We’ve known for some time that wine has certain benefits for the health of some people, specifically wine drinkers of course.  Drunk in moderation, wine can help prevent certain cancers, reduce the risls of heart disease and slow the onset of some neuroligical degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s.

Until now those pesky wine drinkers have has the upper hand in the ‘healthy drinks’

Beer vs Wine - the health benefits

stakes but a recent study by the Research Laboratories at the Fondazione di Ricerca e Cura has apparently shown that beer can match wine in certain aspects of health benefits. Specifically both wine and beer have the effect of decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 31%.

Two glasses of wine or slightly more than one pint a day will do it for men while one glass of one is enough for women.  The more one drinks, the more the decreased risk evaporates until a level is reached when the risk actually starts to increase.  There are also other conditional factors; women of child bearing age for example can slightly increase the risks of some varieties of cancer.

What does seem to be the conclusion of the researchers is that even though the benefits appear to be proven, the reason why beer can be as beneficial as wine is still a bit if a mystery;  the researchers admit that the only obvious early conclusion is that both contain alcohol – there is no similarity between the ingredients or the brewing processes.

We should mention that studies have been performed into the health benefits of beer before, resulting in the following useful pub facts:

• Beer can help reduce blood pressure
• Beer contains flavanoids, natural oxidants which the body needs to protect against disease
• Beer can help prevent kidney stones
• Beer can lower levels of insulin in the blood
• Beer contains Vitamin B6 which promotes the manufacture of haemoglobin
• Beer raises the levels of the blood’s anti-oxidants
• Beer helps with relaxation and promoting good sleep

Frankly we’re not sure about the last one, from a scientific point of view anyway, but the researchers surely know best.

12th Belfast Beer & Cider Festival

The 12th Belfast Beer and Cider Festival deserves a quick mention this week, if only because it’s something of a celebration of the rise of the micro-brewery in Northern Ireland and the spectacular success of this event over the last twelve years or so.

Over the years since it’s inception it has grown steadily and now features around 100 real ales and 20 or so varieties of cider.  Most of the brews are local but an increasing number originate abroad, ales and breweries which are trying to fight their way into the local market.

Ulster Hall, Belfast

It takes place over three days, beginning on the 17th November and running until the 19th.  Beer may be the main attraction but it’s not the only one; there will be plenty of live music as befits any Irish occasion so if you’re in the area, head won to the Ulster Hall for a good weekend.

Whatever a beer is made from, be it wheat or any one of a number of different grains, the brewing process will always include hops.  Hops are what give the finished product it’s flavour and bitterness and it also acts as a stabilising agent.

Bavaria, in Germany, provides us with the first documented evidence of the use of hops for the above purpose in the brewing process and we can therefore date it to about the 11th century AD.  We do know that hops were cultivated in Germany around three hundred years before this but not for any purposes related to beer.  Before the 11th century beers were flavoured with a variety of herbs and flowers including dandelions and marigolds.  A mixture of herbs known as Gruit was the most popular addition prior to the use of hops but even this varied from producer to producer.

“Wicked and Pernicious Weed”

The Dutch followed the German lead in the use of hops and by 1400 AD the British had begun to import and use Dutch hops in their own brewing industry.  Hops were seen as an unwelcome addition in some quarters and the city of Norwich actually banned hops in 1471.  Hops were famously described as a “wicked and pernicious weed” in 1519.  Five years later however, the British began to grow their own hops.  One hundred years later the United States began to produce their own.

Now it is a massively mechanised industry in those countries which are the major producers, but in the past huge numbers of seasonal workers have been required to harvest the crop.  Kent, in England, has historically been a large hop producer and before the mechanization of the 1960s thousands of workers (including whole families) would descend on the county from the East End of London to pick the crop.  Seasonal workers from Birmingham and the Midlands would head to Worcestershire.

Growing and Brewing

Hops are grown in hopfields and the plant itself is a climber which is usually trained to

The Hop Plant

grow up strings or frames.  An oast house is used to dry the hop which then produces resins.  The resins are made up of alpha and beta acids which have different properties. Alpha acids are what provide the finished product with it’s bitter taste but importantly they provide an antibiotic antidote to the bacteria in the brewing yeast.

Beta acids are not quite so useful but they do provide beer with it’s aroma, occasionally giving rise to the smell of rotten vegetables noticeable in some ales.  Both acids are added to the mix in the process of boiling the wort and differences in tastes and aroma arise from the different times at which they are added.

