- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Different varieties of hops can be used to create an array of flavors and styles of beer. Does the variety of barley used in beer-making affect the flavor of the brew?
This is a question UC Cooperative Extension advisor Konrad Mathesius hopes beer drinkers will answer on Friday, July 12, at YOLO Brewing Company in West Sacramento.
To find out if barley makes a difference, the public is invited to taste a flight of five beers – four beers made from the specially grown barley varieties and YOLO Brewing's own Chinook SMASH DIPA – then fill out a short survey about what they taste.
Several varieties of malting barley were grown by a Woodland farmer in...
- Author: Ann King Filmer
California's drinking age of 21 prohibits many undergraduate students from learning critical skills early in their academic careers — sensory skills that they will need when they move on to jobs in the multimillion-dollar winemaking, brewing, and food industries.
Not until students turn 21 can they taste the wine and beer they make and learn to assess its sensory quality. Learning the characteristics of a wide assortment of good (and not-so-good) wines and beers is an important component of winemaking and brewing. Having to wait until their junior or senior year to learn these skills is a disadvantage for these students.
Legislation (AB 1989) has been proposed by California Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro (D-North...
- Author: Suanne Klahorst
On a recent Sunday night I went to see Charles Bamforth, the University of California's only professor of brewing, speak at Sudwerk Riverside in Folsom, hosted by the Sacramento Chapter of the UC Davis Alumni Association. The standing-room-only banquet room had an empty seat next to a winemaker and a food scientist; a married couple who came back early from a weekend in Santa Cruz for some edutainment and local brew. Bamforth can pack ‘em in on most of his speaking venues.
Bamforth teaches in the UC Davis food science department. Brewing is fermentation science, which is a food science, and Bamforth’s book on Beer and Health is proof that beer is indeed food. He claims beer is...
- Author: John Stumbos
A new winery, brewery and food-processing complex began operations this fall at UC Davis. Part of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, the technologically sophisticated facilities will be used to teach students, conduct research, and solve practical problems related to foods, beverages and health.
The south wing of the new complex is home to the August A. Busch III Brewing and Food Science Laboratory, which includes the brewery, general foods-processing plant and milk-processing laboratory. The complex’s north wing houses a new teaching-and-research winery. The complex is adjacent to a 12-acre teaching-and-research vineyard and across a courtyard from the departments of Food Science and Technology,...
- Author: John Stumbos
Drink beer to lose weight? That’s what some recent newspaper headlines trumpeted. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. Actually, what our favorite authority on beer — UC Davis professor Charles Bamforth (right) — said was that swapping a glass of wine for a beer every day for a week would cut out more calories than are burned off during a 30-minute jog.
Why? Because most of the calories in alcoholic beverages are in the alcohol and wine typically has a higher alcohol content than beer. “The higher the alcohol content in any drink, the more calories it contains,” says Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences.
He contends...
