Image via Archinect.

There are plenty of examples of structures built from recycled materials—even Buddhist temples have been made from them. In Sima Valley, California, an entire village known as Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village was constructed from reused glass. But this is no new concept—back in 1960, executives at the Heineken brewery drew up a plan for a “brick that holds beer,” a rectangular beer bottle that could also be used to build homes.

Gerard Adriaan Heineken acquired the “Haystack” brewery in 1864 in Amsterdam, marking the formal beginning of the eponymous brand that is now one of the most successful international breweries. Since the first beer consignment was delivered to the United States upon the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, it has been a top seller in the United States. The distinctive, bright green of a Heineken beer bottle can be found in more than 70 countries today. The founder’s grandson, Alfred Heineken, began his career with the company in 1942 and was later elected Chairman of the Executive Board at Heineken International. Alfred, better known as “Freddy,”oversaw the design of the classic red-starred label released in 1964. He had a good eye for marketing and design.”Had I not been a beer brewer I would have become an advertising man,” he once said. When Freddy’s beer took off in the international market, he made it a point to visit the plants the company had opened as a part of its globalization strategy.

A display of WOBO “bricks” from the Heineken Experience, in Amsterdam. Image courtesy of Flickr user seaotter22.

In 1960, Freddy took a trip to the island of Curacao in the Caribbean Sea and discovered that he could barely walk 15 feet on the beach without stepping on a littered Heineken bottle. He was alarmed by two things: First, the incredible amount of waste that his product was creating due to the region’s lack of infrastructure to collect the bottles for reuse. (Back then, bottles were commonly returned for refilling, lasting about 30 trips back and forth to the breweries). Second, the dearth of proper building materials available to those living in the impoverished communities he visited. So he thought up an idea that might solve both of these problems: A brick that holds beer.

The rectangular, Heineken World Bottle or WOBO, designed with the help of architect John Habraken, would serve as a drinking vessel as well as a brick once the contents were consumed. The long side of the bottle would have interlocking grooved surfaces so that the glass bricks, once laid on their side, could be stacked easily with mortar or cement. A 10-foot-by-10-foot shack would take approximately 1,000 bottles (and a lot of beer consumption) to build. Yu Ren Guang explains in Packaging Prototypes 3: Thinking Green:

“On returning to Holland [from Curacao], Alfred set about conceiving the first ever bottle designed specifically for secondary use as a building component, thereby turning the function of packaging on its head. By this philosophy, Alfred Heineken saw his beer as a useful product to fill a brick with while being shipped overseas. It became more a case of redesigning the brick than the bottle.”

A handful of designers have accepted Alfred’s WOBO as one of the first eco-conscious consumer designs out there. Martin Pawley, for example, writes in Garbage Housing, that the bottle was “the first mass production container ever designed from the outset for secondary use as a building component.”

A WOBO wall. Image courtesy of Flickr user greezer.ch.

There were many variations of the original prototype—all of which were ultimately rejected as many components were considered unworkable. For example, a usable beer bottle needs a neck from which to pour the beer and a protruding neck makes it harder to stack the product once the beer’s run out—problematic for brick laying. The finalized design came in two sizes—350 and 500 milimeters (35 and 50 centimeters)—the smaller of which acted as half-bricks to even out rows during construction. In 1963, the company made 50,000 WOBOs for commercial use.

Both designs (one of the wooden prototypes is pictured in Nigel Whiteley’s Design for Society), were ultimately rejected by the Heineken company. The first prototype for example, was described by the Heineken marketing team as too “effeminate” as the bottle lacked ‘approprate’ connotations of masculinity. A puzzling description, Cabinet writes, “considering that the bottle consisted of two bulbous compartments surmounted by a long shaft.”

For the second model, Habraken and Heineken had to thicken the glass because it was meant to be laid horizontally—a costly decision for an already progressive concept. The established cylindrical designs were more cost effective and could be produced faster than the proposed brick design. But what most likely worked against Habraken’s design was that customers simply liked the easy-to-hold, cylindrical bottle.

Though the brick bottles never saw the market, in 1965 a prototype glass house was built near Alfred Heineken’s villa in Noordwijk, outside Amsterdam. Even the plastic shipping pallets intended for the product were reused as sheet roofing. The two buildings still stand at the company’s former brewery-turned-museum, The Heineken Experience. 

A Heineken label circa 1931. Image courtesy of Heineken International.

Where Heineken failed in creating a reusable brick bottle, the company EM1UM succeeded. The bottles, which were easier to manufacture for most automatic bottling machines than Heineken’s design, were made to attach lengthways or sideways by pushing the knobs of one into the depressions of another. EM1UM was mostly successful in Argentina and collected awards for bottle designs including prisms, cubes and cylinders.

In 2008, French design company, Petit Romain, made plans to make its own take on Alfred Heineken’s WOBO design, the Heineken Cube. It’s similar to the original concept in that it’s stackable, packable and altogether better for travel than the usual, clinky, cylindrical bottles. The major difference is that the cube is meant to save space, not to build homes. Like Freddy’s WOBO, the Cube is still in the prototype stage.

The prototype Heineken cube from Petit Romain via Laughing Squid

Though Freddy’s brick design never took off, it didn’t stop Heineken International from maintaining the lead in the global brew market. By ’68, Heineken merged with its biggest competitor, Amstel. By ’75 Freddy was one of the richest men in Europe.

A fun, slightly-related fact: Alfred Heineken and his chauffeur were kidnapped in 1983 and held at a 10 million dollar ransom in a warehouse for three weeks. Lucky for Freddy, one of the kidnappers gave away their location mistakenly while calling for some Chinese takeout. According to the Guardian, after the incident, Heineken required at least two bodyguards to travel with him at all times.

Alfred played a large role in the company’s expansion, championing a series of successful acquisitions, right up until his death in 2002. While his plans for translucent, green bottle homes never came to fruition commercially, the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple, constructed from a mix of one million bottles from Heineken and the local Chang beer remains proof of the design’s artfulness. For some designers, it seems, there is no such thing as garbage.

Since the mid to late 19th century, isinglass, a fish by-product has been used as a clarification agent in Guinness beer. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Guinness sells about 10 million pints a day across 100 countries. On St. Patrick’s Day, that number hops to 13 million. When Arthur Guinness set up shop in Dublin back in 1759, he never would’ve guessed that his stout would become the unofficial beer of the Irish and the go-to beverage to shout to the bartender come March 17 (besides Jameson). Even Obama honored his Irish lineage with a highly-publicized Guinness at a pub in Ireland last year. But the classic brew isn’t for everyone. For the hardline vegetarians and vegans out celebrating this St. Paddy’s Day: there could be traces of fish bladder in your Guinness.

Isinglass, a gelatine-like substance made from the air-bladders or sounds of fish like the sturgeon is added to cask beers like Guinness to help any remaining yeast and solid particles settle out of the final product. As the finings pass through the beer, they attract themselves to particles in the fermented beer that create an unwanted “haziness” in the final product and form into a jelly-like mass that settles to the bottom of the cask. While beer left untouched will clear on its own, isinglass speeds up the process and doesn’t affect the final flavor of the beer once removed.

The word isinglass most likely comes from the corruption of the Dutch word huisenblas which translates directly to “sturgeon’s bladder,” but its history goes back a little further. Its archaic, Latin root, ichthyocolla, comes from the Greek words ikhthus (fish) and kolla (glue)—defining the mucous-like substance as “fish glue.”

