Brew Ha Ha: making a fuss about beer

The science of foam

by Chris on February 19th, 2008

There are a lot of jobs I think I’d like. I’d like to be a brewmaster, but ultimately I’d rather be someone like Ed Stoudt of the Stoudt’s brewery, who seems to do more tasting than he does brewing. Also on the tasting side of things, there’s always beer journalist, a la Michael Jackson, although I suspect he’s one of the few who actually made any money at it. In short, there are a number of people in this world who work with beer, and for the most part they are jobs I’d be interested in having, at least in theory.

One I’m not so sure I’d want, but which is interesting nonetheless, was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer some time ago, and was based on an article in the British journal Nature. These two local (to me) guys apparently study foam. That’s right, foam.

Now, I once knew a guy who worked with foam of various types, and when he’d been drinking he would wax on about the materials engineering aspects of foam and the foam industry while another friend (who drank a little faster) lifted his head from the bar periodically and mumbled “foam” repeatedly. But that was the foam in insulation panels and chairs, the solid foams which make up much of our world even though we never see it. These guys actually study the foam in beer, among other things. According to those gentlemen, if you look at the foam in your beer the big bubbles will get bigger and the little bubbles will disappear. Apparently that was old news, but now these clever fellows have figured out how to calculate the speed at which this happens in three dimensions.

Now, that’s something I don’t really need to know, but know I have something else to think about while I enjoy my next beer on the porch. Unfortunately, Nature appears to be a subscription-only site, and the Inquirer link is gone, but the short version (according to the Inquirer), but if you want to know more about foam you can check out this article from All About Beer - it may not explain the theory above, but it’s a pretty comprehensive treatment of foam in beer.

image from Wikipedia (Christian “VisualBeo” Horvat)

Share This

Related Stories

• Does your beer look like this?
• Beer Moves in Mysterious Ways
• Beer of another kind
• About Brew Ha Ha
• Blast from my past

POSTED IN: Science