Pissed Pacyderms

Stories of drunk wild elephants have a long history in Africa. Supposedly elephants get sloshed by eating the fermented fruits of the marula tree. Hilarious footage of an elephant purportedly doing just that is included in the 1974 animal documentary “Animals are Beautiful People” but in 2006, researchers showed plowed pachyderms are just a myth. In the paper “Myth, marula, and elephant: an assessment of voluntary ethanol intoxication of the African elephant” published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, researchers calculated an adult African elephant would have to consume an unrealistic number of overripe marula fruits to get the job done and concluded “there is no clear evidence of inebriation in the field”. What explains the persistence of drunk elephant stories then? The lead author, when discussing the paper with National Geographic, explained: “People just want to believe in drunken elephants”—undoubtedly one of the funniest quotes ever in scientific journalism.

Drunk elephants are funny, but are there drunk elephants? (image from Olivier Delaere)

Elephants may not become intoxicated under natural conditions, but there is evidence elephants can develop a taste for human alcoholic beverages and turn into mean-ass drunks. There are many reported incidents of elephants in India seeking out and drinking human made rice beer. They subsequently tear shit up or even join the not so exalted ranks of drunken Darwin award winners by getting themselves killed. In 2004, a group of elephants reportedly drank rice beer in a remote Indian village, started getting rowdy, and knocked down an electrical pole on themselves, killing 4 of them (God who had to clean that up?).

Blitzed Birds and Skunked Shrews

The only thing more dangerous than driving while drunk is flying when drunk. There are many, many reports of birds —cedar waxwings in particular—getting smashed figuratively and literally on berries that have fermented. Getting drunk for birds often ends the same way it can for humans, that is to say, badly. The most common reports are of drunk birds flying right into buildings/windows or passing out, falling from trees and dying from the impact. I could find little evidence that birds ever get drunk for fun; it happens by accident when berries ferment under certain conditions and the birds are unable to distinguish a fermented berry from a normal one. Symptoms of drunkenness in birds can mimic symptoms of sickness from illness such as the bird flu, which as you can imagine, really freaks people out.

There is very little evidence that the vast majority of animals seek out and consume ethanol when it occurs naturally. This makes sense as animals do not have the infrastructure to protect them from their own bad decisions—such as police officers, ambulances, hospitals, and stomach pumps. If Jonny roadrunner eats fermented cactus fruit, gets smashed and passes out in the middle of Southern Ave in Tempe, Arizona, there won’t be any cadre of his fellow birds picking him up, he’ll be killed. Contrast that to the college student that once shared an emergency room with me with a near fatal blood alcohol content of 0.4 found under the same circumstances—he lived—thanks to the diligent work of his fellow humans. Animals don’t have that luxury. There are studies in fact, that show when fruit bats get accidentally intoxicated, they seek out a type of sugar that helps them sober up faster. We know that’s not the case with frat boys.

Despite this, there are a few animals that have been found to naturally consume ethanol, in particular a Malaysian treeshrew that likes to drink the fermented nectar of the bertam palm tree. However, the tippling treeshrew does not show any observable signs of drunkenness (where’s the fun in that?). Researchers theorize that the ethanol still has some type of pleasurable neurological effect the shrew gets in exchange for acting as a pollinator for the tree.

Sober Primates (excluding us)

So what about our closest relatives, other primates? Turns out they are part of the temperance movement. Katharine Milton, a researcher looking into the evolutionary history of human fondness for ethanol, conducted a survey of primatologists covering 22 different primate species. Specifically she asked at what stage of ripeness monkeys preferred to eat fruit. Not one out of 22 species preferred overripe fruit (fruit with the most ethanol), and it appeared all species in fact, studiously avoided the ethanol containing fruit. Asked if any primatologists had ever observed what appeared to be intoxicated behaviors, only two incidents out of combined thousands of hours of observations were reported, leading the researcher to hypothesize that drunkenness in primates happens very infrequently. This makes sense as a drunk monkey is more likely to end up a dead monkey.

So what does sobriety in our closest relatives have to say about the human predilection for drinking ethanol till we puke? Alcoholic consumption is most likely cultural instead of biological. “As cultural animals, humans have little innate nutritional wisdom,” says Milton, “and for this reason may have unusual difficulty in determining when it is prudent to quit ingesting ethanol”. No shit, right? See prime example above of drunken- passed-out-on-Southern Avenue Arizona frat boy. Our fondness for the stuff, according to Milton, is also apparently fueled by existential angst. “Humans also appear to be the only animals with a highly developed sense of self-awareness and thus they may be the only animals that might wish to escape from their own consciousness”. Having on more than one occasion used alcohol for this exact reason, couldn’t have said it better myself.

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When I first read the reader’s comment I thought, here we go again.  I’ve written about how Canadian beers are not stronger than American beers (when you compare the macro brews), but the reader’s claim was slightly different.  This claim is Canadian beers are stronger in Canada than they are in the United States, specifically Labatts.  Not believing this claim, I wrote to Molson, Moosehead, and Labatt’s.

Note: I am not including 3.2 beer.  We all know too well that 3.2 beer is weaker than regular beer by about 1% ABV.  (3.2% ABW ≈ 4.0% ABV)

Molson

If there was going to be a beer with a difference in alcohol content, I thought it might be with Molson.  They have several versions of their beer.  I saw on an old alcohol content list on the internet which stated there was a difference in Molson Golden.  According to Molson, there is no difference in their beers.  Cristina S. Docouto from Molson Customer Service Representative states, “The alcohol content in our beers are the same for both the USA and Canada. the only difference that comes into play is the different sizes of the containers.”