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume IX, originally published in Edinburgh in 1797, the method of using isinglass as a clarification agent was long a secret in the hands of the Russians who were known for their exceptionally strong isinglass-made glue. The entry, which draws heavily from Humphrey Jackson’s 63rd volume of the Philosophical Transactions, cites the principal research of Pomet on the process of making isinglass:

“As to the manner of making the isinglass, the sinewy parts of the fish are boiled in water till all of them be dissolved that will disolve; then the gluey liqur is strained and set to cool. Being cold, the fat is carefully taken off, and the liquor itself boiled to a just consistency, then cut to pieces and made into a twist, bent in form of a crescent, as commonly fold: then hung upon a firing and carefully dried.”

Pomet’s experiments with the sounds of fish and its chemical properties lead him to discover the fish membrane’s ability to clarify beer. Adding an ounce and a half of “good isinglass” to a gallon of stale beer to steep for a few days, he found that the bad beer “was converted into good fining, of a remarkably thick consistence.” When he tried this with the same quantity of glue, the experiment yielded only “mucilaginous liquor, resembling diluted gum water which instead of clarifying beer, increased both its tenacity and turbidness.”

Combining the insinglass with malt liquor, he found that a “vast number of curdly masses became presently formed”, became attracted to the “feculencies of beer,” and, with the “well known laws of gravitation,” the unwanted particles combined with the isinglass and fell to the bottom of the barrel.

The process is simple: Remove the membranous parts of fresh-caught fish, scrape off the mucosity with a knife, roll, twist and dry in open air.  The thicker the sounds are, the better the isinglass. The air-bladders of fresh water fish are preferred because they are more flexible and delicate. Swim bladders from sturgeon—especially that from the Beluga sturgeon which yielded the greatest quantity of sounds—were used to make isinglass until the 1795 invention of a cheap cod substitute by William Murdoch.  Summer is the best time to collect, as frost interferes with the fish’s gelatinous principles. After the drying process, “good” isinglass, once held up to a light, exhibits prismatic colors.  

Guinness first used isinglass in its Dublin brewery in the mid to late 19th century. A young fermentation scholar by the name of Forbes Watson, the son of an Edinburgh solicitor, was a pioneer in the experimentation and examination of the mineral constituents of Guinness beer. Within six weeks of being hired at the brewery, Watson discovered a way to recover beer at the bottom of the vat saving Guinness 6,000 pounds a year. Very early in his career, he toyed with pasteurization and introduced new methods of breaking down isinglass finings that would increase the lifetime of the stout. In 1909, Watson was killed in an accident with a machine he had helped create at age 37. After he died, little scientific ground was broken for the company until the 1930s.

With the presence of modern gelatin, isinglass is rarely used today with the exception of British “real ale” cask beers. Generally, British beers still use isinglass, gelatin, glycerin or casein. According to a recent statement made by Guinness:

“All Guinness brands are free from animal matter and from contact with animal matter. However, isinglass, which is a by-product of the fishing industry, is used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass is retained in the floor of the vat but it is possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer.”

For many strict vegetarians and vegans even “minute quantities” of an animal product is enough to abstain from eating a particular food. Much like the honey debate (Does it hurt the bee? Or does it not count as an animal product? What about silkworms and cochineal bugs?) flexitarians and militant vegans may disagree on how to classify the potential traces of isinglass in beer.

For those who are on the anti-isinglass side of the spectrum, carrageenan, a type of red algae, also called Irish Moss, (an appropriate title for St. Paddy’s Day) also works as a fining agent in beer, but doesn’t yield the same results as isinglass. The k-carrageenan interacts with the proteins that create cloudy beer and form the molecular equivalent of marbles in syrup at the bottom of the batch. Vegan brands like Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon use carrageenan while others like Odell Brewing Co. use centrifugation for clarification. 

Strict vegetarians and vegans often choose German or Belgium brews which abide by “purity laws” (first enacted in 1516) which require that breweries use only ingredients of water, grain (barley or wheat), hops and yeast. The ruling was officially lifted in 1987 by the European Court, but the tradition of the law remains.

So, before you step out on the town in your green get-up and order an Irish stout this St. Patrick’s Day, remember: Pescetarians, rejoice—Guinness is still “good for you“. Vegans, stick to whiskey.

America can’t get enough craft beer. Microbreweries, regional breweries, and brew pubs per capita as of April 2012, according to the Brewers Association

Dan Koester wants to assure you, there’s nothing to fear. Despite having names such as the Worthy Adversary, Alimony Ale and Nippletop Milk Stout, craft beers aren’t as intimidating as they appear, though just try ordering a Fulton Lonely Blonde without feeling like a crusty, old sailor. But Koester, craft enthusiast and author of The Definitive Guide to Buying Craft Beer: Discover Everything You Need to Know About Buying and Enjoying Craft Beer, says craft beer is for everyone.

Koester says he hasn’t met a craft beer he doesn’t like.

“I think the group in general, the people who are enjoying craft beer, is just a very laid-back group,” says Koester, who sports a respectable mustache and hails from the brew-loving land of Wisconsin. During the day, he’s conscientious, Oak Creek Dental Care Dr. Koester, but in his free time, he’s a bit of a Renaissance man, restoring old cars, biking with his family and trying any craft beer he comes across.

After sampling craft beers his son was bringing home while working at a liquor store, Koester began exploring a world previously unknown to him. Now he travels the country, most recently to Oregon, to try as many varieties as possible.

His interest coincides with a national boom in the craft industry. After a serious slump post-Prohibition, large companies were the only survivors, acquiring smaller operations so that by the end of the 1970s, there were only 44 brewing companies in the country, according to the Brewers Association. Koester says homebrewing grew in popularity in response to industry consolidation. Craft breweries blossomed from basements and garages and, as regulations began recognizing the smaller breed of brewers, craft beer gained a foothold in the market. Over at the Atlantic Cities, Richard Florida sifted through the data to figure out why craft brewing seemed to boom in certain states. Interestingly, the state comparison revealed that income played less of a role than education level (the higher the level, the more breweries abound). Florida also found some interesting corollaries:

“…craft brewing is more closely associated with higher levels of happiness and well-being (0.47).”

“Curiously, there was a negative connection between craft breweries and two other unhealthy behaviors or “sins” — smoking (-0.28) and even more so with obesity (-0.54).”

Some states have even begun trying to attract craft brewers as a way to boost local economies. And, in true trendsetting fashion, American craft brewers are now feeding demand in Europe, according to PRI’s The World, who argue that the big shift came two years ago at Munich’s Oktoberfest when a Samuel Adams beer took home gold. The victory in the heart of European beer country was compared to the famous Judgement of Paris in 1976 when two California wines bested the competition in a blind tasting.

There are now 2,126 breweries in the country, according to the Brewers Association, with 2,075 considered craft breweries, meaning they produce 6 million barrels of beer per year or fewer.

Before you get overwhelmed by the choices, Koester offers his expertise on everything from food pairings to essential questions to ask before you buy a drink.

On food pairings:

Spicy Foods: “With spicier food, Mexican food, that sort of thing, I like the Scotch Ales, they go very well with spicy food,” says Koester, singling out Samuel Adams’ version of it in particular.

Best Bets: For a gold medal-winning brew, try Oskar Blues Brewing’s Old Chub Scottish ale, which placed first in its category at the U.S. Beer Championships. The beer is “brewed with bodacious amounts of malted barley and specialty grains, and a dash of beechwood-smoked malt,” creating a flavor profile “of cocoa and coffee, and a kiss of smoke.”

