A lot of what is in the article will be well known to anyone who is a beer connoisseur. And these days, given the proliferation in the U.S. of great beer of every type imaginable, I find such people everywhere. However, for the rest of us it does provide a great primer on what’s going on to produce that frothy glass of deliciousness in front of us.

Science aside, there are other fascinating tidbits in the article, such as

Many cultures have seen beer as a gift from God (a medieval English term for yeast was godisgoode)

After reading Connelly’s article, I realized he’s been writing similar ones for some time now. You can find out about the science of

• Whisky Making
• Cheesemaking
• Breadmaking
• Cake
• and … Cinder Toffee!

Ok, got to go – I’m hungry now!

So when I received an email from Kimberly Moniz at SHIFT Communications asking if I’d be interested in receiving a free sample to possibly mention on the blog, I almost replied automatically in the negative. But then the nature of the product sunk in, and I paused — this wasn’t a book, this was booze! Specifically, Canadian Club whisky.

I’ll admit that I’m an occasional Scotch drinker, but not much of a Canadian whisky fan. To be honest, the mention of Canadian Club conjures images of something my grandmother would have been drinking (while smoking her Pall Malls), although that seems to be changing. I suspect the marketing people recognize that, and thought it would be good to freshen their image among a younger, hipper crowd. And what better way to do that than by reaching out to science blogs? (Especially ones that occasionally rhapsodize about the perfect martini.) This is some new-media marketing savvy I can get behind. Also, free booze.

But our honor is not sold so cheaply — we’re not going to provide free advertising just because someone sends us some loot. We have our scruples, and everything we post must adhere to the guiding principles of our Mission Statement. But then I remembered that our Mission Statement says we post about whatever we feel like posting about. Still, we like to convey at least the illusion of integrity.

So I hit upon the perfect solution: talk about the whisky, but do so through the lens of Science! That is, we would accept the free booze, but only under the understanding that we would subject it to a rigorous taste-test in comparison with other comparable whiskies, apply the time-honored techniques of the experimental method to the results, and publish whatever they might turn out to be. Kim was up for this adventure, so we set the wheels in motion. Results below the fold.

We were sent a bottle of Canadian Club’s super-special 30-year-old whisky, as well as a bottle of their slightly-special 12-year-old offering. I judged that it would make the most sense to put them up against a variety of other kinds of whisky, so we assembled a worthy array of adversaries from around the globe. (Note that the Scots and the Canadians spell it “whisky,” while the Americans and Irish use “whiskey,” so there’s no consensus choice in this case.) From left to right, we have the two Canadian Club entries; a bottle of Jim Beam Distiller’s Series, a Kentucky bourbon; Jameson, a classic Irish whiskey; and Glenlivet, a well-known single-malt scotch. I wasn’t smart enough to keep track of the prices for the different bottles, but you should imagine that the 12-year CC is about $18, the Jim Beam is about $18, the Jameson is about $23, and the Glenlivet is about $35. The 30-year CC is apparently a collector’s item that will set you back about $200.

Then, to the experimental procedure. I rounded up a few friends (8 people in all), none of whom were really whisky experts, but none of whom were really averse to the idea, either. One of them was Risa, who was passing through town for other reasons, so it was a true Cosmic Variance event. We disguised the bottles by putting them all in plain brown bags and assigning numbers to each. All of the testers were given samples of each whisky, as well as a score card where they were asked to give each entry an overall score between 1 and 5, as well as to write down more specific impressions.

And here are the results! Complete with error bars (at least, standard deviations computed from the raw data), so that makes it science, right?

And the results are — inconclusive. Well, that’s not exactly true. We learned a lot, actually. It’s true that all of the scores ended up being within the error bars of each other. So we didn’t technically learn a lot about whisky. But we learned a lot about the proper experimental protocol for conducting a whisky tasting! Mostly, I don’t think we gave people enough of it. That is, more than one person remarked that it took more than a couple of sips to really start to appreciate the merits of any individual liquor. If we were to do it again, we’d take more time, offer lots of food, and let people really enjoy each of the offerings, so that their individual ratings were more reliable. In the meantime, if you’d like useful insight into the nature of these different drinks, you’d be better off checking out Drinkhacker or similar sites. They actually know what they’re talking about.

The other thing we learned is that, despite the obvious scatter in the numerical results, people did have somewhat consistent reactions to the different whiskies. Both kinds of Canadian Club were judged as sweet, mellow, vanilla; the Jameson was lighter and thinner; the Jim Beam was a bit more harsh; and the Glenlivet was thought to be more complex but softer. It’s just that different people liked different characteristics. So perhaps there is no absolute scale of whisky achievement, but rather a subjective relationship between the liquor and the imbiber? Of course, down that road lies moral relativism and nihilism, and ultimately the Taliban will win, so we should probably avoid that path.

Most of all, we learned that we like getting sent free stuff that doesn’t require hours of our time to read and think about. Other good possibilities for this category might include: iPads, trips to Vegas, and Tesla roadsters. You know where to find us.