Moosehead

Moosehead Breweries is Canada’s largest and oldest independent brewer.  The brewery was founded by Susanna Oland in 1867, and is still owned by the Oland family.  Phil St. Thomas, Consumer Affairs Coordinator for Moosehead, had this to say about their beer sold in the United States.  “Moosehead Lager and Moosehead Light are the only two brands that we offer in the USA. In certain States where the ABV is regulated by law and requires a lower ABV than we produce, yes we do comply with those laws and reduce our ABV. In the States where our ABV is accepted, there is no need for us to reduce the ABV, therefore we do not do so. In other words, we only reduce the alcohol content in our beer if it is required by local laws.”

The only places where the law might require lowering the alcohol content for Moosehead is states which have 3.2 laws.  Alabama’s laws cap beer at 6% ABV, but Moosehead is 5% ABV.  There are 3.2 states, but you can purchase the full strength version in all states.  So there is no difference in Moosehead beer found in the two countries.

Are the Canadian beers watered down in the USA? No.

Labatt’s

Labatt’s is the surprise of the group.  In the past, there was no difference in Labatt’s between the two countries.  This apparently has changed due to today’s face-plant economic conditions.  Norma from Labatt Customer Service said there is a difference in the alcohol content, but it’s a recent change.  She stated, “Recently we have changed the alcohol content in Labatt’s Blue to 4.7% by volume in the USA compared to 5% by volume in Canada.  This small change will result in a substantial cost savings for the company.”  So in Labatt’s Blue, there is a slight difference of 0.3% ABV.  The other Labatt offerings have no difference in alcohol content.

It’s the same beer

While Labatt’s Blue has a lower alcohol content in the United States, I don’t think you can claim all beers from Canada are weaker in the United States without cherry picking your data.  The Labatt’s change is a recent change, and other major Canadian beers have no difference in alcohol content. Eh.

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There’s a large sign on one of the (many) organic/natural/vegan/I’m better than you for not eating “x” restaurants in Boulder, Colorado reading “biodynamic wine” in huge, bright letters.  Boulder, being commonly referred to around Colorado as “25 square miles surrounded by reality”,  is known for its unusual and far out ideas in just about every aspect of existence.  If it’s found in Boulder, it may not be very realistic, scientific, or true, but it’s bound to be interesting.  Such is the case with biodynamic wine.

Winemaking and wine drinking are some of the most storied aspects of human consumption.  A big part of the appeal of wine is the narrative that produces it—the culmination of a symphony between ecology, history, and human artistry that results in a nuanced and tasty beverage that just also happens to make you feel fairly great when you drink it (provided it’s consumed within reason that is).  There’s even a word for this concept: terroir.  Wine drinkers don’t just care about how a wine tastes, they also frequently care about how it’s produced.  The better the story, the more appealing the wine to some people—and biodynamic wine has quite the story.  Get ready.

Are biodynamic wines really any different than regular wine?

First, “biodynamic” refers to an organic agricultural method that sprang from the spiritual philosophy and worldview of a man named Rudolf Steiner. It was first laid out in a series of lectures by Steiner in 1924, and then developed over time by several different agricultural organizations founded to practice and promote the method.  Frequently the words “organic” and “biodynamic” are used interchangeably, and although there are many similarities between the two, biodynamics is like organic farming’s kooky half brother that doesn’t have a job and attends Burning Man every year to commune with the cosmos.

• Biodynamics is an agricultural method based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner
• Biodynamics and Organic are similar, but biodynamics is much less science

Cosmic grapes

Both organic and biodynamic farming do not use manufactured pesticides or fertilizers, preferring instead to use more natural methods and additions such as biological pest control, and compost and manure as fertilizers.  Both also use the crop rotation method, which helps to preserve soil fertility.  All of these methods have been scientifically shown to have environmental benefits such as positive impacts on soil organic matter, reduction in agricultural runoff pollution, and increases in biodiversity. The fundamental underlying idea of biodynamic agriculture is the farm as a living organism, with all the ecological interactions and feedback loops that implies.  That makes sense, because although a farm landscape has been manipulated by humans, it is still an ecological system (however altered) and thinking about it that way is just logical.  However, biodynamics extends this “living organism” idea off into the cosmos, and that’s where things start to go off the rails.

Biodynamics intends to align agricultural practices and their resultant food products with “cosmic energy”. This “cosmic energy” referred to in biodynamic literature is not defined, so one is left to wonder, do they mean the incoming energy from the sun?  Or perhaps they are intending to manage dark matter? In which case I’m sure the folks over at the Large Hadron Collider would love to hear from them.  How are these cosmic forces harnessed for the good of growing you ask?  Why there’s a bunch of ways!  First, biodynamic practitioners use lunar and astrological cycles to determine when to perform certain acts such as planting, harvesting, and the application of biodynamic “preparations” (more on that shortly).   Adherence to this cosmic calendar apparently imbues and aligns the farm with the universe.  This alignment and imbuement however, cannot be scientifically tested—go figure.