Heavy Foods: ”The more bitter, hoppy beers, which I do like a lot, the IPAs and Imperial IPAs like a Russian Imperial Stout, go really well with German food. The heavier, meatier foods seem to go well with the bitter, hoppy beers,” says Koester.

Best Bets: The Alchemist Brewery’s Heady Topper, with a promise to put hair on your chest, took the top honors over at Beer Advocate in the Imperial IPA category. And Paste Magazine nominated Great Divide Brewing Company’s Hercules, also a double IPA, for its balanced flavor and hoppy finish.

Sweet and…Sweet: With the glut of holiday cookies upon us, Koester says you can’t go wrong pairing a similarly sweet brew with a sweet treat. “Something like an Abbey Triple or a fruitier beer, a Lambic, with something sweet goes very well,” says Koester.

Best Bets: Developed from a Belgian recipe from the 1300s, the Allagash Brewing Company makes a Coolship Resurgam that the Wall Street Journal calls, “clean and tart with an effervescent strawberry finish.”

On craft beers for wine lovers:

So maybe you remember a little too well the stale, pale flavor of college party beers past though you wish you didn’t. For whatever reason, you’re a wine-only person. To get out of your grape rut, Koester again recommends starting with something like a Lambic, known for a refreshing, bubbly profile with hints of fruit that should appeal to the wine-lover’s palate.

Best Bets: And for another great Lambic from abroad, the New York Times likes Lindemans Cuvée René as an older, aged variety “with wonderful raspberry aromas that combined with a sort of earthiness.” For a sweeter finish, the New York Times suggests, De Troch Apricot Chapeau from Noble Union Trading, saying it had a ”nut flavor almost like Turkish delight.”

On beginner brews:

“A lot of the things that will turn people on or off is how bitter is the beer,” says Koester. “I think that’s a very basic question: Do you like more of a sweet or milder beer?” Because the hoppier brews can be a bit strong for beginners, he says brown and amber ales tend to cut a middle road. “They have some bitterness, some hoppiness, but they’re also a very flavorful malty beer.”

Best Bets: Tröegs Brewing Company’s amber ale, Nugget Nectar, has the highest user-generated score of any amber ale over at Beer Advocate. Available February through March, the brew promises to “take hopheads to nirvana with a heady collection of Nugget, Warrior and Tomahawk hops.” Meanwhile, Red Brick’s version, Laughing Skull, placed first in its category at the 2011 U.S. Beer Championships with its signature zombie logo.

Soak grain in water and a seed begins to sprout. Dry out that tiny protoplant, or acrospire, roast it, and you’ve got malt—the basis for fermenting beer (and distilling whiskey too). The process can be crude; soaking can take place in a puddle, drying on the roof of a house. I wrote about the small-scale revival of the malting process, of the more modern variety, in The New York Times last week and it’s curious just how far the process predates the current garage-scale renaissance, the flourishing of regional malthouses in the 19th century, or even the English maltsters who first set up shop on American soil four hundred years ago.

The late historian Peter Damerow, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, published an examination of 4,000-year-old cuneiform writings found near present day Turkey, including a mythic text from ancient Sumerian tablet known as the “Hymn to Ninkasi.” Ninkasi was the goddess of brewing. In the paper, published earlier this year, he explains that the hymn accompanied “a kind of drinking song” dedicated to a female tavern-keeper. It’s the first recipe, of sorts, for beer:

Ninkasi, you are the one who handles dough (and) … with a big shovel,
Mixing, in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics.
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grain.
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the earth-covered malt (“munu”),
The noble dogs guard (it even) from the potentates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt (“sun”) in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash (“ti-tab”) on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes …
Ninkasi, you are the one who holds with both hands the great sweetwort (“dida”),
Brewing (it) with honey (and) wine.
Ninkasi, [...]
[You ...] the sweetwort (“dida”) to the vessel.
The fermenting vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on (top of) a large collector vat (“laÌtan”).
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is (like) the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

As archeologist Patrick McGovern has written in Uncorking the Past, the domestication of barley in the Fertile Crescent led to the emergence of a forebear to modern beer some 6,000 year ago, providing a possible motive for a decisive step in the development of human culture and the so-called Neolithic Revolution. Beer may have come before bread. Still, these cuniform tablets are notoriously difficult to translate and leave only a rough outline of the process—so, despite the best efforts to replicate the Tigris-like rush of ancient Sumerian beer today, unanswerable questions about the beer’s exact composition remain. When, for example, did they interrupt the germination of the “earth-covered” malt, a crucial step enabling a grain to undergo alcoholic fermentation?

Damerow suggests there’s reason to doubt whether these brews even proved to be much of an intoxicant 4,000 years ago: “Given our limited knowledge about the Sumerian brewing processes, we cannot say for sure whether their end product even contained alcohol.” Then again, would we really have kept the ancient process alive for so long if it just gave us better nutrition and didn’t also make us feel good?

Image: Woolley 1934, pl. 200, no. 102/Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, 2012

Nouveau Pac Man Cuisine. Image courtesy of Flickr user Orbital Joe.

Have you ever considered video games to be works of art? A show called The Art of Video Games, opening Friday at the American Art Museum, moves beyond looking at games simply as a form of entertainment and draws our attention to how games are a design and storytelling medium—perhaps the art medium of the 21st century.

By the same token, have you ever stopped to think about how food figures into video games? Pac Man chows down on power pellets, Mario is a hardcore mushroom-monger, Donkey Kong a banana connoisseur. There have been games devoted to food fights or hamburger chefs being chased by manic pickles and sausages. Furthermore, ever since the video game boom of the late 1970s, games have been used as a means to advertise products—including edibles. While “advergaming” may be a recent piece of Internet age jargon to describe web-based games created to market a branded product, the concept has been kicking around since the dawn of video games. Here are a five notable games that were created to promote familiar foodstuffs.

Tapper (1983): Let’s start with arcade-era gaming. The premise of this one was simple: You are a bartender whose goal is to keep sliding beers down the bar to quench your customers’ thirst. This cabinet is noteworthy for its clever physical design: Bar-style beer taps are used to control your character and places to rest your drink. Players will also notice that the Budweiser logo is shown front-and-center and on the bar’s back wall. Although the game was initially meant to be installed in bars, it was re-tooled and re-christened Root Beer Tapper as a kid-appropriate game for arcades and home video gaming platforms.

Kool-Aid Man (1983): What’s notable about this game is how the marketers and the computer programmers behind the game clashed. Marketing wanted a single game that could be adapted to the variety of gaming systems then on the market, whereas programmers wanted to create multiple versions of the game, each one able to take advantage of each platform’s technical strengths. For those who bought the Atari 2600 version of the game, you played the Kool-Aid Man who had to thwart little round creatures called Thirsties who drank from a pool of water—if the water was depleted, the game ended. The Intellivision version was drastically different, with players controlling two children trapped in a haunted house being terrorized by Thirsties. If you collected the ingredients needed to make Kool-Aid, the Kool-Aid man characteristically busted through a wall to thwart the Thirsties.

The California Raisins (1988): The late 1980s and early 1990s were a great era for clay-animated television ads hawking food, and the chief ad mascots were the California Raisins. This Motown-esque group of singing raisins was featured in several television ads, a Christmas special and a Saturday morning cartoon show. The raisins released several albums and even inspired two video games. The first was a PC game in which you played a raisin whose friends were trapped in a cereal factory and it’s your job to rescue them.The second is the stuff of gaming apocrypha. Developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System and slated for release in 1991, it was cancelled at the last minute, perhaps in part due to the raisins’ waning popularity. I still think that’s doing pretty well for something as simple as dried fruit. (On a side note, the raisins’ claymation counterpart, the Dominos Noid, also graced PC screens.)