Germany and the United States are the biggest producers of hops, check out the chart below for the twelve biggest producers:

Major Hops Producers

Hops have very few other uses but users of herbal medicine may recognise it as a cure for insomnia or anxiety.

Dogfish Head is a well-established brewery in Milton, Delaware; it was founded in 1995

Dogfish Logo

and following some years of gradual growth, the company suddenly went into expansion overdrive in 2003, increasing output by 400% by 2006.  The man behind the brewery is Sam Calagione and chose the name after an area of Maine called Dogfish Head where he spent holidays as a child.

The attitude and outlook of Dogfish Head could be compared to that of the Brewdog brewery in Scotland (brewer of some of the world’s strongest beers) in that experimental and occasionally very strong beers are not unusual.  Dogfish’s brews have been known to reach 20% abv and the brewery refers to these as “off-centered ales for off-centered people.”  Even the staple brews where Dogfish makes most of it’s sales are relatively strong.  Dogfish produces dozens of regular and seasonal brews so we’ll just mention a couple of them here.

IPAs

The India Pale Ales are what we’re referring to when we talk about the biggest sellers for Dogfish.  Depending on your point of view they are named creatively or unimaginatively (we plump for the former) and are as follows:

• 60 Minute IPA – a “hoppy, citrusy, grassy brew”, 6.0 abv.
• 90 minute IPA – “brandied fruitcake, raisiny, citrusy”, named by Esquire Magazine as “perhaps the best IPA in America”. 9.0 abv.
• 120 minute IPA – “too extreme to be called beer”, this brewer between 15% and 20% abv. It’s also a seasonal offering.

Dogfish IPAs

Although there are many more beers available just as part of the IPA offerings, the three mentioned above tend to get the coverage, probably because of the name.  The timings actually refer to the amount of time the wort is boiled while hops are added to the mixture.  The longer the length of time, the bitterer the taste of the final product will be. There is also a 75 minute IPA brewed very occasionally which includes maple syrup as part of the recipe.

Ancient Ales

Dogfish has notably been the driving force behind the brewing of ‘Ancient Ales’, an attempt to brew ales using residue left behind on drinking vessels which have been unearthed from archaeological digs.  In collaboration with Dr. Pat McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania, four recipes have been extracted and brewed to date as follows:

• Midas Touch Golden Elixir – from the 8th century BC tomb of King Midas in Greece
• Chateau Jiahu – from 7th century BC Central China
• Theobromo – from 12th century BC Honduras
• Ta Henket – from ancient Egypt

Brewpub

Dogfish also operates a superb brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware called the Dogfish Head Brewing and Eats.  It contains Delaware’s only (legal) distillery.  This venue is also the only place where you’ll be able to sample the ancient Egyptian brew, Ta Henket.

Paul Halsey is the man behind the brand and before heading out on his own, he had worked in the brewing industry for a number of years, starting out at Bass, then moving on to restaurant management.  Halsey cites German brewing methods as his influence and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Purity Brewing Co. actually only produces three beers as follows:

• Mad Goose: a light copper Pale Ale brewed at 4.2%
• Pure Gold: a golden ale brewed at 3.8%
• Pure UBU: a premium amber beer brewed at 4.5%

Purity's range of beers

A brewery of this quality has also won its fair share of awards including the Gold Award in the Champion Best Bitters in the 2009 SIBA National Beer Competition (Pure UBU), Gold in the same competition for Mad Goose (Best Bitter) and Pure Gold (Bitters and Pale Ales) as well as several smaller awards and recommendations.  CAMRA has consistently judged Purity’s efforts as award winners and Pure UBU recently won silver at the 2010 International Beer Challenge and can now call itself won of the world’s top 50 beers.

With the influence of German brewing techniques, it’s no surprise that Purity imports several top quality German brews – Maisels Weiss (5.2%), Veltins Pilsner (4.8%) and Bernard Lager (3.8% – and these can be purchased through the Purity’s website.  Cider fans are not neglected and the website also offers for sale Hogan’s Draught Cider (4.5%), direct from the nearby Warwickshire cidery.  Check it out; this is a brewery with a bright future.

The U.K. budget will next year feature a small but possibly meaningful tax rise on beer with a certain alcohol content.  On March 23rd the Chancellor will announce plans to increase tax on beers with an ABV of 7.5% or above.