"Certified" biodynami wines have a special logo on the label

Biodynamic preparations are one the main ways biodynamics differs from just plain ole organic agriculture.  There are 8 different preparations, each supposedly having a specific beneficial effect on the plants, the soil, and once again, “cosmic energies”.  All of these preparations were described originally by Steiner, and you can bet he didn’t arrive at them by rigorous scientific field trials, instead, he ascertained the ingredients through “meditation”—in other words, he made them up.   Biodynamic preparation number 500 for example, involves packing the horns of a cow skull with manure, burying it, then digging it up, diluting the manure with water, and spraying it on fields.  The horns of the skull focus and concentrate cosmic energy you see, thus allowing biodynamic wineries to harness the awesome forces of the universe to get you sloshed—presumably the universe has nothing better to do.

• Biodynamics describes a method to fill cow horns with manure to harvest cosmic energies
• Steiner’s preperations came to him through meditation

She blinded me with science

There’s been a recent uptick in the number of biodynamic wineries.  There’s even a non-profit organization, Demeter, which “certifies” biodynamic farms, and allows them to use a certification symbol on their products; you can find the symbol on the back of certified wine labels.  They state on their website that their membership has tripled in the last three years.  According to their description of the program, the certification includes similar requirements to certify organic farms, but also mentions that they’re really aren’t any “standardized” (their choice of quotes) requirements for their biodynamic certification.  They don’t mention whether they send someone out to determine if the farmer is packing the manure into the cow horns correctly, or correctly synchronizing their farming activities with lunar and astrological cycles.  Presumably this is because it makes them sound less nuts.  On the website for those who are already members—the Demeter Biodynamic Trade Association—however, there’s plenty of text devoted to biodynamic’s more kooky aspects.

Sometimes “natural” methods or remedies have what turns out to be a valid scientific reason behind them.  Many of our medicines for example, have historical botanical origins.  Willow bark was used for centuries as a pain reliever before science allowed us to isolate the compound, salicylic acid, that was responsible for this effect. Farms used manure as fertilizer long before we had a scientific understanding of the nitrogen cycle.  As it turns out—surprise!—this is not the case with biodynamic preparations.

A study in 2005 examined the effect of biodynamic methods—specifically the biodynamic preparations—on soil and the quality of wine grapes.  Many prior studies conducted on biodynamic methods compared biodynamic to traditional cultivation, which does nothing to elucidate any difference between biodynamic and organic farming, which many studies have already demonstrated is significantly different from traditional farming.  The 2005 study found no difference in soil characteristics or grape quality between the biodynamic and organic treatments.

• Your winery can be certified “biodynamic” by organizations like Demeter
• A 2005 study showed there is no difference between biodynamic and organic grape quality

Free to be you and me

Wines from all over the world are claiming they are certified biodynamic

The organic farming methods in biodynamics have proven environmental benefits.  Many biodynamic vineyards do produce excellent, highly rated wines.  Is it worth it to spend extra money on biodynamic wine over organic wine?   If wine drinkers in part pay for a good story, then biodynamic wine should be a huge hit. There are few things weirder or more interesting (although not scientific in the least) in winemaking today than the image of viticulturists venturing out by the light of the moon to pack cow horns with crap for the benefit of their grapes. Hey man, that’s love.

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Where does this beer myth come from?

American beer used to use alcohol by weight to denote the alcohol content in beer.  Some areas still use alcohol by weight, but there has been an effort to convert to alcohol by volume in the past decade.  Alcohol by volume is a better metric.

Alcohol by volume is the percentage of the liquid which is alcohol.  For example if you had 100 ml which contained 4 ml of alcohol, the alcohol by volume is 4%.  Alcohol by weight measures the mass of a substance in a mixture as a percentage of the mass of the entire mixture.  So if you had 100 grams which contained 4 grams of alcohol, the alcohol by weight is 4%.  It looks like the two are the same, but they are not.

You get into trouble comparing ABV and ABW because is alcohol weighs less than water.  Alcohol is less dense, about 4/5 as dense as water.  The density of alcohol is 0.79336.  Alcohol by volume is the alcohol by weight times the density.

ABV = ABW * 0.79336

This means if your beer is 4% ABV, the beer is only 3.17% ABW.  Since Canadian beers use ABV and American beers were using ABW, many thought Canadian beers were stronger.  The myth persists to this day, even though American beers are starting to use the same metric.

Another reason is you are allowed to market the alcohol strength in Canada, but not in the United States.  You cannot advertise “this beer will get you drunk” due to alcohol laws, nor can you promote your brand based on the alcohol content.  Different states even have different regulations on how strong the beer can be.  These help contribute to the “Canadian beer is stronger” myth.

Is Canadian beer stronger than American beer? No.

The beer alcohol content list

I’m sure there are many out there who still are not convinced.  I’ve written an alcohol myth list where I stated Canadian beers are not stronger than American beers, but I still had many people write me to tell me I was wrong.

So here’s the list of beers and their alcohol content.  Most of the beers in the world vary from 4% to 6% ABV, with almost all beers having an alcohol content close to 5%.  There are beers which go as high as 25.6% ABV (Samuel Adams Utopias – American).  For this list, I’m focusing just on the macro beers.  Obviously anything from Avery is going to be stronger than Labatts.  Craft beers all tend to be slightly higher in alcohol.

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I try to stamp out every beer myth I come across, so when Virgil G. another beer blogger pointed out I may be perpetuating a beer myth in my Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, and Beer Myths article I was surprised (and somewhat embarrassed).  It would be pretty bad if I wrote an article about myths and perpetuated one of my own – especially in the same article.  Damn.

