classification that covers a range of beers that have a flavour profile anything from fruity, to champagne, to a hoppier variety of pilsner, with a colour profile ranging from slightly lighter than a stout, to a bright golden in both hazy and clear varieties.
Saying you lacked variety because everything was an IPA is like saying you lacked variety because the beer shop only sold beer. There are more than 16 different IPA styles out there that all taste and have a mouthfeel wildly different fro
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Have you ever tried Newcastle Brown Ale? Obviously I have to ask.
If not, please do. It has no head, is served a little colder than other British beers, is supposed to be "nursed"* and has a unique flavour. Apparently it's quite popular in Japan, though I wonder if that has something to do with the links between Japan and NE England.
* When we 'nurse' a pint we drink it slowly; perhaps while enjoying a quiet hour with a crossword, that sort of thing. Brown ale comes in a thick glass bottle and is traditionall
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Sure, I've had those. Brown ales aren't my favorite, but Newcastle is one of the better ones for sure.
Re: What? (Score:2)
Boddingtons is delicious and foamy. The best the English have to offer.
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Ah, Boddingtons, the "Cream of Manchester". I don't know about delicious, but ta for reminding me of the advert. [youtube.com]
The 90s really was a golden age for adverts in Britain, though nothing can beat the Louis Armstrong Guinness advert. I'm sure you know the one I mean.
Do you want a flake in that, love?
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Since you mention it there was actually a part of the 1980s Weights and Measures Act that said the head "may not form a substantial part" of the pint. That part of the act was repealed in the 90s but until then a customer who ordered a pint of beer would expect a pint glass to be filled with beer all the way to the top (or the line marked "1 Pint"). There was some leeway for a little head (hur hur) but it was not unknown for people to send a pint back, as one might with an unsatisfactory steak, and expect t
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Guinness drinkers for one.
While no one wants a beer that's all foam a nice foamy head is quite nice on some beers.
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Ok, I'll give you that, though a well poured Guinness should have no more than about a half inch head on it. It does have a nice mouthfeel, though I typically prefer a heavier stout than Guinness when I'm in the mood for a stout.
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To each their own of course. My point though is that there are plenty of beers that are best served with a nice head, Guinness was just the most popular example I could think of. For instance, I'm a big fan of Belgian beer and those styled after and many of their beers should have a foamy head when served although the foam is often a bit different from Guinness (different beers produce different types of foam).
The foamy head does more then provide nice mouth feel as well. It effects flavor, the foam is rele
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Guinness is overrated.
Heck, most Irish alcohol is overrated.
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Guinness being good or bad is irrelevant to the point that lots of beers are best drank with a foamy head. Guinness is just a well known example of this. The foam releases scents our noses pick up that change the flavors, it's part of the experience of some beers. Lots of Belgian beers are like this.
Heck, most Irish alcohol is overrated.
I like Irish whiskey. It's much better then the ash tray in a bottle most scotches are and they've been getting a lot of new brands popping up over the last couple decades which has improved variety immensely (t
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The foam is insulation and makes it stay cold longer. :-)
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Foamy beer is bad. It was poured at the wrong pressure, or thru a too-short tube from the keg (or by a bartender who dislikes you...)
However, a good head on a beer is important. It is where the air and liquid mingle to create the aromatic experience of the beer. Smell is an important aspect of taste. You want the head to last while you drink the beer so that you get the full smell/taste experience throughout. A clean (oil-free, soap-free) glass helps a lot with head retention.
A good beer is something to
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Foamy beer is bad. It was poured at the wrong pressure
Quite a lot of beer styles if they don't foam you send them back because they've gone off in the keg and need to be tossed. Not every beer is the weak piss that flows from a bud lite can.
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The brewers want foamy beer - more foam = more air = less beer.= more profit
It's like having ice in your Coke - more ice = less Coke = more profit
In the good old times in the UK if your beer had too much head you could demand a top-up to get a proper pint. Then some fool of a judge said the head was part of the pint.
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Or Weizen, way different.
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Or Dunkle Weizen
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"My sense of taste is better then everyone else's"
People have been drinking beer for thousands of years but yeah, no one really likes the taste. Ridiculous...
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Sure, there was a period when Europeans forgot that one shouldnt shit in ones drinking water and beer came in handy as a safe way to hydrate. That doesnt change the fact that beer has been around a lot longer then that and is today an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. But yeah, everyone drinking beer is deluding themselves, only you have the one true accurate pallet.
Gimme a frick'n break with your self righteousness. I don't like olives but you don't see me walking around telling everyone they
Re:Beer is ass (Score:5, Funny)
Beer tastes like ass.
I assume you performed a double blind test with a statistically significant sample size to verify this. How many assholes did you taste in the process?
Re:Beer is ass (Score:5, Funny)
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Sometimes, the void stares into you.
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By the way, your comment “How many assholes did you taste in the process?” reminds me of an old joke: “What’s the difference between driving in a thick fog and a sixty-niner? At least in a sixty-niner you can see the asshole in front of you.”
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+5, Funny, for this?
Triggered, coward?
you had to add the second because you're a vulgar amateur
That was the funny part. All you've done here is proven you don't understand humor, and been cowardly.