Chex Quest (1997): For a kid, finding a prize at the bottom of the cereal box is the ultimate payoff for eating breakfast every day. (Aside from all the associated health benefits.) While small toys are par for the course, the cereal box can also be a source for home gaming entertainment. The first video game packaged in a box of cereal also happened to have a food theme. Chex Quest was based on the then-popular Doom series of games, which was notorious for its extreme violence. Chex Quest, on the other hand, was totally kid friendly. You played as an anthropomorphized piece of Chex tasked with saving the planet from an invasion of slimy, green creatures—but instead of killing them, you zapped them with your gun and teleported them to another dimension.

Darkened Skye (2002): Released on the Nintendo Game Cube platform in 2002, you play Skye, a shepherdess charged with fighting the forces of darkness with your wits, weapons and… magic Skittles. Yes, you read that right. Turns out there are Skittle-laden rainbows that bring color and life to Skye’s world, and she unleashes the magic of said Skittles in her mission. What an epic extension of the “taste the rainbow” ad campaign!

All that said, perhaps the most perfect marriage of video games and the culinary world is the Super Nintoaster—the product of a gaming fan who gutted a toaster and replaced the heating elements with all the requisite circuitry and jacks to make a perfectly functional gaming system. Pac Man shrimp dumplings, served at Red Farm restaurant in New York City, come in at a very close second.

The Art of Video Games will be at at the American Art Museum through September 30.

Churros can be both delicious and dangerous. Image courtesy of Flickr user a_sorense.

In the past we have seen how gelatin, ice cream trucks, raw chickens and vanilla extract have figured in to the criminal behavior those who think they can live outside the law. Food crimes don’t seem to be letting up, as evidenced by the following four incidents.

December, 2011. Port Richey, Florida. A pint and a bank job.

On the afternoon of December 22, John Robin Whittle ordered a beer at the Hayloft Bar, but left for approximately half and hour and then returned to down the drink. He was soon arrested by local authorities: Whittle fit the description of a man who robbed a nearby Wells Fargo bank but ten minutes before.

October, 2011. Punta Gorda, Florida. A slippery situation.

Why steal used cooking oil? This restaurant waste product can be converted into biofuel and on the open market it can command as much as four dollars a gallon. On the evening of October 17, two men were spotted behind a Burger King pumping cooking oil into their collection truck; however, their vehicle did not belong to Griffin Industries, the usual company that picked up the oil. The two drivers explained that the regular collection truck had broken down, but on calling Griffin Industries, the restaurant manager learned that none of their trucks were in the area collecting oil. By this time the two drivers had left with approximately $1,500 worth of oil. The manager called the police, who spotted the truck at a Golden Corral, again siphoning off used cooking oil. Two men, Javier Abad and Antonio Hernandez, were arrested and charged with grand theft. (And for a lighter take on this trend in food crime, check out the “Simpsons” episode “Lard of the Dance,” where Bart and Homer conjure up a get-rich-quick scheme by stealing grease.)

Marysville, Tennessee. July, 2004. Would you like extra cheese on that?

At about 5:00 in the morning on July 18, Marysville, Tennessee police discovered a car abandoned in the parking lot of the John Sevier Pool containing a pile of clothes and a bottle of vodka. A thoroughly intoxicated Michael David Monn, the owner of the car and the articles therein, was soon spotted running toward the authorities wearing nothing but nacho cheese. The 23-year-old had apparently jumped a wall to raid the pool’s concession area. In March, 2005 Monn pleaded guilty to burglary, theft, vandalism, indecent exposure and public intoxication. He was sentenced to three years probation and a $400 fine to cover the costs of the stolen food.

Santiago, Chile. 2004. Hot Stuff.

In 2004, Chilean hospitals began treating people for burns incurred after attempting to make churros, the treat of fried dough coated in sugar. In each case, the dough shot out of the pot, showering the chefs with hot oil. The injuries came days after La Tercera, a daily newspaper, printed a churro recipe—but neglected to test it. In December 2011, the Chilean Supreme Court determined that the suggested oil temperature was far too high and that anyone following the recipe to the letter would have ended up with dangerously explosive results. The newspaper’s publisher, Grupo Copesa, was ordered to pay out $125,000 to 13 burn victims, including one woman whose injuries so severe that she was awarded a $48,000 settlement.

Boiling the wort. Image by Lisa Bramen

I have found that one of the keys to harmony in my marriage is clear division of labor. I’m in charge of food acquisition and preparation (except one night a week, when my husband makes either pasta or pizza so I can write), paying bills, and general tidying. My partner is responsible for doing the dishes, most of the heavy housework (like cleaning the floors and bathrooms), and either mowing the lawn in summer or clearing the driveway of snow in winter. I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the bargain—here’s hoping he never develops an interest in cooking.

But sometimes it can be fun to tackle a kitchen project together, as we found this weekend, during our first attempt at brewing our own beer. After my last DIY food adventure, pickling vegetables from my garden, I was glad I didn’t have to go solo this time. As with the pickling, the process took a lot longer than expected—the better part of Sunday—but it went a lot more smoothly having two heads, and two sets of hands, rather than one.

Which is not to say there were no glitches. We followed a porter recipe from a nearby brewer’s supply store where we bought our ingredients. (There has probably never been a better time to take up home brewing—thanks to the explosion in interest in the past decade or so, supplies and information are readily available at bricks-and-mortar stores and online.)

The first step was to steep our specialty grains—a combination of three kinds of malted barley—in hot water, wrapped in cheese cloth like a giant tea bag. We accidentally spilled about a quarter of the grain in the sink while trying to pour it into the cloth. Everyone, from the supply store owner to the guys on the instructional video that came with our brewing kit to the authors of the book we bought on brewing, had drummed the importance of sanitation into my husband’s head. (After reading the book before bedtime, he actually muttered in his sleep, “It’s all about cleanliness.”) We didn’t dare try to salvage the spilled grain, even though the sink was clean. So we decided to compensate for the lost grain by steeping the remainder longer. I’m hoping we don’t end up with two cases of watery porter.

Next we added malt extract, which looks like the sludge left in an engine that’s overdue for an oil change but smells pleasantly, well, malty. This we boiled, along with the hops, for about an hour. Or, it would have taken an hour, if our 1961 stove weren’t so dysfunctional. The large front burner goes on strike about as often as an Italian train worker. At some point we realized our rolling boil had slowed to barely a simmer. And since the five-gallon pot wouldn’t fit on the back burner under the second oven, we had to move it to the small front burner. Again, we added a little extra time to compensate.

The beer in the early stages of fermenting

Finally we had our wort, which is what gets poured into the fermenter (a glass carboy) along with some yeast. At this point we would have used our hydrometer to measure the original gravity before fermentation—later readings will tell us how fermentation is going, because the reading will get lower as the sugars turn into alcohol—but we didn’t realize until too late that the hydrometer had shipped broken. The supplier sent out a new one and assured us it wasn’t a big deal to not get an original reading.

A couple of days later, our batch appears to be fermenting nicely; it has developed a good mound of foam on top, called Kräusen. By next weekend, it should be ready for racking, or siphoning into another carboy for secondary fermentation without the spent yeast sediment that has settled to the bottom of the first carboy. Once fermentation is complete, we’ll add a little corn sugar to aid carbonation before bottling.

