Hi again beer lovers. Happy Friday! Come in and share a cold one with us.
In beer news this week: the California drought; an "electronic tongue"; beer ice cream.
For most brewers and other kinds of business, the limit to growth is money; you have to finance a bigger facility and more production equipment. But if essential raw materials are limited you're in real trouble. Bear Republic brewery recently secured their water supply by covering much of the cost of drilling new wells that will also serve the town of Cloverdale. 2013 in California was the driest year ever recorded and 2014 isn't looking any better, so water-intensive businesses like brewing are going to notice.
An interesting stat from that article is that brewers typically need 6 gallons of water to end up with a gallon of beer. I know some is lost in the damp spent grain, and some is boiled off; I assume most of the rest is for cleaning up.
-----
In Spain, food researchers working on electronic chemical analysis decided that the most fun thing to study would be beer. Their "electronic tongue" is an array of electrodes sensitive to different chemicals.
Exposed to beer, the electrode bundle yielded chemical data that could be analyzed for patterns to identify the different brews.
It could tell the difference between Schwarzbier, lager, double malt, Pilsen, Alsatian and low-alcohol beer — all the types it was “trained” to recognize.
-----
I know the people behind Beercandy; now here's beer ice cream!
-----
I've got some Union Jack IPA, and some Sam Adams. Sam is on special this week; better than the Kona that was cheap last week.
What are you drinking? Who's brewing? Any good beer news where you are?