I have been hoping something like this would happen. I’ve been posting stories for years about beer or wine that’s been salvaged from shipwrecks, and about scientists looking at those beverages.
Taking data from those drinks can illuminate how human beings have impacted our environment.
BUT. There’s this Very Cool Thing where we get to play with yeasts from decades ago, and see how those yeasts impacted the food and drink of the day, and I’m psyched to try them.
Sure, this scientist is helping breweries in Portland, Maine but still! Neat job to read about.
Because if its inherent properties as a carbonated beverage, you really can’t take beer into space.
But this is an area where my interest in potent potables and my interest in science definitely converge, so I dig on this article on the impact of aging wine in space!
Once again, I am pleased, but maybe in the slightly awkward position of giving Big Beer Business credit.
But sometimes, you just throw money and smart people at problems and they come up with cool solutions.
But on the other hand, something that can actually be counted, too.
So, they found a beer cave in Missouri. I guess the notion of men hiding out in caves to drink beer and avoid life goes back farther than I’d thought.
Then again, if we’ve got scientists recreating medieval ale from the walls, maybe scientists can learn something from how beer was made in the 1800’s, too.
Post title just to be cheeky to the Brits.
But: neat story about using new technologies to reduce CO2 emissions!
…but what surprises and disturbs me is how, relatively speaking, we’re not drinking much more than we tend to in a typical year.
Research done at the University of Victoria suggests that the average person in BC has had between five and ten more drinks a month in 2020 than the 2012-2019 average. Drinking spiked in March (unsurprisingly), dipped in April, and has gone up consistently until July (the last month for which the researchers have data). But again–not as much as I was expecting. 
What is shocking to me, though? Those numbers represent “estimates of per capita monthly standard drinks of total alcohol consumption” for everybody in the province aged 15 and older. To put it in other words: if a standard drink is ~a 12 oz. beer at 5% alcohol, that means that in July 2020, it’s estimated that every single person in BC aged 15 or older drank the equivalent of fifty beers in the month of July. Which is, again, just slightly higher than the average of per capita monthly standard drinks of total alcohol consumption since 2012.
Fifty drinks is approximately two beers a night. Or two glasses of wine. Or two shots. Which is not bad.
But then you remember that the drinking age in BC is 19. And, of course, not everyone drinks fifty drinks a month; I’m probably at a third of that this month.
So spare a thought for those whose drinking keeps the average per capita that high in a regular year.
I love these science stories: here’s one on how researchers at Michigan State University are trying to fight a new fungus that has been impacting Michigan’s hop crops.