By Christmas, we’ll either have two cases of delicious porter under the tree or 48 bottles to reuse/recycle and some brewing lessons under our belt. Either way, we’ll have a new hobby to share.

Scientists recently discovered the wild yeast that came to be used to brew lager beer. Image courtesy of Flickr user Anders Adermark.

People have been tossing back beer for thousands of years—the drink is a cornerstone of human civilization—and it’s a potation whose heady qualities come to us by way of yeast. Perhaps most familiar to us in the granulated form stocked on supermarket shelves, yeast is a single-celled microorganism that creates the alcohol and carbon dioxide in beer, in addition to imparting flavors, all of which can vary depending on the type of yeast being used. (More than 800 species of yeast have been documented.) A variety of this fungus commonly used to bake bread and brew ale beers is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which ferments at a warm 70 degrees. But at some point in the 15th century, Bavarian brewers introduced lager, which employed a hybrid yeast that fermented at cooler temperatures. But what the S. cerevisiae was crossed with to craft this type of beer remained a mystery until now.

Scientists from the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere set out to find where the non-ale portion of the lager yeast came from—and the search took them to Patagonia. Here, in outgrowths on beech trees, they found an undocumented wild yeast—dubbed Saccharomyces eubayanus—whose DNA sequence matched the genome of the unknown half of the lager yeast. They hypothesize that this wild yeast made its way to Europe by way of trans-Atlantic trade and mixed with the baker’s yeast in brewery environments.

But with lagers being brewed before Europeans graced North America, how did this variety of beer initially come to exist? Chris Hittinger, one of the lead scientists on the study, suggests that lagers were made before the arrival of S. eubayanus, and while the beer underwent a long fermentation process in cool temperatures, the resulting brew just didn’t taste very good.

Blackstrap molasses. Image courtesy of Flickr user FotoosVanRobin.

People between North Carolina and Vermont are cleaning up after Irene, the storm that destructively tromped along the eastern seaboard this past weekend. Hurricanes in the northeast are pretty rare and can leave people at a loss for how to prepare for extraordinarily severe conditions. At the very least, there are standard pieces of advice you can use to more or less muddle through a nasty situation. But perhaps even rarer are freak events involving food that cause a lot of damage. Those with an appetite for tragic tales might enjoy the following:

London Beer Flood: In the late 18th century, the Meux family brewery attained celebrity status, at least on account of the spectacular size of the vats they used to craft porter—one had the capacity to hold some 20,000 barrels of beer. Unfortunately, the hoops holding one of the vats together had corroded, and on the evening of October 17, 1814, they completely gave out, loosing some 3,500 barrels of beer that knocked down the brewery walls and flooded Tottenham Court, killing eight.

The Great Mill Disaster: Built in 1874, the Washburn “A” Mill along sat along the east bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota and at the time was the largest flour-making facility in the United States. “Was,” unfortunately, is the operative word. On the evening of May 2, 1878, the stones used to grind grain gave off sparks, igniting particles of flour dust in the air and causing a massive explosion. (Flour, a carbohydrate, is made mostly of sugar and burns very easily.) In all, 18 people were killed and the blast started other fires that destroyed six nearby mills.

Boston Molasses Disaster: In Boston’s North End, near the city’s financial district and working class Italian neighborhoods, there stood a molasses tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company. Built in 1915, the vat was capable of holding some 2.5 million gallons; however, by 1919, locals were complaining that it was leaking, and on the afternoon of January 15, it exploded. Flying metal knocked out the supports of nearby elevated train tracks and a 15-foot-high wave of molasses crashed through the streets at some 35 miles per hour, knocking down and enveloping people in its path. Parts of Boston were standing in two to three feet of molasses and the disaster left 21 dead and 150 injured.

Basra Mass Poisoning: In the winter of 1971, shipment of grain arrived in Basra, Iraq; however, it was treated with a methylmercury fungicide and was intended only for use on seed. (If ingested, methylmercury can cause serious neurological damage, and in high doses, can be deadly.) The bags were accordingly marked poison—although only in English and Spanish—and the grains were dyed bright pink to indicate they were not for consumption. Nevertheless, bags of grain were stolen before they could be distributed to farmers, the dye washed off and the grain sold as food. (Another account says that the grain was freely given away and the recipients thought that washing off the dye would rid the grain of mercury, making it safe to eat.) Some 6,500 people were hospitalized, 459 of whom died.

Chocolate Stout Milk Shake. Image courtesy of Flickr user Accidental Hedonist.

In John Steinbeck‘s 1945 novel Cannery Row, the loner marine biologist Doc loves his beer—so much that one of his friends jokingly remarks that one of these days he’ll order a beer milk shake. ”It was a simple piece of foolery, but it had bothered Doc ever since,” Steinbeck writes. “He wondered what a beer milkshake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it…. If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police.”

Doc eventually gets over his neuroses at an out-of-town diner and orders the shake—half a bottle of beer added to some milk, no sugar—under the pretense that it’s doctor’s orders to help treat an infection. The resulting flavor, described as nothing more than the sum of its dairy and stale ale components, hardly sounds appetizing, and Doc’s post-swig twisted facial expressions pretty much say it all. So from there on out, I’m guessing he probably went back to pairing beer with savory foods, like hamburgers, which is what most of us do. But who’s to say you can’t find beers fit for a dessert course?

Greg Engert, the beer director at Churchkey and Birch and Barley restaurants here in DC, chatted with Smithsonian online reporter Megan Gambino a while back about beers to sub in for New Year’s champagne toasts. It only seemed fitting to pick his brain over e-mail about brews to satisfy the sweet tooth and how to incorporate them into the dessert course of a meal.

When did people start brewing beers meant to appeal to the sweeter part of our palate?

Beer, as a fermented grain-based beverage, has always displayed some degree of residual sweetness. In fact, most beers would have displayed very little “sweetness” as we today comprehend that sensation. Until the technological innovations that began in the early 18th century and culminated in the 19th, beer would have for the most part been much lower in alcohol than today’s variants, had a dark hue, almost always shown some sort of roasty or even smoky quality (both on account of primitive malting techniques), and would have also almost exclusively displayed at least a mild acidity, as well as a sort of earthy, somewhat funky quality we would now mostly associate with Old World wine (due to a lack of yeast science, more rustic brewing techniques and equipment, as well as the affection for such flavors).

I think the larger desire for sweetness is a 20th-century invention, and one only made possible by technological advancements, then instilled in a larger culture with the advent of processed food, as well as with Prohibitionist movements that swept the West with a flurry. I like to remind people that with the United States’ nearly 15 years of the Great Experiment, a generation of young men and women grew up without tasting alcohol, and soft drinks swooped in to ensure that soda-pop, and simplified, concocted—i.e., unnatural—sweetness would remain an indelible part of our world.

What qualities make a beer suitable to serve as (or with) a dessert?

Sweeter, grain-based flavors offer beer as a companion to so much of our foods, as they allow for ales and lagers to complement the sweeter notes that abound in all aspects of cuisine. I am not just talking about sugary sweetness, but starchy sweetness, as well as the sweeter notes inherent in the fatty, protein-laden, buttery tastes we discover in so much of the dishes we enjoy. Beer’s matching with food is extremely complex and many interactions are contained within the felicity of food and beer.

