15 replies to this topic

[passlaku]

[*]You should always store bottled beer upright, not on its side. This minimizes oxidation and contamination from the cap.[*]Bottled beer is pasteurized. Keg beer is not. That's why it's critical for kegs to stay cold (38°F). As the temperature rises, CO2 expands (causing foamy beer) and dormant bacteria may become active and ruin the keg.[*]The type of water used for brewing makes a difference. The best ales are produced with hard water (with more natural salts like calcium) while soft water is better for lagers.[*]Before the 1400s ales were flavored with herbs like rosemary and thyme. Hops were first introduced to preserve beer but are now a desirable flavor.[*]Dogfish Head's Midas Touch Golden Elixir is made from a 2,700-year-old beer recipe that was found in a royal tomb in Turkey. The tomb is believed to be the burial place of the legendary King Midas.[*]In 1814 a brewery tank containing 3,500 barrels of beer ruptured in London causing a beer tidal wave that flooded the streets, demolished two houses and claimed the lives of 9 people.[*]Pabst Brewery produced the first six-pack of beer in the 1940s. The brewery conducted numerous studies, which found six cans were the ideal weight for the average housewife to carry home from the store.[*]Anheuser-Busch uses rice in its formula and the company alone consumes about 15% of the entire U.S. rice crop.[*]Belgium wins the "country with the most individual beer brands" award with more than 400 brands and counting.[*]The familiar Bass symbol, a red triangle, was registered in 1876 and is the world's oldest trademark.[*]Hops contain an herbal form of estrogen that is rumored to make men chesty (a syndrome known as "Brewer's Droop") and lead to erectile dysfunction.[*]The '33' on Rolling Rock bottles was originally a printer’s error. It refers to the 33 words in the original slogan. It has generated enough mystery over the years that the company decided to keep it.[*]Guinness sells an average of 7 million glasses a day.[/list]

[BarelyBrews]

I laughed about number 7.Worried about #11 though.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

#2 is only true of BMC more or less. Most craft beers aren't pasteurized.

[chuck_d]

[1]You should always store bottled beer upright, not on its side. This minimizes oxidation and contamination from the cap.

Unless it has a cork and you are aging it for a long time, I believe you want to lay it on its side to wet the cork, and rotate it every so often. Also, if the cap is contaminated, it's gonna get picked up in transport. However, you'll want to stand it upright for awhile before serving to let all the particles settle to the bottom of the bottle so you can decant it.

[2]Bottled beer is pasteurized. Keg beer is not. That's why it's critical for kegs to stay cold (38°F). As the temperature rises, CO2 expands (causing foamy beer) and dormant bacteria may become active and ruin the keg.

Not exactly. Not all bottled beer is pasteurized, and even then you want to keep bottled beer cold. I hate this one so much because it's just so misleading and will cause people to mistreat the beer they buy in the store. Heat damages beer no matter what package it is in. Period. Repeated heating and cooling cycles damage beer more quickly. This has nothing to do with kegs or bottles. The only time you see breweries storing bottles warm is when they are bottle conditioning. Any beer that is bottle conditioned obviously has not been pasteurized after the addition of extra fermentables and yeast. Also, with flash pasteurization it is not limited to bottles as it is not done in-package but on the way to packaging. One benefit of kegging is the near total elimination of air & CO2 at packaging. Also, you don't get foam in the package just because it is heated, it has be, you know, opened, shaken, agitated. I will say that a keg can be contaminated from the taps & lines it is connected to though...

[3]The type of water used for brewing makes a difference. The best ales are produced with hard water (with more natural salts like calcium) while soft water is better for lagers.

Again misleading and not exactly true. London's water isn't near the hardness of Dublin or Burton, but they make fine ales. Vienna and Munich have harder water than Pilsen (much more so in the case of Vienna) but they still make fine lagers. It has more to do with the bitterness balance and color (thus pH) than which yeast you use. The Munich brewers guild back in the day declared that you couldn't make light color beer in Munich after failing at many attempts to copy a Pilsner, then they realized just make it sweet and call it Helles. Same goes for Dortmund, a city famous for it's light colored lager made with very hard water.The other stuff is like trivia, while I have read the Bass story about the trademark, etc. But it reads like a forward, some well known trivia mixed in with some dubious trivia. It's like when I read "A duck's quack doesn't echo" as a Snapple "Real Fact". Um, sure it doesn't...

[Genesee Ted]

The US definitely has more beer brands than Belgium... This list is weird.

[chuck_d]

The US definitely has more beer brands than Belgium... This list is weird.

I'm not certain where the 400 comes from, like i said it reads like a forward and we're the Snopes here... if 400 is accurate then the US slaughters Belgium...https://www.brewersa...er-of-breweries

[MyaCullen]

I'm not certain where the 400 comes from, like i said it reads like a forward and we're the Snopes here... if 400 is accurate then the US slaughters Belgium...https://www.brewersa...er-of-breweries

that may have been true in like 1984, lol

[3rd party JKor]

I'm not certain where the 400 comes from, like i said it reads like a forward and we're the Snopes here... if 400 is accurate then the US slaughters Belgium...https://www.brewersa...er-of-breweries

It's crazy that over 1,000 breweries opened in the US between 1990 and 2000.

[MyaCullen]

It's crazy frakin' awesome that over 1,000 breweries opened in the US between 1990 and 2000.

FTFY

[3rd party JKor]

FTFY

Actually, that's just the net count. With all the breweries that were going out of business at that time, too, it's probably more like 1,500 or 2,000 that opened.

[MyaCullen]

Actually, that's just the net count. With all the breweries that were going out of business at that time, too, it's probably more like 1,500 or 2,000 that opened.

It was the sentiment more than the count :)just locally here I'd say for every 2 that started 1 closed

[3rd party JKor]

It was the sentiment more than the count :)just locally here I'd say for every 2 that started 1 closed

...and thank god for that. There were some horrid ones that popped up during that time. Most of the good ones survived.

[passlaku]

I wonder if the Belgium stat is per capita? Belgium's pop is ~10 million compared to the US's 307 million. If there are 400 breweries in Belgium does that make 1 brewery for every 25,000 people? If the US has 2000 breweries that makes 1 brewery for every 153,500 people. My per capita "math" isn't so good so I was wondering if the logic/calculation was correct.

[earthtone]

I would think the Man-boobs come from the high calorie count?!

I think that's the belly, not the saggy man boobs..... and FWIW I saw a video on some "men's" website that you should convince your ladies to drink DIPA because the estrogen in the hops makes the boobs grow.but what about the ED???

[Genesee Ted]

I heard Brewer's Droop was ED. Also, while I was on a tour at De Halve Maan (sp?) in Bruge, the female tour guide made mention that the women used to harvest the hops and during the harvest, the prickly nature of the hops would prick their skin, allowing those female hormones a de facto injection site. Supposedly the women would have a surge in boosomliness which made the men excited, and thus the harvest was looked at as quite a fun time. Perhaps anecdotal, but fun anyway. When my lady picks hops, it makes me want to do her too