The IPA legend

The IPA legend goes like this.  Beer brewers were looking for a beer to take to India.  The trip to India is hard on beer, since the beer is exposed to dramatically high temperatures including crossing the equator twice and a very long journey over time and distance.  Time and high heat can be very harsh on beer.

George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery stepped up with his variation of the popular pale ale.  He increased the gravity of the pale ale beer (high alcohol) and added a ton of hops (highly hopped).  This new creation not only survived the trip to India, it seemed to improve the beer.  The India Pale Ale style was born.  At least this is the beer legend.

You’ll find this story in some form in just about every beer book and beer website out there.

My troublesome quote

So in my original article, where did I go wrong?  It was an article about pilgrims right, so where did IPAs come in??  IPAs came about in 1790, while pilgrims are sooo 1600s.   Here’s the questionable claim I made in the previous article:

“India Pale Ales (IPA) were created later in history specifically to make the long journey to India.”

Created is a bit of a strong word, and I think this is where I got into trouble.

How much of the IPA "invention" is myth vs. history

Where’s the myth?

Earlier this year, articles on The Zythophile titled “Myth 4: George Hodgson invented IPA to survive the long trip to India” and “IPA: Incredibly Poor Article” spread across the blogsphere.  These articles make the claim the IPA style is just an evolved style from the time, and suggest the Hodgson creation/invention/formulation is a myth.  To support this thesis, Zythophile makes the following claims:

• Other beers, like porter, could make the trip to India
• The October beer is similar to the IPA, and other brewers knew how to make strong, highly hopped beers
• The market was very small before 1830, so why bother?
• There is no evidence Hodgson created the style

It all seems so convincing, it makes me wonder why no one has said this before?  Even Michael Jackson (RIP) references this story in New World Guide to Beer.  Well I am not a beer historian, but there are several questions I have which would need to be addressed before claiming the story is debunked.

Let’s look at each point in detail.

Can other beers make it to India?

For the first point, yes other beers could make the journey.  Zythophile points out in a journal entry from Joseph Banks (on the Endeavour with Captain Cook in the South Pacific) the author enjoyed a porter stored on the boat for a year.  Banks’ porter is one example of a beer making it over a year on a boat.  Unfortunately this is what we call a sample size of one.  Actually I am sure a much higher percentage of beers made the journey (otherwise why bring beer at all), but the point is valid.  Just because Joseph Banks’ pint of porter made it to the South Pacific ok, it does not demonstrate there isn’t a problem shipping beer.

A beer won’t sour if it doesn’t become infected, but the odds of infection are greatly increased if the beer is exposed to heat.  Heat can also make beer go bad, which is why we go through so much effort to keep beer cool.  Heat will caramelize sugars and amplify and off-flavors in the beer, even if you chill it again.  If you doubt this, take your favorite beer and put it in the oven for an hour at 120 F, re- chill the beer and then tell me if it tastes like the same beer.  My guess is you will get aromas and flavors of cooked vegetables.

Even Joseph Banks made a point to note the recently tapped porter was surprisingly good when he wrote “a cask of Porter tappd which provd excellently good”.  It doesn’t really matter which way you travel to India from England, you must cross the equator twice.  A beer can make it (and many did), but the chances are not in your favor.  Because other beers can make the journey (in some percentage) is not a reason to claim there is no problem to solve.  If you ship 100 barrels and you lose some percentage of that beer to spoilage, you have a problem you need to solve.

On a tour through the Budweiser brewery, the tour guide noted very little beer was ever spilt (by design and significant effort) which resulted in thousands of extra cases of beer saved each year.  While comparing a modern Budweiser to the industrial age Bow brewery is not exactly fair, it does show small changes can make a large effect on the bottom line.

The October beer and the India Pale Ale ABV

This point is a bit confusing.  Zythophile knows the IPA was not a strong beer at the time (and states so), but then compares it to a barley wine called October beer which he lists with a starting gravity of 1.140 or higher (somewhere around 16% ABV depending on finishing gravity).  I guess the reason was to make the point a beer can last two years or longer, or to show other brewers were making stronger beers.

I doubt any beers on ships were very potent brews (I’m still looking for a historical recipe for ship’s beer).  The reason I do not think it would be a strong beer is drunk sailors do not work well, they fight, and tend to fall off ships.  Giving strong beer or barley wine to a group of men who are bored out of their mind on a boat for six plus months does not seem like a good idea.

The counter point to this argument is the beer was consumed in India, not on ships.  This is a fair point to which I agree, but it still suffers from the same problems.  Drinking a high alcohol beer in high heat (such as India) invites dehydration.  If they were shipping an October beer to India, I do not think it was a high alcohol beer.

• October beers had OG of 1.140, much too high for an IPA
• High alcohol beers cause dehydration when over consumed

Part of the evidence offered by Zythophile is an advertisement which states “select investment of prime London goods just landed from the HC [Honourable Company] ship Sir David Scott”, including “Hodgson’s warranted prime picked pale ale of the genuine October brewing, warranted fully equal, if not superior, to any ever before received in the settlement.”  I’m not sure what the advertisement means by “genuine October brewing”, but it does not sound like a barley wine.  The advertisement says pale ale.

The beer at the time served two purposes.  First the beer served as a healthy source of water.  Second the beer served as a source of vitamins and nutrients.  This is why the nutritional porter was so popular at the time, more popular than the pale ale.  The intoxicating properties were pure bonus.  Unfortunately beer is also a diuretic.  Both health benefits (water and nutrients) drop off dramatically as the beer becomes more potent.

