Nov 20 2008
Alex Bell, Master Brewer at O'Hanlon's, a specialist brewery in Exeter, will be at the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) at Belgrave Square on 28 November 2008 to talk about the art of making a perfect pint.
Beer has been around for thousands of years with China being the source of the earliest evidence of a rice, honey and fruit based brew being made as far back as 7000BC – long enough for mankind to have perfected the art of making the best beer.
In the West, although beer making was the province of women, it was swiftly taken over by men, or monks, to be precise at the end of the first millennium who wanted a pleasant tasting drink that was also nutritious which they could drink during fasting.
But it was not until the 1860s that, with the discovery of the process of fermentation by Louis Pasteur, scientists finally unlocked the chemical components of the beer making process – up until then, no one understood the process of turning grains into a heady and intoxicating brew.
By 1881, the gaps in knowledge had changed dramatically with a Dr Charles Graham, professor of chemical technology at University College London (UCL), presenting a paper on the introduction of lager beer into the UK and the process of making it which he described as also a beer but ‘associated in our minds solely with the method of bottom fermentation in contradistinction to the top fermentation process, which latter hitherto has been the only method followed in the United Kingdom’ at the first ever general meeting of SCI, also launched that year.
Being a chemical engineering graduate, also from UCL, Alex is well placed to talk about not only the art of beer making but the science, too. He will also have up 300 pints of three types of beer for tasting to illustrate different types and brewing methods – purely for scientific reasons, of course!