Teach 'em Science Right: Brew Some Beer

Education in the United States has been declining for years.  STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are being attacked by anti-intellectual brain bigots, AIBB’s as I shout at the television whenever the channel switches to Sean Hannity, and we need to arm them with the best weapon we have, BEER!

Well, not actually give them beer, but teach them to make it.  Why would we want kids to make beer?  We don’t, unless we want them to be, say, President of the United States, President of the United States, a world-changing chemist, or a baseball team.

Jesus said take it to the hole!

Sure, kids can't (legally) drink it yet, but what is the point of having kids if they aren’t a source of free labor?  They could also make root beer or ginger beer, I guess.

Volumes and Measuring

How many quarts are in a gallon?  How many grams are in an ounce, and then how many ounces are in a pound?  If you aren’t currently being tracked by the DEA (and let’s admit, that’s just about all of us) then you probably don’t know these conversions.  But when following a brew recipe, it is imperative that you know your shit.  Measuring and being precise with your ingredients is what separates an IPA from regular pale ale, or a Belgian white from…something else.  Nobody likes Belgian whites.  So take your ShockTop and go home, Mike.

You also get to use sweet toys to check your accuracy, like a sight glass on your brew kettle or a hydrometer to read what the gravity of your beer is.  The gravity is the amount of fermentable sugars present in your wort (the pre and post boil beer tea like liquid), which is what feeds the yeast to make them big and strong and alcoholly.  When you know what your original gravity was (before fermenting) and your final gravity (logically, after fermenting), you can find out how much alcohol is in your beer by using...

Math and Conversions

Math is anything you want it to be.  Hence, it is super important for beer brewing.  You got a recipe that calls for 0.53 ounces of Centennial hops for your 11.35 liter IPA?  I got that shit.  We know that there are 28 grams in an ounce, so 28 x 0.53 is MATH!  Throw that shit in the boil at 60 minutes and you are golden.  But wait, how long is it until you need to put in your next hop addition (ha, math) when there are 15 minutes left in the boil.  60 minus 15 sucka.  Math!

Wait, I live in the good 'ol US of A, we use gallons, not stupid liters!  How many gallons is 11.35 liters?  Well, that's about 0.04759 hogsheads.  It's also about 3 milk jugs, or gallons as some people call them.  See, more conversions.  Beer recipes are written down in all kinds of weird volumes, as beer is made basically EVERYWHERE ON FUCKING EARTH and we don't all use the same units of measurement.

Your tools also won't give you the same readings.  Like a hydrometer versus a refractometer, the rumble while you stumble.  A hydrometer will read out specific gravity by reading how dense the liquid is versus regular water, which is very precise but uses roughly 6 ounces of beer for every reading. The fancy refractometer will tell you the Brix scale of your liquid by measuring the amount of light refraction, which must be converted to specific gravity to really be of any use but only uses 2-3 drops of wort.  Both measurements are basically the same, but they require math to convert.  Real math, with different weird symbols and shit.

Then when they get better and need to change that 3-gallon batch to a 5 gallon (or 10 if they are super smart and have small, diligent fingers), more math.  Scale that shit up.  This math is practical and has immediately observable and verifiable results.  That’s why Xanax is more popular than Valium, or why people choose crack over the leading brands.

Scientific Method

As Adam Savage of Myth Busters fame said, “the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”  If you want to make quality beer, you need to take notes.  So you can repeat the process and monitor the results.  It’s easy as that.  This is a big part of the scientific method, and beer brewing is just one big experiment.

1. Ask a question:  How do you make beer?
2. Do background research:  Figure out how to do that shit.
3. Construct hypothesis:  If I put this shit in with this shit, with this amount of water, and do all this junk to it, boom, beer.  Magic may be included in this stage.
4. Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment:  Make that beer.  Do it.
5. Analyze your data and draw a conclusion:  Did you get enough booze?  What’s the gravity?  How much alcohol?  And the best question; how’s it taste, motherfucka?
6. Communicate your results:  Share with your buddies.

While kids maybe probably legally shouldn’t drink the beer, it is legal for them to take small tastes in the presence of their parents and in their own homes (WARNING:  This may not be true in your city, county or state, or anywhere they hate fun and drunk kids).  They could also give it to someone who can legally drink it, like their parents or older brothers with fake ID’s.  Then they can tell them how it was. And then give you a swirly (thanks Dad!).

Hygiene

There are these little things in our air called germs, from what I am told.  The theory goes that there are microorganisms all around us, and some of them cause infection and disease.  That’s what those people outside of your door are fighting against with their masks and HAZMAT suits and long handled cattle prods.

Sure, I understand, but beer is not actually part of my body, so why do I care if it gets sick?  Your friend yeast cares.  If you let any bacteria (a type of germ) get in the wort and that bacteria grows and acts all bacteria-like, that will kill your yeast and infect the beer.  And that is a no go.

That’s a nasty meatball.  Err, beer.

So you have to sanitize everything that wort is going to touch or it will look like this.  Kids are dirty as shit, so this would totally help them learn how to be all hygienic and whatnot.

Innovations

As my dad always said, if you aren’t making your own tools, you aren’t doing the job right.  He would usually shout that when we had broken all of the things that the “manual” and “experts” and “professionals” had advised to use.  So you improvise.  The same goes for beer.

When you have a problem with beer brewing, you fix it, or you don’t make beer, or you don’t make good beer, or you use too many or’s, or your face, or or or.  That’s called an invention, and you know what else is an invention?  Everything (I screamed that last word like Gary Oldman in The Professional when he was after hot-ass very sweet Natalie P.)  So teach ‘em how to do it right, by making awesome beer!

And then you make shit.  Like a beer sculpture.  What do you picture when you think of a beer sculpture? 

Yeah right, that DUI won't stick.

No, I’m talking about this:

Actual Bender robot.

It’s a towering monstrosity of beer brewing, using gravity to feed beer from the mash ton to the lauder ton, into the brew kettle and then out to your stomach (after a few stops and a lot of waiting).  There are a ton of different types of beer brew sculptures, but mostly 3, and they can all be made with easily found materials, some ingenuity and an endless supply of free labor.

Kids are going to learn science.  Get used to it.  When you find that Playboy underneath their bed (do they even still publish Playboy?  Does it still fit conveniently under beds?), you know that they are just studying anatomy and biology.  How would you rather that they learn chemistry?  Like my friends and I when we taught ourselves the ol’ chem chem (technical name) by making Asshole (apple/grape backyard wine)?  Or maybe like those clever chaps on that show Badding Break or whatever that was and make the methy meth?  No, how about they make something that can earn them a living (there has been no evidence that people who make meth or other drugs can also make a living at it, right?) and it can be something that you love.  Growing pot works too, I guess.

*This post is satire. Mostly.