Flannel Shirt

The science of liking beer

I'm glad science has started focusing on the important things.

I remember quite vividly the first time I tried beer — I almost spit it out. Bitter, bubbly and generally bad, I didn’t get why everyone seemed to be so enamored with it. Yet I, like so many people in the world, continued to drink it. Have you ever wondered why we, as a species, consume alcoholic beverages even though they taste terrible at first?

A new study suggests that despite the bitter taste, the chemicals in beer trigger the brain’s reward system. This pleasurable effect might just explain why we’re so willing to keep drinking past the first sip — until intoxication takes over, and we’ll drink just about anything. But more importantly, this new research, published today in the journalNeuropsychopharmacology,  may explain why some people can drink casually while others slip into alcoholism. 

Addictions occur when the brain betrays the body, causing feelings of pleasure from activities that are unhealthy. Scientists have long known that the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that stimulates the brain’s reward system, is strongly associated with addictive behaviors. The pleasure kick stimulated by alcohol, drugs or risky behaviors tells our bodies to repeat the behavior, starting a dangerous cycle that can be tough to break. Understanding exactly what triggers the release of dopamine in the brain is key to understanding and preventing addictions and relapses.

For alcoholics, previous research has found that even the sight or smell of beer is rewarding to the brain, pushing them to drink. David Kareken and his colleagues wanted to know whether the same was true of the taste. Forty-nine men whose relationship to alcohol varied from almost non-existant to perhaps-too-intimate were given tiny tastes of their favorite beer while scientists watched how their brains reacted using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. They also asked the men to report their desire to drink, and whether they had any family history of alcoholism.

They found that the very first sip of beer is enough to begin the neurotransmitter cascade. Within minutes, dopamine was released by the ventrial striatum, and the men reported increased cravings for more.  The same effect was not seen when gatorade or water was substituted for alcohol. The men only received 15 milliliters of beer on their tongue over the course of 15 minutes through an automated sprayer, so there was no chance that changes in the brain were due to intoxication. Instead, flavor cues alone — before the alcohol could enter the body — caused the release of dopamine and induced the desire to drink, even in men with no alcoholic past. The subjects that did had a family history of alcoholism, however, had notably higher levels of dopamine release after tasting beer than those who didn’t. Meanwhile, the heavy drinkers who didn’t have any family history had only moderate dopamine release, suggesting that heritable traits are more important in influencing the brain’s reaction to beer than behavior.

The scientists suggest that these data explain why people with a family history of alcoholism are twice as likely to become alcoholics themselves, and why it’s so difficult for some to stay sober even when they try to quit. The release of dopamine in the brain is a powerful motivator, part of an intricate reward system that has been honed by evolution to encourage important behaviors like reproduction. Unfortunately, alcohol and other addictions take over this vital pathway in the brain, compelling us to do things we might otherwise realize are damaging. But what’s worse is that those who are predisposed to alcoholism have the same neurotransmitter release whether they drink or not, so even if they make the effort to avoid alcohol in most cases, this study suggests a sip may be enough to tip them over the edge.

 

How beer gave us civilization

I've been down this road before, but it's a good essay.

Human beings are social animals. But just as important, we are socially constrained as well.

We can probably thank the latter trait for keeping our fledgling species alive at the dawn of man. Five core social instincts, I haveargued, gave structure and strength to our primeval herds. They kept us safely codependent with our fellow clan members, assigned us a rank in the pecking order, made sure we all did our chores, discouraged us from offending others, and removed us from this social coil when we became a drag on shared resources.

Thus could our ancient forebears cooperate, prosper, multiply — and pass along their DNA to later generations.

But then, these same lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization.

To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.

We needed beer.

Luckily, from time to time, our ancestors, like other animals, would run across fermented fruit or grain and sample it. How this accidental discovery evolved into the first keg party, of course, is still unknown. But evolve it did, perhaps as early as 10,000 years ago.

Current theory has it that grain was first domesticated for food. But since the 1950s, many scholars have found circumstantial evidence that supports the idea that some early humans grew and stored grain for beer, even before they cultivated it for bread.

