@HBC I’d love to know more about vasodilation, partly because I was once told (by a physician) that the biggest benefit of alternating alcoholic drinks and water (when out drinking) is simply that you are drinking less alcohol. I thought that once your body entered the state (name escaping me) where it was breaking down alcohol, any water you consume is just going right through you and not helping to hydrate you.
Awesome thread! Someone buy this man a beer. That is fermented at a proper temperature…
My buddy and I aged a bunch of fusel laden brew a long time and fusels remained, so I am in the cannot age them camp too… That said, we had some “hot” beers that aged and esterified quite well. From memory, the fusel beers pushed into the nail polish/chemical/fuel-ish territory, and the hot were rubbing alcohol or strong smelling.
So most chemical reactions are self limited by how many reactants are in solution and how much catalyst is in solution. So if you are using Chemical A + Chemical B to make Chemical C while using Catalyst X to push the reaction, once you run out of either Chem A, Chem B or Catalyst X the reaction stops. Some reactions can also be stopped by temperature changes or if the solution gets too saturated with one of the reactants.
In your example, Butyric acid is a bit of an odd ball because it’s ester Ethyl Butyrate is so volatile, but I’ll get to that in a second. So the reaction for this is Ethonal + Butyric acid <—> Ethyl Butyrate + H20 while using a fatty acids to push the reaction from the left of the equation to the right and is called a condensation reaction. Brett yeast will push the reaction to the right as well because it has the right enzymes to reduce the butyric acid.
So a few factors will limit this reaction I think. Also please note I am just talking about biology and chemistry. I’m still a fairly new brewer compared to everyone on this forum so I may get some of the brewing parts wrong. In several experiments it was found that a molar ration of 1 mole of butyric acid to 10 moles of ethanol at a temperate of 75 degrees Celsius with a suitable amount of catalyst (in this case fatty acids from the yeast) will produce the optimal amount of ethyl butyrate. So what would cause this to stop? Too much ethanol with too little butyric acid would do it. If the optimal ration is 1:10 and you have a ration of 0.5:20 then the reaction will not push forward to form an ester. Also, the temp would have an effect on how much butyric acid is formed along with the yeast used, as well as the amount of fatty acid the yeast can use as a catalyst to push the reaction from an acid to an ester. The last reason is why Brett will be self limiting. From my understanding Brett is used because it has an abundance of the fatty acid to use as a catalyst for the chemical reaction, but this reaction is self limited by the amount of live Brett in solution as well as the amount of fatty acids present. Once the chemical reaction uses up all the catalyst it will be less willing to move from left to right in the chemical formula above. Catalysts are essentially used to make a chemical reaction happen when it doesn’t want to because it is already in equilibrium, so when the catalysts are used up, the chemical reaction wants to stay in equilibrium so the substrates (ethanol and butyric acid) do not react with each other
So something weird about ethyl butyrate that I touched on earlier. It is very volatile. Essentially it doesn’t want to be Ethyl butyrate because ethyl butyrate isn’t a stable molecule so it will undergo something called self hydrolysis, meaning that the hydrogen atoms will remove themselves from the ethyl butyrate. It should remove itself from a beer over time due to this.
I guess you would kinda be drinking less alcohol since you are using your time to drink water as opposed to beer but I think I would disagree with him on that one. The water you are consuming during drinking is acting more to flush your system than to hydrate yourself, but the end result is you stay hydrated (mostly). It’s kinda like when you have the flu you drink liquids to keep your body running as best as possible. The alcohol in beer is a diuretic, similar to caffeine in coffee, both causing your blood vessels to constrict and become smaller. Essentially you are removing water from your circulatory system in order to break down the alcohol/flush out toxins, making your circulatory system work harder to move thicker material through smaller blood vessels. By drinking water you are adding more water to your circulatory system to keep it open and working at peak efficiency. It is also diluting the alcohol in your system by surrounding it with more water, so less alcohol will hit your liver at the same time, and allow you to remove toxins from your liver much quicker since your blood is nice and watered down and running though wide open blood vessels. You will be losing the water you are putting into your system instead of keeping it, but it will be pulling the toxins out of your body as well.
Ha! I should be buying all of you a beer! You guys are making me think about things I never would have though about so I am really learning a lot by answering this.
It sure is the best way! I learned a ridiculous amount writing a couple brewing articles for a local magazine. With your background, sour and wild brewing would probably be right up your alley.
What an incredibly interesting thread. I’ve never studied the science behind beer and alcohol any, but this is great stuff. Following this thread closely. Thanks.
Then look up back to the surface from the neverending whirpool/vortex you just entered
There is also a Brewing Network Sunday Session podcast where they had Chad Yakobsen on (the first time). He is the head brewer @ Crooked Stave and wrote his doctorate thesis on Brettanomyces. Pretty awesome stuff. It inspired a new show on the network called The Sour Hour with the guys from Rare Barrel.