So, when most people think dessert, they think of sweetness, and beer certainly has that covered. Malty beers arrive on the palate showing fantastic notes of toasted bread, biscuits, nuttiness, caramel, butterscotch, toffee. These are all flavors we find in desserts. And beers can very emphatically showcase chocolaty and coffee notes in those darker brews with roasty notes. Fruitier flavors abound in some of the maltier styles already mentioned, but are also seen in the yeast-driven brews, which—through fermentation—produce boldly fruity and spicy notes. These are typically stronger Belgian ales, with those that are lighter in color tasting of apple, pear, peach, orange, lemon, banana, apricot and figs, as well as clove, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla and coriander. The darker varieties offer banana, fig, prune, raisin, cherry, plum and vinous flavors. Spices arrive in the guise of clove, pepper, rose, nutmeg and cinnamon. Some of the funky and sour brews, the Flanders red and brown ales, the fruit lambics, are also excellent for not just showing off fruitier flavors, but reminding us that their acidity is often present in fruit itself. So fresh fruit desserts can work nicely with these drinks that are actually more naturally similar to the fruits themselves. And this is to say nothing of the beers that are brewed with many adjuncts to either establish or heighten the flavors of the beer. We have malty beers brewed with hazelnut nectar, roasty stouts with cacao nibs and sweeter Belgian lambics crafted with fruit, or at least fruit juices.

Can you pair beers with more traditional dessert offerings?

Beers can pair well with so many desserts it is mind-boggling. The ability to identify very emphasized flavors in our beers, like chocolate, fruit or nuttiness, makes it so pairing beer and dessert is quite an approachable endeavor, and one that is instantly rewarding. The easiest approach is to look to mirror the flavors of the dessert with flavors found in certain beers; however, one needs to make sure that the impact of flavors from both are even, otherwise a light and airy dessert will be overwhelmed by a rich and boozy brew, even if they share certain major flavor effects. The same is true for a bold and rich dessert when paired with a lighter and more restrained ale or lager.

Think like a pastry chef and approach your pairings as if you are continuing to craft the dessert. To that end, in addition to looking for complementary flavors, matching fruit with fruit and chocolate with chocolate, one can seek to forge new complimentary relationships on the palate. So perhaps bringing a stronger Belgian dark ale to that chocolate cake, rather than the imperial stout; the Belgian will show some caramel and hints of cocoa to mirror those flavors in the cake, while adding some delicious dark fruit and spice flavors to add a complimentary nuance to the dessert. The same would work for bringing a nutty, toffee sweet barleywine the cake: this dusts the slice with shaved hazelnuts and drizzles of caramel.

What would your top recommendations be for dessert beers and what draws you to these particular brews?

Top styles for dessert beers fall into these categories. They should typically be bolder brews, as dessert comes at the end of the meal and the palate may struggle to fully engage milder flavors. Also, desserts tend to be richer, or at least intensely flavored.

Malty, bready, nutty, caramelized brews: English strong ale, barleywine, Scotch ale (aka Wee Heavy), doppelbock, eisbock

Roasty and chocolaty brews: sweet stout, oatmeal stout, porter, Baltic porter, Belgian stout, brown ale, imperial stout

Fruity, spicy, sweeter brews with brighter notes: sweet fruit beer/sweet fruit lambic (brewed with strawberry, raspberry, cherry, peach, apple, etc.), Belgian strong blond ale, tripel, Belgian strong pale ale, Weizenbock (pale), wheatwine

Fruity, spicy, sweeter brews with darker notes: dubbel, Belgian strong dark ale, Weizenbock (dark), quadrupel

Tart, funky, fruity brews: Flanders red/brown ale, traditional fruit lambic; blond, pale and dark wild ales

So perhaps if Doc were a little more beer-savvy before going into the diner, he could have had a better milk shake. He’s not the only one who has been intrigued by the pairing—and some even find it preferable to enjoying beer on its own.

Putting beer koozies to the test. Photo credit: Lisa Bramen

With the official kick-off of outdoor barbecue season this weekend also comes an alarming increase in beer waste. According to the Bureau of Bogus Statistics I Totally Just Made Up, as much as a third of every beer opened during the summer months goes unconsumed. The primary reason: the beer has gotten warm. When the mercury climbs, canned and bottled beverages don’t stand a chance of remaining palatably cold to the finish. With sodas or mixed drinks, it’s no big deal—just add ice. But beer doesn’t taste good with ice (even, in my opinion, when “ice” is just in the name).

Some people might say, “I don’t have that problem. I drink my beer in one long guzzle so it never has a chance to get warm.” Those people might have problems beyond warm beer.

For the rest of us, some marketing genius out there invented the koozie. The koozie, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, is a little foam insulating sleeve that fits around an aluminum can or, in more recent versions, a bottle. No one seems to know the origin of the name (or of the product itself, which became popular sometime in the 1980s), but my best guess is that it is a corruption of the word “cozy”—as in a tea cozy, meant to keep the teapot warm—with an extra “o” so it sounds like “cool.” Switching the “c” to a “k” must have been a byproduct of the era when bastardized spellings and superfluous umlauts were considered cool (see “Mötley Crüe”).

Whatever the origin, the koozie has several undeniable benefits: It keeps your hand from getting cold and covered in condensation. It’s a good way to identify one’s beer at a party, where it could easily be confused with look-alikes—the second most common cause of beer waste, according to the BBSITJMU. It can be used as camouflage: a friend of mine who was pregnant, but not ready to reveal her status to friends, covered her nonalcoholic beer in a koozie to avoid arousing suspicion. Finally, it’s a personal billboard, allowing you to proclaim your allegiance to a sports team; declare important sentiments, like that you’re “not as think as you drunk I am”; or go formal with a tuxedo koozie. You can even support independent crafters by buying felted, crocheted or cowhide koozies on Etsy.com.

But how well do they actually work at keeping your beverage cold? In the interest of preventing beer waste, I put them to the test. Recently, my husband and I conducted an experiment with three bottles of beer: I held one in a koozie, my husband held one without, and a third one, also koozieless, was set down between sips. We drank them at the same rate, alternating between the two held beers and the third beer, stopping at five-minute intervals to evaluate the temperature. The air temperature was 67 degrees Fahrenheit (not exactly sweltering, but it was early evening).

Within five minutes, there was already a subtle but noticeable difference between the beers we were holding—with koozie and without—and the unhandled one. The latter was still frosty, while the others had already started to lose their chill. The gap widened over the next ten minutes. At 15 minutes, the one without the koozie was warmer than the one with, but the unhandled beer was still coldest. Finally, at the 20-minute mark, all three were less than refreshing, but the one that had been held least remained coolest.

Our conclusion: the koozie helped, but not as much as limiting the beer’s time in hand.

Would the results have been different if we were using cans? If the air temperature had been warmer (especially if it had been warmer than human body temperature)? If we had a beer in a koozie that we set down between sips?

Hard to say. If any science-minded beer drinkers out there care to conduct their own experiments, be sure to let us know the results.

A chicken gets a beercanectomy. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

It is true, though, that Aussies love a barbecue. In the two weeks I was there over the holidays, I attended no fewer than four. Most featured sausages and marinated chicken, usually served with ketchup (or tomato sauce, as they call it) as the only condiment. But one barbecue was different.

The friends I stayed with in Melbourne are a bi-continental married couple—the Australian husband, Konrad, met his American wife, Nikki, while she was studying abroad in Queensland—who had returned to his homeland after about seven years in the States. During his time in America, including a year in Jacksonville, Florida, Konrad had developed a deep appreciation for Southern-style barbecue. Since returning home, with nowhere local to sate his cravings, he had bought a smoker and made it his project to learn how to replicate his favorite foods himself. During my visit he planned a backyard bash to introduce his Aussie friends to a barbecue with all the Dixie fixin’s—pulled pork, brisket and beer-can chicken with four kinds of homemade barbecue sauce on the side, plus potato salad, macaroni and cheese, baked beans and cornbread. Sweet tea and mint juleps were on the drink menu.