Brian Hayden and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada provide new support for this theory in an article published this month (and online last year) in the Journal of Archeological Method and Theory. Examining potential beer-brewing tools in archaeological remains from the Natufian culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, the team concludes that “brewing of beer was an important aspect of feasting and society in the Late Epipaleolithic” era.

Anthropological studies in Mexico suggest a similar conclusion: there, the ancestral grass of modern maize, teosinte, was well suited for making beer — but was much less so for making corn flour for bread or tortillas. It took generations for Mexican farmers todomesticate this grass into maize, which then became a staple of the local diet.

Once the effects of these early brews were discovered, the value of beer (as well as wine and other fermented potions) must have become immediately apparent. With the help of the new psychopharmacological brew, humans could quell the angst of defying those herd instincts. Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds.

But the alcohol would have had more far-ranging effects, too, reducing the strong herd instincts to maintain a rigid social structure. In time, humans became more expansive in their thinking, as well as more collaborative and creative. A night of modest tippling may have ushered in these feelings of freedom — though, the morning after, instincts to conform and submit would have kicked back in to restore the social order.

Some evidence suggests that these early brews (or wines) were also considered aids in deliberation. In long ago Germany and Persia, collective decisions of state were made after a few warm ones, then double-checked when sober. Elsewhere, they did it the other way around.

Beer was thought to be so important in many bygone civilizations that the Code of Urukagina, often cited as the first legal code, even prescribed it as a central unit of payment and penance.

Part of beer’s virtue in ancient times was that its alcohol content would have been sharply limited. As far as the research has shown, distillation of alcohol to higher concentrations began only about 2,000 years ago.

Today, many people drink too much because they have more than average social anxietyor panic anxiety to quell — disorders that may result, in fact, from those primeval herd instincts kicking into overdrive. But getting drunk, unfortunately, only compounds the problem: it can lead to decivilizing behaviors and encounters, and harm the body over time. For those with anxiety and depressive disorders, indeed, there are much safer and more effective drugs than alcohol — and together with psychotherapy, these newfangled improvements on beer can ease the angst.

But beer’s place in the development of civilization deserves at least a raising of the glass. As the ever rational Ben Franklin supposedly said, “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Several thousand years before Franklin, I’m guessing, some Neolithic fellow probably made the same toast.

Bad behavior

I haven't seen this kind of joyriding before.

PACIFICA, Calif. — Three people were arrested Monday after they stocked a stolen, 82-foot yacht with pizza and beer, and then ran the vessel aground on a Northern California beach, authorities said.

Authorities took two men and a woman off the boat hours after the "Darlin" got stuck in shallow water at Pacifica State Beach, the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office said.

Pacifica police arrested Leslie Gardner, 63, Dario Mira, 54, and Lisa Modawell, 56, on suspicion of grand theft and conspiracy. They were being held in the San Mateo County Jail.

The strange tale began early Monday when beachgoers phoned police to report the sailboat in trouble.

The luxury yacht was trapped on a sandbar in shallow water at low tide and unable to get back out to sea. A few wetsuit-clad surfers had paddled out in the frigid water near the grounded vessel as its hull was battered by 4- to 5-foot waves.

After television news reports of the grounding aired, the boat's owner called police to report it stolen, Sausalito police Sgt. Bill Fraass said.

"We do have thefts of vessels throughout the area, but the theft of a vessel of this size is uncommon," Fraass said.

However, no one waved a gun.

Police arrested a 61-year-old Florida woman for allegedly pointing a gun at Walmart employees, threatening them after the store refused to honor her coupon for $1 off of a purchase and later attacking authorities.

The Smoking Gun reported on Monday that Mary Frances Alday was arrested on March 1 and charged with four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count apiece of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence stemming from a confrontation in which she allegedly took a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber gun out of her car and pointing it at the staff saying, “I have something for y’all.”

The Wakulla County Sheriff’s Department said in a release that the Crawfordsville, Florida resident “became verbally abusive” toward the store’s assistant manager, Tracy Stockslager, when Stockslager said the store’s policy prevented them from honoring the coupon.

 Alday allegedly hit Stockslager with her shopping cart while being escorted out of the store and warned the staff not to follow her. When Stockslager said she intended to get Alday’s license plate number, Alday allegedly said, “If you follow me, I have something in my car for you.”