The problem with all this attention on the alcohol content is it doesn’t matter either way, and it contributes to the IPA myth.  The IPAs of the time were rarely over 1.070 for good reasons I’ll discuss later.  High alcohol IPAs are part of the myth.  If October beer had a starting gravity of 1.140, this was not the IPA shipped to India.

The East India beer market was very small before 1830

This is true.  The first three decades saw little increase in the market with only about 9 to 10 thousand barrels shipped a year.  It didn’t grow to 20,000 barrels until 1840, long after the disputed “IPA discovery” in 1790.  But doesn’t this support the George Hodgson claim?

Only a small time brewer could take this market.  Larger brewers would not be interested in the market until there was a higher demand for the product.  This just shows fewer breweries were involved in the East India beer trade, and thus reduces the number of people who could have stumbled upon the ideal recipe.

How much beer really was sold in the East Indies? Not much.

A smaller brewer would also be much more susceptible to product loss.  If Hodgson lost any percentage of his product, he would feel it much more than a larger brewer.  As a smaller brewer, the Bow Brewery was under more pressure to solve any shipping problems.

The last thing to note is, while the market was shipping only 9 to 10 thousand barrels a year, nearly all of it was by the Bow Brewery.  The Bow Brewery only produced 11 thousand barrels a year for the first 16 years of its existence.  Few other breweries were shipping beer to India in the 1790s.  There was no India beer market before 1790, because Hodgson saw an opportunity and created the market.

• The market was small, but so was the Bow Brewery’s production
• Smaller brewers feel the financial pain of beer loss more
• In the early years, most beer to India came from the Bow Brewery

There is no evidence Hodgson created the style

This is a negative proof.  It basically states there is no evidence X is true, so X must be false.  That’s a logic error.  To show Hodgson did not create the style, you would need to show another true IPA existed before Hodgson’s India Ale and was sold as such, Hodgson never produced the ale, some point in history much later where the legend changed (like the pilgrim myths of the early 1900s), or some other direct contradiction.

There were similar beers at the time, the IPA is an evolved style, but Hodgson’s India Ale had two distinct alterations to reduce spoilage.  The first is the addition of hops.  Hops are a significant anti-microbial agent, and adding more hops will preserve a beer for longer periods of time.

The second change will surprise you.  The second IPA change was not to increase in alcohol, but as I alluded to earlier, the recipe actually was created with a lower starting and finishing gravity than other beers of the day resulting in a much drier and lower alcohol beer.

IPAs were rarely created with a gravity higher than 1.070, because higher gravity beers will have more residual sugars.  The IPA beer at the time was a much drier beer.  Residual sugars are what attract spoiling microorganisms.  Contrary to popular belief, studies show alcohol (ethanol) levels less than 10% do little to prevent microorganisms.  The hops and polyphenols in the beer prevent spoilage, not a stronger beer.  A brewer at the time might not know microorganisms were spoiling the beer, but the brewer would know dry hoppy beers spoil less than sweeter maltier beers.

I think Zythophile is probably right that Hodgson did not create a beer style.  I do not think anyone came to Hodgson and asked for him to create a beer which could make it to India nor did he market the beer as a new style, but I do think he modified the pale ale recipe to extremes to reduce product loss.

• Can’t negatively prove something, with an absence of evidence  i.e. – I can’t prove he didn’t kill her, so he must have killed her
• IPAs of the time had lower alcohol compared to other beers of the day
• Alcohol does not provide protection against microorganisms at low ABVs (<10%)

So where do we stand?

Hodgson was successful for several reasons: his beer, his brewery’s proximity to the ship ports, and his shady business practices.  IPAs probably succeeded other beers in India because it was lighter and dryer, both good qualities of a warm season beer (who likes porter on a hot summer day?).  He moved into the India market due to an imbalance in shipping costs, and though shady business practices he dominated the India market.

Hodgson did not create a beer style, but he likely reformulated an existing style to reduce product loss.  Whether he created a style, modified an existing style, or just got lucky it really doesn’t matter.  His beer had two qualities other beers shipped to India did not.  His India ales were hoppier and much drier.  Sure other brewers probably knew this combination would work to reduce spoilage, but Hodgson was the brewer who did ship this beer to India.

For these reasons his name is associated with the history of the IPA.

Yes other brewers were producing similar ales, but Hodgson’s beer was the pale ale shipped to India.  The market for beer in India was small, but as a percentage of Hodgson’s revenue the India market was huge.  If October ales were barley wines, I do not believe the IPA is a modification of this recipe nor has any relevance to the discussion.

Hodgson’s beer was known through lore and legend to be the first true India Pale Ale, if not actually documented anywhere.  So when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

What do you think?  Myth or not?  Let me know in the comments!

[EDIT: Zythophile had a rebuttal on the old site. I included it here so the comments were not lost]

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The Thanksgiving story

When the pilgrims came to America they were running low on provisions, specifically beer.  The crew was concerned about provisions for the trip back so they dumped the pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, packed up and left.  The pilgrims immediately built a brewery and had a happy Thanksgiving dinner with the locals.

Did the Pilgrims really stop in Plymouth to build a brewery?

That is the story, but is it really true?  Would religious puritans really drink beer?  Did they build a brewery?  What was the brew choice at the first Thanksgiving?  Here’s what I found out.

Did the pilgrims drink beer?

