What: Absolutely nothing
Beer: Orkney Dark Island & Kronenbourg 1664
Receptacle: Standard pint glass & thin tapering Kronenbourg glass
When: 24 September 2008
Situation: Attempt at beer reading in the Green Dragon
Richard Queens and I attempted to do some beer reading in the Green Dragon and I remembered all the kit. The only problem was that the beers failed to produce any readings whatsoever. My first pint, Bonkers Conkers, did actually have promising foam but none of the shapes really resolved into anything better than a kind of horizontal question mark that wasn't worth picturing. The second, Dark Island, was a very nice beer but had no foam at all. RQ had no foam either, not surprisingly as he refused to drink any actual beer and stuck to Kronenbourg.
What: the decaying corpse of a beautiful rabbitBeer: Hopback Entire Stout
Receptacle: Straight-sided pint glass
When: 27 September 2008
Situation: A large gathering of friends in the Kingston Arms
I wasn't really expecting any readings to emerge in the Kingston Arms, where I was with a large group eating and having a few drinks. I stuck with the Entire Stout all evening and hadn't brought beer-reading kit. However, shortly into my second pint, a rabbit leapt out from the foam! It was such a clear and undeniable rabbit that even Victoria, despite her general scepticism about my animal readings, noticed it. But I was too slow in my futile attempts to get a decent picture of it with my phone camera and no adequate background or light and by the time I captured it, the once clear rabbit was now a barely recognisable corpse. You can still see its ear, but the rest has subsided into foamy nothingness.
1 comment:
Rob - I'm not suggesting you wear lipstick, but...
Lipstick and Beer
How does wearing lipstick affect your beer drinking? And what's physics got to do with it?
Why does lipstick destroy foam?
It's not just the fats in lipstick that destroy foam - the fats in crisps, nuts and pork scratchings, as well as the natural oils in moustaches all diminish the head of a beer.
The head is created by bubbles of gas, often carbon dioxide or nitrogen, that are released as your pint is being pulled. These bubbles are coated with a strong skin of proteins that originate from the malted barley used during the brewing process and which helps the bubbles to form a stable foam. But when fats or detergents come into contact with the foam, they can literally punch holes in the protein skin, weakening and destabilising the bubbles and destroying the head.
A technique known as Atomic Force Microscopy, which can study the surface of bubbles at very small scales, has shown these holes in the surface of the protein skin.
Scientists at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich have been investigating how beer foam can be made to resist the ravages of oils and fats. They've found that the protein skin can be made stronger by adding compounds called hop acids which help to bind the beer proteins together. Another additive is a seaweed extract which thickens and strengthens the protein skin. And looking to the future, the researchers have recently patented a method of extracting a natural molecule from excess grain that is normally thrown away in the hope of using it to make more stable beer foams.
But preserving your head doesn't have to involve strengthening the bubbles. Another method is to keep the fats away from the foam in the first place. Barley proteins are thought to have small pockets in which fat molecules can sit. So by ensuring that barley proteins aren't lost in the brewing process, brewers can ensure that there are fewer fat molecules available to go on a bubble bursting rampage.
www.physics.org
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