But first we had to go shopping. It turned out that the main ingredient in cornbread—cornmeal—was not stocked at local supermarkets. We tracked down a Spanish market in the artsy Fitzroy neighborhood (the Melbourne equivalent of New York’s Williamsburg or L.A.’s Los Feliz) where we found a package of P.A.N. brand, which had a drawing of a sassy-looking lady with her hair tied up in a polka-dotted scarf.

Naughty Pan, drinking on the subway! Photograph by Lisa Bramen

Since we were out for the rest of the afternoon and evening, this meant carrying around a sack of cornmeal everywhere we went. “Pan” became a kind of mascot, and we took a series of photos with “her” that became increasingly ridiculous as the night wore on.

Konrad and Nikki spent the better part of the next day preparing for the feast that afternoon. For the most part, the food seemed to be a hit with the Aussies. The biggest surprise was the baked beans—over there, as in England, baked beans are most commonly eaten at breakfast with eggs and toast. Their version comes out of the Heinz can in a relatively bland tomato sauce without the zip of BBQ baked beans, and some of the guests were downright excited about having them in this new context. The macaroni and cheese and the smoked meats and sauces also got raves.

As for the cornbread, I think Pan, which was pre-cooked, was the kind of cornmeal meant for arepas (delicious South American corn fritters) and not quite right for American cornbread. Although I didn’t get to try the resulting corn muffins before they disappeared at the party, they must have tasted alright anyway.

Maybe next time, they’ll introduce the Aussies to one of my favorite Southern dishes, shrimp and grits. But I’m sorry, y’all, “prawns and grits” just sounds wrong.

Beer-battered onion rings, courtesy of Flickr user kshilcutt

Do you have what it takes to be a food scientist? If you would like to find out, perform the following simple exercise, which was designed and executed by a team of professionals led by Fred Shih of the USDA’s Southern Regional Research Center. By the end, you will know (a) the difference between beer-battered fried foods and those fried in water-based batter, and (b) whether your future will be in the lab, gathering data that could improve the human condition, or at the bar, overfilling on unhealthy snacks.

1. Procure quantities of wheat flour, long-grain rice flour and pre-gelatinized rice flour. Also pick up some canola oil, Vidalia onions and tilapia filets. Oh, and beer.

2. Whip up six equal batches of batter: three with beer and each of the flours, and three with water and each of the flours. Be sure each batch achieves a viscosity of about 120 RVU. Then cut the filets into squares measuring 3.8 by 3.8 centimeters, and the onions into strips measuring 3.2 by 0.6 centimeters. Batter your fish and onions thoroughly, but save a sample of each batter by itself.

3. Fill your deep fryer with canola oil to a depth of 4.5 centimeters and heat the oil to 190 degrees Celsius. Fry everything—the beer-battered stuff for 2 minutes, the other stuff for 4. Also fry samples of each batter alone, until each one looks golden brown. Then let all your samples cool so we can begin our analysis.

4. First, we are going to determine how much oil each batter sample absorbed—”oil uptake,” in the lingo. Get out your supercritical fluid extraction system and fill the sample cartridge with this stuff in this order, starting from the exit end of the cartridge: 1 gram of Ottawa sand, 1 gram of diatomaceous earth and 1.5 to 3 grams of batter, to fill. Then use 65 mL of carbon dioxide to extract the sample at 51.71 MPa and 100 degrees C. For the love of Mike, set the restrictors to 140 degrees C, and keep the flow rate between 2.5 and 2.7 mL per minute. Pretty soon oil will be extracted from the batter sample. Weigh the oil and do some pretty complicated math, and you will have your oil-uptake data.

5. Now we can test for textural qualities, which eaters are more interested in anyway. Remember those batter-only samples from step 4? Take your Stevens QTS Texture Analyzer and, using an acrylic cylinder probe, perform a double bite test on them at 60 mm per minute until you reach an 80 percent deformation target. Your Texture Pro software will generate data on the hardness of each sample and the quantity of fractures. For the sake of simplicity, we will define “hardness” as the peak compression force attained during the first cycle of the force deformation curve, and “quantity of fractures” as the number of occasions the load decreased by 5 percent before reaching the target value in cycle 1. Okay?

6. And finally, we come to the all-important sensory evaluation—the moment when our carefully fried foods meet the tongue. Convene a panel of eight specialists trained in Sensory Evaluation Techniques (Meilgaard, et al., 4th edition) and feed them each four strips of coated fish or onion samples so they can evaluate them for hardness, fracturability, crispness and toothpacking. Just so everyone’s on the same page, let’s say “hardness” is the force required to compress the food; go with a scale of 1 to 14.5, with Philadelphia cream cheese being 1 and a Life Saver being 14.5. “Fracturability” is the force with which the sample breaks, with 1 being the force required to break a Jiffy corn muffin and 10 the force required to break a Finn crisp rye wafer. Now, “crispness” is the force and noise with which a sample breaks, on a scale of 3 (a Quaker low-fat chewy chunk granola bar) to 17 (Melba toast). “Toothpacking,” of course, refers to the degree with which the sample sticks to the teeth, from 1 (uncooked and unpeeled carrots) to 15 (Jujubes). After your panelists have tested the samples, record their scores on a computerized ballot-counting system that will tabulate and graph the scores for you.

Following these simple steps, the Shih team found that the oil uptake of beer batters was 9 to 18 percent greater than water-based batters. Its instrumental textural analysis found that beer batters fried up softer and more fracturable than water-based batters. And its panel of trained sensory evaluators found that beer batter made the tilapia filets and onion strips softer but crispier.

Your results may vary. But your method may not.

(Hat tip to NCBI ROFL.)

—by T. A. Frail

Beer guru Greg Engert recommends some sparkling beers to toast this New Year's Eve in lieu of champagne. Courtesy of Powers & Crewe.

Perhaps it is because I associate it with that stomach-ache-inducing sparkling grape juice I gulped down during so many New Year’s Eves as a kid, but I am not a huge fan of champagne.

So my ears perked up when I heard that the Boston Beer Company (the maker of Samuel Adams) and Germany’s Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewery, were teaming up to unveil a bubbly brew called Infinium that blurred the line between sparkling wine and beer, just in time for the holidays. The festive effervescence of champagne with the hoppy flavor of beer sounded like it could be the perfect combination, and I wondered if there were other “toastable” hybrids out there.

Greg Engert seemed to be the guy to ask. He is the beer director at ChurchKey, a swanky beer bar in northwest Washington, D.C., and Birch & Barley, its sister restaurant downstairs, where he curates an impressive collection of craft beer: 500 bottles, 50 taps and five cask-conditioned ales. Both the bar and restaurant, which opened in October 2009, have been huge successes, and Engert’s hand in them hasn’t gone unnoticed. In April, Engert became the first-ever beer professional to be named one of Food & Wine magazine’s “Sommeliers of the Year.”

