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Kids and drinking
In article >, wrote:
> Bull! Yuengling brewery, for one, sells unpastureized beer that
> is aged in wooden barrels, though it is shipped in aluminum kegs.
> Not sure what you think is/was more real about beer from 50 years
> ago, but the most common reason given for beer being different
> now is the pastureizing process.
That's my understanding also. My wife and I took a tour of the local
Budweiser factory some years back, before they gave tours. My wife was a
food chemist, and belonged to some foody tech group, so they gave a group
tour. I wasn't too impressed. 99% of the tour was focused on the
bottling line. I thought that was pretty boring. They were clear that
the beer going into the aluminum barrels was not pasteurized and the beer
in cans and bottles was. We did get a look at the tanks where the beer
was brewed. They made my house look tiny! Somebody asked about
"beechwood aged". The tour guide laughed, and walked up to this huge
tank, opened up a little door, and pulled out a tray with little chunks of
wood on it. I would guess that the volume of wood was about half a
gallon. The guide said they had some kind of story about the wood acting
as a catalyst to settle the yeast, but admitted that the wood couldn't
possibly alter the taste of the beer, given the volume of wood and the
size of the tank. At the end we were taken to the tasting room, where the
beer tasted much better than what you buy at the store. I'm convinced
that the only difference was that the beer in the tasting room was yanked
off the bottling line before it went into the pasteurizing machine.
--
Dan Abel
Sonoma State University
AIS
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