After going outside, Alday allegedly pulled the weapon out of her car and pointed it at the staff before leaving the scene in a 2011 Ford Escape. When authorities pulled her over later that evening, the department said, her pattern of belligerence continued.

When asked if she had a weapon in the vehicle, she allegedly told Sgt. Danny Harrell, “Yes, I have a concealed weapons permit, and you are not taking my gun.” She also refused to give up the weapon when asked where it was.

Authorities said Harrell was forced to use a taser on Alday when she “reached over the console for something in the passenger seat” after she refused to get out of her vehicle. The gun was found in a console in the center of the vehicle.

Alday is currently in jail while she awaits her first court appearance.

Beer news

Before I got to Portland I had never heard of the term "growler". Now there's a big article in the LA Times about all the places to get growlers down there. Maybe Portland is on the cutting edge of growlers.

Craft beer fans in Los Angeles have never had more choices for local beer, and you're not limited to enjoying fresh brews just in the brewery's tap rooms or buying bottles or cans to take home. One of the best ways to enjoy the freshest brews at home is with a growler -- a specialized glass jug that you can have filled and re-filled at nearly all of L.A.'s local breweries.

Historically, growlers were metal pails with tight-fitting lids that were used to take beer home from the saloon. These days, growlers are glass jugs that hold either one or two liters of beer and are sealed with either a screw-on cap or a bail-top stopper. When properly filled and sealed, they will keep a beer fresh and carbonated for a few days, but once they're opened the beer will quickly go flat and should be enjoyed within 36 hours (for best results, keep your filled jugs as cold as possible, as cold beer will not go flat as quickly).

Getting a growler filled is a great way to enjoy the freshest beer from breweries, especially beers that are not available in bottles or cans, and they provide an important revenue source for the start-up brewery. The initial buy-in for the glass itself varies from a few dollars for the 1-liter screw-top bottles to about $20 for the larger and heavier bail-top jugs, and the cost to fill a growler ranges from under $10 for a 1-liter "mini growler" to more than $20 for two liters of a brewery's special release brews. The bottles are endlessly reusable; just be sure to rinse them out promptly and thoroughly when you pour the last pint from one.

One downfall of the growler is that, in California at least, the law requires that a brewery only fill a growler printed with their own name and address. You can't have Monkish Brewing fill one of yourBeachwood BBQ bottles. This can lead to an unwieldy collection of empty glass jugs for breweries across the Southland, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of fresh and local beer in your own fridge.

A comparison of cheap beers

Here. 

In Portland there are so many different great beers that sometimes you forget the swill that has fueled college undergrads over the years. On Christmas night the neighbors came by with a big bottle of very good beer that was aged in a bourbon oak keg. I've tried bourbon-aged beer before and wasn't thrilled with it. But as a sipping beer it's okay. 

But we're not talking about sipping beer here.

For example:

Natural Light is the best-selling beer in the subpremium segment, the fifth-best-seller overall, and—at this writing, in the view of RateBeer.com—the second-worst beer in the world. (It trails Olde English 800, a malt liquor favored in the 1980s by Eazy-E and more recently by college students. It is not in the purview of this exercise to discuss malt liquor, a topic I intend to avoid until there exists a magazine titled Ugly Buzz Quarterly willing to pay $5 per word for my wisdom on that foolishness.) Natural Light is among the cheap beers sold by the 30-pack, which, based on my own experience as an undergraduate, constitutes a single serving. I refuse to encourage young people to drink in such an irresponsible manner as I did because that would be morally wrong and totally superfluous; copious anecdotal evidence suggests they need no such encouragement. But for the sake of this story, I tried to enjoy a Natural Light responsibly and derived no enjoyment from sitting down and sipping one at a leisurely pace. My first mistake was the sitting. Beers of this type are not supposed to be drunk while sitting, unless perhaps the seat in question is mounted on a riding mower. Rather, you douse your central nervous system with them while standing, ideally over a rousing match of beer pong or robopound. Idling over a light beer, with its low alcohol content (4 percent or so) and its high amount of brewing adjuncts (cloying corn, rancid rice), you catch only a gnat of a buzz—or else advance straight from clear-headedness to a faint fogginess resembling a piddling hangover. If you’re having only one beer, Natty Light is one to avoid.