Engert was preparing for ChurchKey’s big New Year’s bash (tickets still available for an open bar of 55 drafts and samples from Greg’s “secret stash”) when I spoke with him earlier this week. ”I wouldn’t say I dislike champagne per se,” he said, “but I find that flavor options for sparkling wine are only subtly different. Craft beer, on the other hand, always provides the effervescence of a sparkler, but can do so with a wider range of tastes and aroma. You can enjoy roasty or even smoky flavors, caramel, toffee, toasty and nutty notes, herbal and citric hop freshness, or even fruit and spice aromatics that tend toward the darker side—plum, raisin, cherry—or lighter—peach, banana, apple.”

Engert seemed as ebullient as the beers he has on tap, explaining how the methods of making beer and champagne can be quite similar. A popular trend, he says, is for beers to undergo a secondary fermentation at a winery, in much the same way that sparkling wine does. And, as I had hoped, he offered up some recommendations.

So, now, without further ado, I present to you Engert’s top picks for beers to toast this New Year’s Eve!

Bubbly & Brut-esque: DeuS: Brut Des Flandres | Brouwerij Bosteels | East Flanders, Belgium

This beer is fittingly titled the “Brut” of Flanders, as much of its production mirrors that of the finest brut wines of France, albeit crafted of malted barley initially in the Flemish north. The straw pallor signals the intense dryness to come, no doubt engendered in congress with the méthode traditionnelle*. Post primary fermentation it is dosed with sugar and wine yeast, then carried to Rheims, France (the capital of all things Champagne). Only there is it bottled where it can continue to re-ferment for three to four weeks. More than a year’s maturation at cellar temperature then occurs, after which is riddling (3 to 4 weeks), then disgorgement. What remains is an ethereal brew, delicately emboldened.                                                                 * Note: Though Engert’s other three picks are brewed by similar methods, this is the only one made in the méthode traditionnelle.

Bubbly & Roasty: Black OPS | Brooklyn Brewery | New York

Here is an imperial stout loaded with intensely deep flavors of cocoa, caramel and espresso that is further layered by its four-month maturation in oak barrels once used to age Woodford Reserve Bourbon. Vanilla, spice, toast and coconut tastes abound in a brew that might have ended up heavier on the palate had it not been bottled flat, then re-fermented with wine yeast normally reserved for primary fermentation in sparkling wine. Black OPS ends up neither heavy nor sticky, but rather creamy and tantalizing while losing nothing of its mature character.

Bubbly & Tart & Funky: Hanssens Oude Gueuze | Hanssens Artisanaal | Flemish Brabant, Belgium

The “Champagne of Beers” as a moniker could have originally been applied to Gueuze Lambic, the classic-rustic brew of the Payottenland, a valley surrounding the river Zenne, which flows through—and even under—Brussels. While beer has been brewed in countless regions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, this region has altered their brewing path very little over the centuries. Airborne wild yeasts and bacteria begin the ale’s ferment, and continue along with a hoard of microscopic brethren in oak casks for a number of years. The Gueuze style is naturally re-fermented, but not by some careful “méthode” or more modern bottle conditioning practice; the Gueuze is a blend of Lambic that has wildly fermented in oak barrels for one, two and three years. The still hungry and now starved micro flora of the three-year-old thread feed upon the as yet unfermented one- and two-year-old beers’ sugars and a natural fermentation results. Sparkling, yes. But wildly tart, earthy and even funky. These are rare craft-made ales that not only astound in their astonishing simplicity, but also stand as a sort of revenant of what beer once was…and is. And will be.

Bubbly & Hoppy: Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Grand Cru | Our Brewers Reserve, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company | California

This is the final installment in the series of artisanal beers brewed to celebrate Sierra Nevada’s 30 years of craft brewing. It consists of two hoppy brews (Celebration Ale & Bigfoot), aged in oak barrels, then blended with fresh Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. While malty and firm on the palate, with vanilla notes from the wood, it exudes huge herbal and citric hop notes in the nose. Stunningly generous, as the re-fermentation serves to exude powerful effervescence that both brightens the texture and pushes the aromatic envelope as well.

To be considered for publication, please e-mail your submissions to FoodandThink@gmail.com by this Friday (Dec. 17) morning. We’ll read through all of them and pick our favorites to edit and publish on subsequent Mondays through mid-January. Just a reminder, we’re looking for true, original personal narratives of roughly 500 to 1,000 words. The rest of the details are up to you!

I’ll start with an example…

My Goodness, My Guinness
By Amanda Bensen

Ever heard the term “goody two-shoes?” That was me in high school, and that was still me at 19, as I entered my junior year of college. Up until then, I had never had an alcoholic drink. After all, I wasn’t 21—and underage drinking was not only illegal, but at my college it was an offense that could get you expelled (along with having opposite-sex visitors in your room overnight, or with the door closed).

Guinness, courtesy of Flickr user Paul Watson

But my junior year was different. I was studying abroad in England, where the drinking age was only 18, which meant that the mysterious world of alcohol was suddenly wide open to me. I was eager to experience British culture, and I quickly discerned that drinking was a necessary part of this—even the church I visited held its “young adults’ Bible study” at a pub.

When Ryan, another American student in my program, heard that I’d never had a drink, he was both incredulous and adamant that we remedy this strange condition immediately. He dragged me into a pub on the outskirts of Oxford. It was early on a weekday evening, and the place was quiet. We sat at the bar, where a handful of middle-aged men were silently watching television and nursing pints of beer.

“She’ll have a Guinness, and so will I,” Ryan announced loudly, as if this were something extraordinary. The bartender smirked as he handed us our drinks. I was about to take a sip when Ryan stopped me.

“Wait,” he said, lowering his voice. “Just so you know, this is a real local pub, not a tourist trap. They know how to drink. That means you have to take at least an inch or two out of the glass in your first swig, or they’ll probably laugh you right out of here.”

I was alarmed. That wouldn’t be a good way to experience the local culture. So, I took a big gulp, choking slightly and getting foam on my nose in the process. It tasted bitter, but not bad…kind of like dark chocolate, or coffee. I liked it!

Trying to ignore the fact that the other customers were now watching us more than the television, we hunched over our pints and tried not to talk. I looked at the vintage beer ads displayed on the pub’s wall, with slogans like “Lovely day for a Guinness” and “My goodness, my Guinness!” and debated whether it would be nerdy or cool to mention that I was reading a biography of the British mystery author Dorothy Sayers, who wrote those slogans in the 1930s. I was hoping it would help prepare me for a tutorial on C.S. Lewis I’d be taking that fall, since Sayers was a friend of his. Probably nerdy, I decided.

By the time my pint was nearly drained, Ryan was already finishing his second. “What did you have for dinner?” he asked. I said I hadn’t had dinner yet.

He put on a look of mocking seriousness (although the mocking part went straight over my head at the time).

“What?!? No food in your stomach? That means you’re going to be sick in…” he looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

I felt fine, but he sounded certain, so I was worried. We tossed a handful of pound coins down on the bar and hurried out to the street in search of a quick bite. With only five minutes left in our ridiculous countdown, we found a food truck. I ordered a tray of fries and a greasy veggie burger, and downed them quickly, as if they were medicine. I don’t know how Ryan managed to keep such a straight face through it all.

By the end of that year, I was the one dragging visiting friends to the local pubs, although I never got into heavy drinking. After buying me eight shots in a row one night without seeing any effect, Ryan declared me the best drinking buddy he’d ever seen: “Such a tolerance! Never seen anything like it in a girl!”

What he didn’t realize is that I was the one doing the leg-pulling this time — it was a dark pub, there was nothing behind my chair but a dead-end stairwell, and I’d been tossing the shots over my shoulder the whole time.

I’ve long since lost touch with Ryan, but I still love Guinness.