For St. Patrick’s Day, the patron saint of Ireland, beer will be flowing in many bars around the world on Friday. In this matter, science and history have a few words to say. Remember five.
March 17 is Saint Patrick’s Day. And in addition to the Patricks, millions of young and old will flock to all that matters of Irish pubs in Dublin and around the world, in honor of Patrick, the evangelizer of Ireland, who is said to have explained the concept of the Holy Trinity to the Irish thanks to a clover, which then became the symbol of the country.
>> The origins of Saint Patrick’s Day
And to celebrate, even if without alcohol, it always seems crazier, beer often remains attached to this tradition. This alcoholic drink made from water, malted barley, yeast and hops, also a victim of galloping inflation, should be consumed in moderation. But behind the mystery of its bubbles, hide some unique characteristics, to know and unsheath to dress up a noisy Saint-Patrick’s conversation. They are legion, but here are five, arbitrarily deemed remarkable 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 good for your kidneys, when it is consumed in moderation (beer, not water), beer can be useful for the proper functioning of the kidneys. This is what emerges from a Finnish study conducted by Dr. Tero Hirvonen and published in theAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, which highlighted the role of hop resins in eliminating calcium deposits in the kidneys, and therefore in reducing the risk of kidney stones. Beer, a well-known diuretic, allows stones to be eliminated more easily.
Be careful, when it is consumed in excess, it produces the opposite effect, since it is rich in uric acid: uric acid stones, which represent 5 to 10% of kidney stones, are formed during an abnormal concentration. high uric acid in urine.
And it is, of course, very bad for the liver: the alcohol it contains is almost completely absorbed by the digestive tract. The kidneys eliminate some 10% of it, via urine or the air exhaled by the lungs. The rest goes to the liver which will then degrade it through two enzymes. In case of excessive consumption, the liver is overwhelmed, and a fatty deposit is formed inside the hepatitis cells. It’s steatosis. And if you consume more, liver cells are destroyed. The other consequence of excessive beer consumption is cirrhosis, caused by inflammatory stress that prevents the proper functioning of the liver. Cirrhosis is irreversible, chronic and fatal.
2Beer is one of the first foods processed by man
Asterix’s lukewarm cervoise can go get dressed, it was almost old-fashioned, since mentions of beer can be found as early as the 4th millennium BC on clay tablets in Mesopotamia. One of the first traces of its existence is thus found in Iraq on a seal dated around 3,800 BC, on which appear two figures drinking beer through a straw.
Even better, traces of beer brewing have been found on Mount Carmel in Israel nearly 13,000 years ago. Further back in time, the word beer appears for the first time in an ordinance issued on April 1, 1435 by Jacques d’Estouville, then provost of Paris, under the reign of Charles VII, an ordinance which regulates the trade in beer.
3We owe the addition of hops to beer to a German nun
Beer, a man’s business? Nay. It is largely thanks to a German abbess of the 12th century that we owe the addition of hops to cervoise to improve its conservation, and this is what we tell you in this article. Among the plants that will hold the attention of Hildegarde de Bingen is hops. In his encyclopedia of the living, Physica, the abbess writes that “the bitterness of hops combats certain harmful fermentations in drinks and allows them to be kept longer”.
Hildegard of Bingen was not the first to discover the benefits of green hop cones. According to several historians, Pliny the Elder had already described the gustatory virtues of the plant in the 1st century. But it was indeed the German abbess who revealed – in writing – its preservative and sanitizing powers. At that time, in the 12th century, beer was also used to conserve water.
4It’s not water, but mostly hops that rush you to the toilet
After two pints, you are hurriedly rushed to the toilet, tight smile, legs crossed, complicated situation, at the bottom right of the bar next door? It’s normal. But it’s not because of the water. Well, not exactly. Beer makes you want to urinate and the first reason is due to its main component (after water), that is to say hops. The latter, extremely diuretic (prosaically, it makes you want to urinate a little more than usual), promotes the elimination of water by the kidneys and increases the frequency and quantity of urine. And so your more or less shameful comings and goings to the bleached depths of the bar.
He is not the only one responsible: the alcohol contained in beer inhibits the production of vasopressin, the antidiuretic hormone (the one that makes you not want to urinate, if you have followed correctly). Synthesized by the neurons of the hypothalamus, vasopressin allows the reabsorption of water by the body: secreted by the hypothalamus, the vasopressin stored in the pituitary gland, another gland located in the brain, is released in the event of dehydration . To put it simply, the more alcohol you drink, the less vasopressin you produce, and therefore… the more water you lose. It is for this reason, dehydration in particular, that the hangover afflicts the excessive consumer of beer the next day.
5 In a half there are up to two million bubbles
The figure may seem hazardous, and we leave it to the reader to recount. Or trust science. A standard glass of beer (a half, therefore, that is to say 25 cl) contains between 200,000 and 2 million bubbles. THE number of bubbles depends on the interaction between the initial concentration of CO2 dissolved in the glass after casting, the critical concentration of CO2 dissolved and the volume of the 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 carbon dioxide dissolved in the glass, then the volume of the bubbles and finally the moment of CO depletion2 beer, i.e. the moment when no more bubbles form.
The savvy reader of hopped drinks will wince, retorting that “it depends”. He is quite right: certain parameters favor the appearance of bubbles. Among them, in the first place, the microscopic defects of the glass which receives the drink: when the bubbles accumulate around these very small cracks, hardly larger than 1.4 micrometers wide, the carbon dioxide dissolves in the beer forms streams of bubbles. As they rise to the surface, the bubbles capture CO2 on their way. And it foams.