Water is essential to life, but at the time of the Mayflower water could also make you sick.  You’ve heard “don’t drink the water” when traveling to Mexico or you’ll get Montezuma’s Revenge.  Back then, you didn’t drink the water anywhere.  This made beer an important commodity at the time, because beer was a much safer beverage than water.  To survive the trip across an ocean, you needed some source of water.  During the Mayflower times, that source of water was beer and wine.

The reason for beer’s advantage over water is harmful microorganisms cannot survive long in beer (or wine).  Of course you can boil water to make it safe, but in the 1600s no one knew microorganisms were the source of their health problems.  People just knew beer was safe and water was not.  So yes, the pilgrims drank beer.

• Beer was the main source of water at the time
• Ships carried wine and beer for long voyages
• The Mayflower was a wine vessel capable of carrying 180 casks of wine

So what kind of beer did the pilgrims drink?

Were the party pilgrims getting drunk on the way over to America?  Beer does not need to be strong for its anti microbial effects.  The polyphenols (not alcohol) in beer and wine act as an anti-microbial agent and prevent bacterial diarrhoea.  Small beers were common at dinner time during Colonial times.

These small beers were usually consumed soon after brewing.  The reason is small beers tend to spoil quickly.  So while the beers were much better than water, they didn’t survive long.  This is true even now, which is probably why Budweiser advertises their “born on” dating system so often.  A small beer would most likely not make the trip to the Americas and back.

I could not find a definitive word on the exact type of beer the pilgrims drank, but it most likely was some type of bitter.  The beer couldn’t be a pale ale since pale ales arrived on the scene in England around 1700.  Porters are very nutritional and would have been my first guess, but the beer style didn’t show up until 1722.  IPAs came even later, however the recipe construction of IPAs do give us some insight into the beer the pilgrims might have been drinking.

India Pale Ales (IPA) were created later in history specifically to make the long journey to India.  Brewers added hops to these beers to travel to much warmer regions of the world over longer periods of time without spoiling.  Hops act as an anti-microbial agent, which is why these beers tend to be very hoppy.  However these beers rarely had initial gravities over 1.070, and most were between 1.050 and 1.070.  These gravities correspond to an alcohol content around 5% to 7.5% ABV.  IPAs were actually brewed lower in gravity to have less residual sugars.  Any remaining sugars would attract spoilage organisms.  This is why IPAs are traditionally dry.

Any beer the pilgrims would be carrying on the Mayflower most likely would not be too strong.  You don’t want people getting drunk on a ship, especially when you are going nuts anyway from sheer boredom.  A stronger beer would also run the risk of more residual sugars.  Spoiled beer is a bigger problem than drunk puritans.  I’m guessing the beer was a very dry, slightly over-hopped, medium strength bitter.  If you know for sure the beer they brought (with a reference), let me know.

• IPAs were developed later for long trips, but they were rarely stronger than 7% ABV
• Higher alcohol beers contain residual sugars, a target for spoiling microorganisms
• Ethanol is not anti-microbial, but hops and polyphenols are

Were they dumped on Plymouth Rock due to low beer supplies?

Many websites point to the ship logs of Captain Christopher Jones as proof the ship’s crew was concerned about beer supplies.  The only problem is Captain Christopher Jones either didn’t keep a log, or it was long lost.  Other accounts of what happened were not written until many years later.

Here’s what likely happened.  The Mayflower was supposed to leave England much earlier and with another ship, the Speedwell.  The puritans had an initial delay negotiating debts with their investment company, and then when they eventually set sail the Speedwell took on water.  The ships had to go back, cram pack most everyone on one ship, and set sail for the Americas again on September 6th.

They reached land in the Americas on November 9th, but they didn’t make for shore until a few days later.  When they arrived they realized the Mayflower was no where close to where they needed to be (Virginia Colony) and many colonists questioned if they had the legal right to settle in Cape Cod.  The last thing you wanted to do was colonize the land and have another group of settlers take the land from you over a legal dispute.  That was ok to do to the natives, but not so cool to each other.  That’s why they wrote the Mayflower Compact.  It was to alleviate the legal fears of the settlers.

The pilgrims got the heave ho from the Mayflower because they were out of time, not out of beer.  And they really didn’t get the “heave ho” as many would imply.  The Mayflower set sail for England April 5th the following year.  That’s five months after reaching America.  If the crew was worried about supplies, they would have left much earlier. The ship had at least half of their beer left at this point, because they needed it for the return trip.  They were not low on beer.

The pilgrims wasted five weeks running around New England, robbed a few Native American graves for buried corn and beans, and eventually landed on Plymouth Rock on December 17th.  They picked the spot because the ship needed to get the colonists established before winter really set in.  Three days later, December 21st, they agreed on a site to settle and set out on their first task.

• The pilgrams were forced to land at Plymouth rock because they were out of time
• The crew had beer through the winter, and left with enough supplies for the voyage back
• The Mayflower set sail for England in April of the following year

Was the first pilgrim structure a brewery?

If you’ve been on a ship for two months, winter is already here, people are dying, and someone told you the first building was going to be a brewery you would laugh at them,  probably after beating the silly person senseless.

The first structure was not a brewery, it was shelter.  The pilgrims planned on building nineteen structures, but they only made four common houses.   Only 45 people of the original 102 settlers survived the first winter.  A brewery was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

• Only 45 people survived the winter, a brewery was the last thing they would think to build

Was the first Thanksgiving happy with beer?