Eh

Beer that tastes like bourbon is kind of yucky. Especially if you don't like the taste of bourbon.

The dark liquid that comes out of the barrel is viscous, reeking of caramel and vanilla. Alexandra Nowell siphons it into a tulip shaped glass, swirls, sniffs and sips.

"Vanilla. Dried fruit."

To the uninitiated, it might look like a wine tasting. And it is, in a sense. It's a barley wine tasting. Nowell is lead brewer at Drake's Brewing Co. in San Leandro. What's in her glass is a barley wine that has been aging in Heaven Hill bourbon barrels since last winter. Nowell had no idea what it would taste like until she opened it that day. She finds that it tastes like a delicious, alcoholic cinnamon raisin cookie.

Since the early 1990s, when Samuel Adams was one of the first commercial breweries to put its beer into used charred oak barrels previously used for Kentucky bourbon, a large number of American craft breweries have begun to age beer in barrels that once held bourbon.

When Robin and her former boyfriend were up here last winter we went on a beer-tasting tour and near the end we stopped at a place that had the bourbon beer stuff, and to me that was the worst of all the stuff we tried that day. 

Beer cocktails

When I was in England many years ago I had my first shandy. And my last. It's not that they were bad, it was just that it was so wrong. It was either warm beer or beer and lemonade. Weird. Now occasionally over the years I have dropped an ice cube into an unrefrigerated beer, but that wasn't for taste but temperature. I've never been tempted to put lemonade in beer. But if you are tempted, Slate has some recommendations:

The big wet story of this incandescent summer concerns your ice-cold beer, America. Ask yourself: Has that pint in your hand been sugared or spiced or juiced up? Repurposed as a mixer? Elevated with a jigger of liquor?

All the papers are onto you. News flows from all corners about happy marriages of stout and bourbon and about elderflower liqueurs fragrantly flirting with pale ales. Last May, Frank Bruni reported on “the advance of beer cocktails” (called such “whether or not the drinks include hard liquor”); this May brought notice of the book Beer Cocktails: 50 Superbly Crafted Cocktails that Liven Up Your Lagers and Ales (including theMaru—a fruity booze-up inside your Sapporo). The mass-market gateway to the new frontier stands in St. Louis, where Anheuser-Busch HQ has launched Shock Top Lemon Shandy, a wheat beer “perfectly complemented by spices and natural lemonade flavor.” And meanwhile the kids on happening Hillhurst Avenue in Los Angeles are infusing gin with hops, mixing it to make “Gin & Chronic,” and telling LA Weekly that it evokes a cottonmouthed hint of pilsner.

America, you drink 20 gallons of beer per head per year, and you’re definitely adulterating some of it. Yet, despite the efforts of cunning commerce and supple craft, the beer cocktail has never taken off as a respectable beverage. This is uncharted territory, exciting and dangerous. I sense your keen thirst for helpful hints, pro tips, and historical context.

Are you shocked that Budweiser is pushing this sacrilege? I'm not. Read it all, if your sensibilities allow.

By the way, it's hot here too, in the 90s, but it cools off to the 50s at night. Just a few well-placed fans can rescue you.

The blues festival has been going on since the 4th, and goes through tomorrow. Joan and I were thinking about it, I invested in a wide-brimmed sun hat and a SPF-rated shirt, but it's been a tad too warm for the foggies to spend a day in the sun. 90.7 has been broadcasting it live, so it's just fine to sit on the front porch, listen to the radio, sip cold beer, and wave as the neighbors walk by. 

The thing about Portland...

In the Portland Oregonian they have a column for beer news. Really, here.

Pee guitar

In my neverending search to find important developments in mankind's growth I give you Pee Guitar.

Reminds me of a joke by George Carlin that involved a group of men, a keg of beer and a Kent micronite filter.

 

Beer adendum

It has been pointed out that I did not include the complete list of Beer's Five Enemies. They are:

1. Light
2. Heat
3. Oxygen
4. Government
5. Religion