Our lives are filled with assumptions, including big assumptions about our knowledge of our world and ourselves. None of us can begin to absorb more than a fraction of the world’s knowledge, but it is all out there: just Google something and see that there are 1,000,000 hits. We may not know everything yet, but with modern science and technology, it’s just the details that need to be filled in, all the “big knowledge” is known. It has to be.
Delusion.
There is oh so much we do not know about things fundamental to our lives and our culture. I’ve just finished reading Proof: The Science of Booze by Adam Rogers and I’ve gotten a serious education about alcoholic beverages and the state of science. We can all enjoy our beer, wine, and whisky but we really don’t know why.
My only defense for my deep ignorance about all this is that I preferred physics to biology. I’m terrible at bio which is why I had to pause when reading Proof to look up something. Yeast is a fungus, but what, I asked myself, is a fungus: animal or plant. Neither. Living creatures are divided into kingdoms: animals, plants, bacteria and fungi. Yeast is a fungus, actually there are thousands of yeasts, but one is now harmonious with mankind Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Yeast in one form or another has been used for baking for thousands of years. But it was not until 1857 that famed Louis Pasteur demonstrated that it was yeast that created the fermentation need for wine, beer, and booze. No yeast, no alcohol. The Germans passed their famed Beer Law in 1516 regulating beer ingredients to water, hops and barley. They left out the yeast because it would take over 300 years for us to learn that the yeasts floating all around us are the way that sugars become alcohol.
Proof has eight fascinating chapters.
Yeast talks about these little generators of alcohol, along with carbon dioxide. That gas can make wine sparkle, of course, and it’s what gives beer its head. Adam takes us on tours of scientists still trying to figure out the tree of life for yeasts: how did our current yeasts evolve. You visit laboratories where yeasts are stored and where, if you want to try to make your own Belgian ale, you can purchase yeast as the essential ingredient. Actually, some beer makers still deny the power of yeast but boast of their particular barley.
Chapters on Sugar and Fermentation take you gently take you through the science of getting alcohol from bases like malted barley or honey or palm sap. It turns out that no matter where you are in the world, people have discovered that a sugary liquid, left exposed to the air naturally harboring yeast, will ultimately ferment into something drinkable if not delectable. Most of us Westerners might need some encouragement to try, and probably would not immediately fall in love with, palm sap wine.
There’s a discourse on people creating new strains of yeast, so that you can get the “same” flavors in wine or beers, but do it quicker and cheaper. You can imagine how happy that research makes the bottlers of 20-year old Scotch.
No one knows when distillation was first used, although there is lovely mythology about a woman, Marie, in ancient Alexandria. She is said to have been an expert at copper tubing and culinary chemistry. Today, we remember her every time we use a Bain Marie.
Distillation is both science and art. There is really just one major firm, in Scotland, making those impressive copper stills for customers. Each customer has their own design, their own shape, and their own intense believe about how the curves and turns of their distilling gear affect their products. A big copper still lasts only 25 years, because the copper bonds with sulfur and the resulting copper sulfide flakes away. But stills can be repaired to get the full 25 years. Thing is, if an old piece coming out has some scrapes and dents, the new one replacing it must have the same muted shaped. Distilleries swear that they, and their customers, can tell the difference.
The chapter on Aging is a barrel of fun. Sorry, I could not resist. Just as different varietals of yeast create different flavors, so does that wood. American Oak and French might as well be planets apart. We don’t know who began firing the inside of the barrels, but those flames render the inside of barrels replete with surface areas and chemicals that we have only begun to understand. In short, we age in barrels because it works. We don’t fully know why. Although, although, there are people out there selling wood-based products so that in 6 months in stainless steel you can get the wood seasoning of 20 years in an charred oak barrel. Again, the Scotch and Whisky makers writhe in discontent. We may not speak of religious heresy much anymore, but there is heresy afoot in the beverage world.
Perhaps music would help. When you store your barrels for months or years or decades before sale, do you move them around so they get equal exposure to humidity and sunlight — because of you don’t the barrels in the front of the storeroom will turn out differently that the ones in the back. Or, you could do what some creative folks have turned to: placing speakers near the barrels with music tuned to create internal waves that have the liquid moving about inside the barrel to enhance aging and contact with the barrel wood lined with all those exotic chemicals. Which Mozart pieces are played remains, of course, a trade secret.
The final three chapters of Proof — Smell and Taste, Body and Brain, and Hangover — truly set the stage for being humble. There has been extensive research on what we taste and how it affects us. But we don’t begin to have a full catalog of all the chemicals in wine versus beer or where they impact our brains. There are remarkably few results on specifically why we are affected by what we drink, and, no, we really don’t understand hangovers yet.
Here’s a great example of the research going on. Why do different plain vodkas — not those flavored ones — taste different. After all, pure vodka is just water and ethanol. They should all taste the same. But researchers here and in Russia have found that water from different areas tend to form different size “pockets” inside of which the ethanol sits. Those pockets are the result of something called hydrogen bonding, and create the differences between, say, French and Russian vodkas that you can taste.
Proof is filled with these little stories and facts. It’s takes you around the world as scientists and brewers and distillers work to understand, to invent, and to please. If you ever happen to take a sip, and if you ever wonder how that magic in your mouth was created, then you need a big glass, a soft chair, and Proof in your hands. It’s actually a bit of a page turner.
Adam notes that William Faulkner is credited with saying, “Civilization is distillation.” Who can argue with Faulkner? Or with Adam.