The first real Thanksgiving most likely wasn’t until July of 1623 when more colonists and supplies arrived.  The famous dinner with the Native Americans happened in October 1621.  The “harvest festival” lasted three days, and probably didn’t have beer.  Any beer from England was long gone, the Mayflower was long gone, and the grains in New England were not suitable for beer.

When the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, surviving was their only goal

The colonists did plant some barley the first year, but there is no evidence it was used for beer.  Barley wasn’t grown in large amounts in the Americas until the late 1700s to create a brewing industry.  In short, there was no beer at the first dinner with the locals.

• President Washington declared the first Thanksgiving Day, but it wasn’t a regular national holiday until Lincoln
• The first Thanksgiving was really a harvest festival with the natives
• There was no record of beer served

Who lied to me?

Budweiser, who else.  Well not just Budweiser, but all the breweries collectively as the United Brewers Industrial Foundation.  The brewers before and after prohibition were scared silly of losing their industry, with good reason.  They wanted to paint beer as American as apple pie in an effort to improve beer’s image and prevent prohibition.

The brewers ran ads stating “the pilgrims drank beer” and created the myths surrounding the beer habits of the early settlers.  These ads ran before prohibition and after prohibition.  The ads are the source of many of the pilgrim myths, and unfortunately what many know about early American History.

• “Pilgrims drank beer” was a marketing campaign to help beer’s tarnished image during prohibition

Sources

• Beer and the Pilgrims
• Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels
• Thanksgiving (United States) Wikipedia.org

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While researching information for other articles, here are some interesting beer facts I’ve come across.  Many of these may surprise you!

Beer has fewer calories than many healthy drinks

Here’s a list of one ounce drinks and the number of calories in each.  We’re not claiming that 5 beers are healthier than 5 glasses of milk, but if you are counting calories, beer has fewer calories.

18 calories in one ounce milk
9 calories in one ounce bud light
21 calories in red wine
20 calories in white wine
15 calories in one ounce of Guinness
8 calories in one ounce of Amstel Light
15 calories in orange juice

Homebrewers pitch too little yeast

Brewers usually pitch 10 million yeast cells for every milliliter of wort.  To match commercial pitching rates, homebrewers should pitch 200-400 billion yeast cells.  A dry yeast packet typically contains 50 billion cells.  A liquid vial contains 70 to 140 billion cells.  The smack packs contain around 100 billion cells.  This means if you do not create a starter, you are under pitching.  Smack packs are not starters.  They activate the yeast metabolism, but they do not increase cell counts.

History of Pilsner and Budweiser

Pilsner and Budweiser origins come from the Czech Republic.  The pilsner style originated in the city of Pilsen in 1840, and is now known as Pilsner Urquell.  “Urquell” is the German word for “original source”.  Budweiser’s history is more suspect.

The Budweiser pilsner comes from the city of Budejovice.  Budweiser describes where the beer comes from, much like Bordeaux describes where in France the wine originates.  The beer has been brewed in Budejovice since the 14th century.  So how does Budweiser have rights to the copyright?  Anheuser-Busch was founded by German immigrants in 1876.  The Czech company Budejovicky Budvar was founded in 1895.

You have to admit the logos look very similar

Both companies claim the name Budweiser, and there are legal disputes to this day.  The United States has ruled in favor of Anheuser-Busch, and Budvar is sold under a different name.  In Switzerland and Germany, Anheuser-Busch must use a different name.  The United Kingdom recognizes that both companies can use Budweiser.  I asked about this on a Budweiser brewery tour in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The response was “I’m not familiar with that microbrew”.  Pilsner Urquel is the original source of pilsner, but it is still up for debate to the original source of Budweiser.

Hathor is the goddess of destruction and drunkenness

The Egyptian goddess Hathor/ Sekhmet goes my many titles (and names).  One is the goddess of destruction and drunkenness.  Her story goes like this.  The Sun god Ra wasn’t getting the love he needed from his subjects, so he sent Hathor to set them straight.  She took the job to extremes, turned into a leopard and started killing all the humans (where is SG-1 when you need them).  Ra, realizing that dead subjects don’t worship well, decided to stop Hathor.  He threw barley and dates into the blood that flowed through the streets.  It turned to beer and Hathor drank it up.  Hathor got drunk and became a much more fun loving god – the god of beer.  She’s also known as the god of fertility.  This is most likely because, as many women have found out, consuming too much alcohol can lead to pregnancy.

Egypt created the first no alcohol beer

The first non-alcoholic beer came from ancient Egypt.  A priestess would create a strong ale, then heat it over a fire.  The alcohol would burn off, and rise to make the goddess (Hathor?) very drunk.  The remaining beer, now non-alcoholic, was sold to the public (probably in France to soccer fans from other countries).

Bass Ale got the very first trademark

The distinctive triangle is the oldest trademark in Britain.  After the 1875 Trademarks Registration Act was passed a Bass employee was instructed to wait outside the patent office on New Year’s Eve.  If my boss told me to stand in line on New Year’s Eve, I know what my reaction would be.  The employee camped out at the office over night.  The new law went into effect January 1st, 1876 and the first two patents were awarded to Bass.

Breweries created the “pilgrims stopped for beer” myth

There is some debate to why the puritans settled in Plymouth .  While there is no debate that the puritans left England with plenty of beer, rumor had it that they stopped in Plymouth because they were out of beer and built a brewery.  There is no truth to this rumor, and the Mayflower probably had plenty of beer for the return trip to England.  The myth actually came from the American breweries shortly before and after prohibition.  Before prohibition, breweries (led by Budweiser) wanted to claim that beer was a part of American heritage.  They ran large ads in newspapers stating “Pilgrim fathers drank it”.  After prohibition, beer sales were down, so in an effort to increase sales the breweries ran ads creating the “pilgrims stopped for beer” myth.