The government says it is one of the ways it is committed to tackling alcoholism and that does seem to be the case – it’s certainly not going to raise much more tax revenue.  Only about 1% of the beer market in the U.K. is made up of 7.5% ABV products, mostly extra-strong lager and some vintage real ales.

Brewdog Beers - all in the new tax bracket

While the decision to raise the tax has been cautiously welcomed by some health organisations, others have suggest that it is not going far enough.  Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said that the government were “tinkering at the edges, failing to address the fundamental inconsistencies within the alcohol duty system.”

Shenker was referring to cider, which can often be stronger than beer and occasionally strong enough to bring it into the new tax bracket.  Spirits and wines have also been left untouched, a point made by Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer & Pub Association, who said that a system was needed “….that nudges consumers to choose lower strength, pub based drinks such as beer.”

At the other end of the scale, beer with an ABV below 2.8% will have its duty lowered, also as part of the overall plan to tackle alcoholism.  Whether anyone is going to be tempted to drink a beer with a an alcohol content of less then 2.8% is a good question; you’re certainly going to notice a difference in the taste.  We’re not even sure there is any real ale brewed at that strength.  It also begs the question of how much you could drink before you found yourself over the drink drive limit although of course you should always err on the side of caution.

To get things in perspective, Google appears to be funding a few of it’s employees who are fans of craft beer.  There’s almost a type of symbiosis there; a stereotypical, hairy, perhaps slightly overweight real ale fan isn’t a million miles away from a hairy, perhaps slightly overweight Google coder.  But good luck to them anyway.

The beer project is actually being undertaken by Delaware micro-brewery Dogfish Head.
Dogfish Head is fairly well-known in the States, having been featured on the Discovery Channel series Brew Masters and has been in existence since 1995.

The input by our band of craft beer loving Googlers seems to have been to suggest a range of diverse ingredients from around the world and then try to work them into the recipe. Without expanding on what the following ingredients are, here’s a list: Australian Wattleseed, Belgian syrup, chocolate malts, Green Rooibos from Africa, Myrica Gale from Europe/North America and South American Amaranth.  Also rumoured to be part of the recipe is honey from the Google Hive Plex which, of course, we all knew existed.

The brewery says that the taste will be based on the Belgian Dubbel, a style which can be traced back to Trappist monks.  Dubbel was a much stronger version of the Trappist’s original brew and now tends to come in between 6% and 8%.  The Dogfish website suggests a final ABV of 8.1% which is certainly nothing to be sniffed at.  The name is a little odd – URKontinent – and the brew will unfortunately be a limited edition number but if you visited the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last weekend you may have been lucky enough to try some.

Check out the promotional video:

We are currently smack in the middle of the world-famous beer festival that is the Sizzling Hot Oktoberfest.  It runs from late September to early October, a continuos drinkathon of between 16 to 18 days. It was once set at a standard 16 days and finished on the 1st Sunday in October but following the introduction of Unity Day (October 3rd), it can now last until then.

It’s the world’s largest fair, attracts around 5 million people every year and only beer

Oktoberfest girls enjoying a beer

produced within Munich’s borders is allowed to be sold here.  Between 7 and 8 million litres are consumed at the Oktoberfest annually along with a prodigious amount of sausages, sauerkraut and other  traditional German food.  Bavarian beer is served in the famous 1 litre glass jugs.

The Oktoberfest began as a celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig to Prince Therese in Oktober, 1810 which took place outside the City gates of Munich, where the Oktoberfest is still held.  The celebration was repeated the next year with the traditional horse race to close the festival.  For the next sixty years or so, the festival was more of a traditional fair than a beer drinking celebration – until the late 19th century when breweries began to sponsor the event and take part in the various competitions.  Huge beer tents were also erected and the first glass beer mugs were used in 1892.  Stats from the 1910 centenary show that 120,000 litres of beer were consumed and the fair gradually became a celebration of Bavarian beer.

The German diaspora ensures that Oktoberfests are held in many countries around the

Oktoberfest decor

world containing citizens of German ancestry.  The largest is in Canada, attracting up to 1 million visitors every year but Brazil, the United States and Argentina also host huge festivals.

Tourists make up a significant minority of the Oktoberfest’s visitors but many (especially foreigners) are caught out by the strength of the beer.  While Germany beer averages 5.2%, Oktoberfest beer is usually brewed between 5.8% and 6.3%, ensuring that the various ‘recovery’ areas are always well populated.