For St. Patrick’s Day, the patron saint of Ireland, beer will be flowing in many pubs around the world on Friday. Science and history have few words in this matter. Remember five.
March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day. And besides Patricks, millions young and old will flock to Irish pubs in Dublin and around the world in honor of Ireland’s evangelist Patrick, who is said to have invented the Holy Trinity. was explained. Irish thanks to a clover, which then became the symbol of the country.
>> Origins of St. Patrick’s Day
And to celebrate, even if without alcohol, it always seems crazy, beer is often associated with this tradition. Made from water, malted barley, yeast and hops, this alcoholic beverage, which is also prone to rising prices, should be consumed in moderation. But behind the mystery of his bubbles, hide some unique features, so that a noisy St. Patrick’s conversation can be detected and eliminated. They are legion, but here are five, arbitrarily noteworthy enough to remember.
1 A little beer is good for the kidneys (but not at all for the liver).
If water is still the best thing to absorb to do your kidneys good, when consumed in moderation (beer, not water), beer can be beneficial for proper kidney function. This comes from a Finnish study conducted by Dr. Tiro Hieroenen and published inAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, which highlighted the role of hop resin in eliminating calcium deposits in the kidneys and therefore reducing the risk of kidney stones. Beer, a well-known diuretic, allows stones to pass more easily.
Be careful, it has the opposite effect when used in excess, as it is rich in uric acid: uric acid stones, which represent 5 to 10% of kidney stones, can form during abnormal concentrations. is made Excess of uric acid in urine.
And it is, of course, very bad for the liver: the alcohol in it is almost completely absorbed by the digestive tract. The kidneys excrete about 10 percent of this through urine or air exhaled through the lungs. The rest goes to the liver, which is then broken down by two enzymes. In case of excessive consumption, the liver becomes overwhelmed, and fatty deposits form within the cells of hepatitis. This is steatosis. And if you use too much, liver cells are destroyed. Another consequence of excessive beer consumption is cirrhosis, which is caused by inflammatory stress that prevents proper liver function. Cirrhosis is irreversible, chronic and fatal.
2Beer is one of the first foods processed by humans
A warm serve of Asterix may have been dressed, it was almost as old, as the beer can be found on clay tablets in Mesopotamia as early as the 4th century BC. One of the earliest traces of its existence is found on a seal in Iraq from about 3,800 BC, on which two figures are seen drinking beer through a straw.
Even better, there are traces of beer being brewed on Mount Carmel in Israel dating back some 13,000 years. Over time, the word beer first appears in an ordinance issued by Jacques d’Esteauville, provost of Paris during the reign of Charles VII, on April 1, 1435, an ordinance regulating the beer trade.
3We owe the addition of hops to beer to a German nun.
Beer, a man’s business? no. It is largely thanks to a German abbey from the 12th century that we are obliged to add hops to the service to improve its preservation, and this is what we tell you in this article. Among the plants that caught Hildegarde de Bingen’s attention were hops. In his Encyclopedia of the Living, physics, Ebbs writes that “The bitterness of hops counteracts some of the harmful fermentations in beverages and allows them to keep longer”.
Hildegard of Bingen was not the first to discover the benefits of green hop cones. According to several historians, Pliny the Elder described the euphoric properties of the plant in the first century. But it was really the German epic that revealed its protective and antiseptic powers – in writing. Back then, in the 12th century, beer was also used to conserve water.
4It’s not the water, but mostly the hops that drive you to the toilet.
After two pints, you’re rushed to the toilet, tight smile, crossed legs, complicated situation, right down the bar next door? is normal. But it is not because of water. Well, not at all. Beer makes you want to pee, and the first reason is its main ingredient (after water), namely hops. The latter, highly diuretic (in terms of urination, it makes you urinate a little more than usual), promotes the excretion of water by the kidneys and increases the frequency and quantity of urination. And thus your more or less embarrassing descent into the bleached depths of the bar.
He’s not the only one to blame: the alcohol in beer inhibits the production of vasopressin, the antidiuretic hormone (the one that makes you not want to pee, if you’ve followed it right). Synthesized by neurons in the hypothalamus, vasopressin allows water to be reabsorbed by the body: secreted by the hypothalamus, vasopressin stored in the pituitary gland, another gland located in the brain, is released in the event of dehydration. happens. Simply put, the more alcohol you drink, the less vasopressin you produce, and therefore… the more water you lose. This is why dehydration makes people especially prone to hangovers the next day after excessive beer consumption.
5 A half contains up to two million bubbles.
The figures may sound alarming, and we leave it to the reader to recalculate. Or trust science. Oh A standard glass of beer (half, ie 25cl) contains between 200,000 and 2 million bubbles. The The number of bubbles depends on the interaction between the initial concentration of CO.2 Dissolved in the glass after casting, significant concentrations of CO2 volume of dissolution and bubbles as they reach the liquid/air interface.
According to a study Published by the prestigious American Chemical Society, Three factors mainly affect the number of bubbles produced in a beer poured into a 25 cl glass. We find in the foreground the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide in the glass, then the volume of bubbles and finally the moment of CO reduction.2 Beer, that is, the moment when no more bubbles are formed.
A knowledgeable reader of hopped drinks will answer that “it depends”. He is absolutely right: some parameters favor the appearance of bubbles. These include, first of all, the microscopic defects in the glass that yield the drink: when bubbles accumulate around these very small cracks, hardly more than 1.4 micrometers wide, carbon dioxide dissolves in the beer and forms bubbles. Creates currents. As they rise to the surface, the bubbles capture CO.2 On their way more foam rises.