The real prohibition repeal date in the United States is December 5

When was the 21st Amendment passed? (April 7, 1933 or December 5, 1933)

The Twenty First Amendment was passed by Congress February 20, 1933.  It was ratified December 5, 1933.  April 7, 1933 the federal government legalized 3.2% ABV beer.  Many confuse the two and celebrate the repeal of prohibition on April 7th.  While you could have purchased something that was technically beer, you could not get wine, full-strength beer, or spirits until December 5, 1933.

The real beer drinkers

The Czech Republic drinks more beer per capita than any other country.  For the past two years, China drinks more beer than any other country (350 million hectoliters).  China is the fastest growing beer market in the world.  The United States ranks number two by amount, but ranks 11 per capita.

The first beer cans

The first beer cans were produced in 1935.  Drinkers were no longer going to taverns, and breweries needed to get beer into the homes.  The smaller packages made it much easier to get beer home.  1939 ushered in a new era of beer on the go (and formaldehyde in beer).

Reinheitsgebot is missing an ingredient

The famous German Purity Law of 1516, “Reinheitsgebot”, is missing an essential ingredient for beer.  The original text decreed that beer can contain only water, barley and hops.  They did not understand the role of micro-organisms until the 1800s, so yeast was not a known ingredient.  Brewers knew to add a bit of the slurry from the previous batch, but did not know it contained yeast.  Yeast was added as an ingredient to the German law during the 20th century.  Reinheitsgebot remained in effect until the European Court of Justice repealed the law in May of 1987!

The first brewery in the United States

As I mentioned earlier, the pilgrims did not build a brewery when they landed in Plymouth in 1620.  Nicholas Varlett obtained from Peter Stuyvesant a patent for the first brewery in America on February 5, 1663 (it was a Monday for the incurably curious).  This brewery was on Castle Point in Hoboken, New Jersey.  The oldest active brewery is the D.G. Yuengling & Son brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.  The Yuengling brewery was founded in 1829.

Hops are a recent addition to beer

The first reported use of hops in beer was 736 AD, but brewers didn’t really use hops until the 1500s.  Before the 1500s, gruit beer used ingredients like wormwood or other herbs to balance the sweetness.  Medieval brewers did not like hops in beer because they thought it caused “melancholy and tormenting disease.”  They also thought tomatoes were poisonous.

Beer is not just beer

Most people know that there are ales and there are lagers.  Ales are top-fermented beers, while lagers are bottom fermented beers.  Ales and lagers have many beer styles that taste very unique.  In the 2007 Great American Beer Festival, there were 76 distinct beer categories.  Each category represented a unique beer style.

Beer isn’t made in a day

It takes a while to make beer.  The quickest time from grain to glass can usually be accomplished in a week.  This short fermentation is possible in low gravity beers (low alcohol).  Budweiser’s fermentation and lagering process takes about a month.  The fastest reported time from grain to glass was at the F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica, New York.  F.X. Matt was the first brewer to get a brewing license after the repeal of prohibition, one hour after the law went into effect.  Defying the known laws of fermentation science, F.X. Matt delivered kegs of “fresh” lager 24 hours later.  This feat has never been “repeated”.

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The different taste buds are evenly distributed across the tongue and mouth

We have all learned in grade school science that different parts of the tongue detect different tastes.  The front of the tongue detects sweet or salty tastes, while the back of the tongue detects bitter flavors.  You might have even performed the experiment as a child where someone drops different flavors on your tongue using an eye dropper as a science experiment.  A recent popular video podcast (one which I like very much) even mentions that you should swallow beer while tasting it in order to allow the bitter flavors of the beer to be stronger.  The tongue map is often pulled out to give wine or beer tasting that scientific credibility.  The problem is: its crap.

No science for tongue map

You'll see this tongue map repeated in many places, but it still isn't true

There is little scientific basis for different parts of the tongue discerning different flavors, and no scientific basis for the regimented tongue map.  The confusion comes from a mistranslation of a German text by Harvard psychologist Edwin G. Boring (what a great name) in 1901.  The myth was debunked in the 1970s, but for some reason it will not go away.

How does the tongue work?

In reality, the whole tongue and parts of the mouth are capable of distinguishing all different flavors.  Some people are better at this than others, and the ability follows a typical bell curve.  About 25% of the population is considered supertasters, while 25% are sub par.  Women are more likely to be supertasters.  Women are often employed as quality tasters in breweries and wineries for this reason.  Asians, Africans and South Americans are also more likely to be supertasters.

Your taste buds, called fungiform papillae, give you the ability to taste.  It is thought that supertasters have more taste buds than average, but it still requires more research to be sure.  A heightened ability for taste would be beneficial in some regions of the world, but could be a liability in others.  The buds can differentiate five flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami.  Umami is a Japanese word meaning “savory”, and was identified by a Japanese researcher in 1908.  Umami applies to the detection of glutamates – meats, cheeses, or other heavy protein flavored foods.  It is also why MSG (monosodium glutamate) makes food taste better.  Each taste bud has about 100 flavor receptors.  The distribution of which type of flavors the taste bud can determine varies, but the distribution does not match the tongue map at all.

So next time a tasting expert trots this cliché out, correct the expert – tongue in cheek!

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