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Miller actually isn't the worst.
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Some beers are quite good, some are not. It's like wines, cheeses, types of beef.. everyone has a unique pallet.
When I drink bourbon - all I taste is the ethanol unfortunately. It's the same with most liquors. I'd like to appreciate the different distilling methods like I enjoy the different brewing methods of beer but I guess it wasn't meant to be.
Something about a couple cold beers to "re-hydrate" after a hockey game.
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Don't forget about the several beers during the hockey game. Hydration is important.
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So how do you explain people who drink ONE beer and call it good? It would be really hard to get drunk on one beer, even with supersizing.
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A real lightweight could get quite tipsy on a single Big Little Thing tall boy, 19.2 oz, 9.5% ABV. They're like four bucks at my local grocery outlet, too.
I used to have a fairly unfortunately serious drinking habit, but I've scaled back, and one of these gets me a nice buzz on. And I'm a big dude.
I also genuinely enjoy IPAs, while I would generally rather not drink a Pilsener and despise sours. But I'm not mad at people who want to drink those other beers, and a lot of people think an IPA tastes like Pine-
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You never got the chance to drink a real Belgian gueuze or lambic then?
I question the trend of modern sours, because most of them just taste like acid, lemon, lime or acetic.
Also, we don't call them sours, but spontaneous fermented. In good gueuzes or lambic the acidity should be subdued.
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You never got the chance to drink a real Belgian gueuze or lambic then?
I've had lambic, no clue on whether it was authentic or not, I didn't enjoy it though. But I still don't think it's bad, it's just not for me.
Science vs professionalism (Score:2)
You are not going to be able to convince me that medieval monks didn't figure this out first.
Young Einstein (Score:4, Funny)
Coming up in The Onion (Score:3)
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Although the origins of single double and triple isn't known, it's inferred that it relates to the strength of the beer (about 3, 6 and 9%), It's not as the article seem to suggest fermented multiple times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In modern parlance, it largely has to do with the method of fermenting. You can't just start out with a higher gravity (more sugars) wort to get a really high alcohol beer -the yeast cant handle it (some can, but it won't taste good!) So you start out at an average gravity, and then feed it more sugar in stages (dubbel or tripel) to get to that higher alcohol content.
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Not just modern parlance, that's literally how they brewed them in Westmalle where the styles were invented in the 1600s. It's a lovely abbey by the way, for any Americans doing a tour of Europe that goes through Belgium, it's out of the way being a bit far out of Antwerp but it is definitely worth a visit, especially if you love beer.
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Yes and no, the relationship between strength and fermentation stages would suggest the phrasing can work both ways even if it doesn't strictly mean that. It's not actually the number of times they were fermented but the amount of fermentation. They control that using the amount of malt added in different stages. Dubbels have double the malt, Tripels, triple the malt. The actual styles are matched to those Abbeys which came up with them first, so most Dubbels are dark to match what Westmalle produced back i
Yeah, nah (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, nah (Score:4)
Have you never had a Guinness (amongst a lot of other beers)? All foam = bad. Nice foamy head = great for some beers.
Re: Yeah, nah (Score:2)
Not a fan of cappuccino, I assume. Or fine dining. People love foam. It's hard to get right, and so expensive. If it were cheap and easy, half our food would have foam.
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Fine dinning is ok but over rated, I generally prefer to dine at small restaurants that makes good quality food at a reasonable price for daily eating. I have a bias towards Chinese and Japanese food and I think only a few variants of those are at risk
Re:Yeah, nah (Score:4, Interesting)
Beer is something you drink
No, beer is something you experience. Taste, texture and smell all go into drinking beer and the foam on the top as well as the creaminess of the bubbles dissolved within the beer wildly influence both taste and non taste.
It's the reason why Fosters is such a blight on Australian history. Who the fuck wants something that tastes like a rubbish pilsner to have foam layer like Guinness on the top. On the flip side if I ever receive a glass of Belgian Triple without a nice creamy foam, I send it back without even tasting and tell them they need to throw out their entire cask. - The beer is off.
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Beer is something you drink
No, beer is something you experience. Taste, texture and smell all go into drinking beer and the foam on the top as well as the creaminess of the bubbles dissolved within the beer wildly influence both taste and non taste.
It's the reason why Fosters is such a blight on Australian history. Who the fuck wants something that tastes like a rubbish pilsner to have foam layer like Guinness on the top. On the flip side if I ever receive a glass of Belgian Triple without a nice creamy foam, I send it back without even tasting and tell them they need to throw out their entire cask. - The beer is off.
As an Australian, I can assure you no-one in Australia drinks that swill. Fosters is for export only, nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
Seriously, I'd moved to the UK before I'd even tasted it. If you do get to Oz, Little Creatures is worth a taste.
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The only time I tasted it on Australian soil was when a corporate engineering event took us to the CUB Brewery in Yatala. Even being fresh from the brewery it didn't do it any favours. The second time I tasted Fosters was in the desert in Dubai, a country which doesn't drink, so I'll forgive them for not knowing any better. It wasn't better the second time around.
These are the times I remind people the benefits of being dual citizen is that you can pretend to be not Australian when the need arises. :-D