- 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...