Finally, here’s the scientific explanation behind the production of Canadian Club whisky. Thanks to Kim Moniz for sending this, as well as the whisky, and for playing along. And apologies for my usual tardiness — it took a while to put the tasting event together, and then I went and lost the score sheets for a matter of months. But science eventually triumphs!

Production Process of Canadian Club

Canadian Club is made from a blend of corn, rye, rye malt and barley malt. Once the grain arrives at the distillery it is split up: the corn is milled and put in a premix tank where water is added to prepare it for cooking. The other grains are milled together, mixed with water and the product, called mash, is then transferred to the batch cooker. The cooked mash is moved from the batch cookers to conversion tanks where malts are added to change the starch into fermentable sugars. Once the malts are added it produces high sucrose mash, which is then transferred from the conversion tanks to the fermenters. There are 39 fermenters in the distillery, each stands over three stories high and is able to hold up to 218,000 liters. Once the fermenter is filled with the high sucrose mash, two types of yeast are added to the mix –commercial yeast is added to the corn mash, while a specially developed yeast patented in 1858 by Hirman Walker is added to the blender grains mash. After 72 hours of fermentation, the product is 11% alcohol and is referred to as “distiller’s beer”. The fermented mash is pumped into a whisky still where it flows through horizontal filtration plates. Steam is injected at the base of the still and as it rises, it causes the alcohol to evaporate out of the mash. The alcohol is then carried to the top of the still and condensed into liquid form called “new whisky”(this is the process of distillation). The “new whisky” is then run through other stills in order to remove unwanted elements, such as fusel oils. The removal of these items is what makes Canadian Club have a light, smooth flavor. The corn distillate is now 95% alcohol per volume, colorless and odorless. The blended grains are distilled through the column still, but at a lower alcohol strength in order to produce a higher grain character in the taste of the whisky. The grain mash is further refined in a copper still, enhancing the flavor of the whisky. After quality control checks, each whisky is then pumped into large blending tanks prior to aging. This process is referred to as pre-barrel blending (blending the corn and grain mash), a unique process to Canadian Club. The colorless new whisky is then pumped to drain and fill where it is tapped into the once used American oak charred barrels for its aging process.

Suffice it to say that my level of coffee-making care doesn’t really compete.

I’m an eclectic coffee drinker; I like espresso but also enjoy a really good cup of American coffee, and I prefer coffee black but am willing to adulterate it with milk if I suspect the quality is not going to be that high. (Sugar under no circumstances.) For the past few years I’ve relied on the lowest-effort method I know of that is guaranteed to produce a good cup: freshly-ground dark roast beans, placed in a simple cone filter and hot water poured right in. Practically instant coffee, but a result that can be as good as the beans allow.

But I’d like to start mixing more espresso into my home coffee experience, so I’m in the market for a new espresso machine. If I were a physicist of means, I might go for a work of art like the Elektra Micro Casa Lever on right. Or would I? This is a spring-action lever machine, which is to be contrasted with the manual levers, not to mention the automatics and super-automatics, and then there’s the matter of boilers, switches, heat exchangers … a complete mess. The pumps are certainly elegant, but I’d also like something that is functional and doesn’t require constant pampering. So I am in the unusual position of being frozen with indecision about what kind of espresso machine to get. Any opinions out there?

The ground rules here are:

1. There’s no such thing as right or wrong; different people have different tastes, for which different approaches are appropriate.
2. Answers with specific comparisons of advantages and disadvantages are more useful than simple insistence on truth.

I do understand that this is the internet and rules are unlikely to be followed, but I feel I should try.

Obviously not all advice on such a topic is too be trusted. The Engineer’s Guide to Drinks thread featured a sobering (as it were) number of people who think a “martini” should just be chilled gin rather than a proper cocktail, and were proud to admit it in public! So caveat lector. And if you want to talk about something other than coffee, be our guest.

That’s a slightly crazy Martini — 2:1 gin to vermouth. I think the pendulum has swung too far towards “dry,” but please.

Look at it! It’s fantastic! And when you cut it open:

Even better! And guess what? It’s deeeeeelicious. Slightly crispy like an asian pear, but reminiscent of a kiwi.

Where have you been all my life, dragon fruit?!?!? Certainly not in mainstream US grocery stores.

Many thanks to my hosts at the DARK Cosmology Center in Copenhagen for introducing me to this wonder food.

Doesn’t that word conjure up the majesty of space exploration? The triumph of human drive and ingenuity?

Or perhaps, it makes you think of an automated laser-guided milking machine?

Seriously. Wrap your mind around that. “Automated laser-guided milking machine”.

Cow walks in when it decides it’s ready to be milked. Sensors read a tag around the cow’s neck to determine if the cow is indeed ready to be milked. If so, the machine launches a veritable Pink Floyd Lasarium around the udder, locating the teats, which are then cleaned and hooked up to the milking units. Sensors then disconnect when the milk flow drops, and the cow goes on its way.

Lasers and cows. Two fine things that I never thought I’d see together.

(and below, an informative video, if you really, really care)

For the many international CV readers, today is the US’s Independence Day celebration, which is in large part an excuse to bar-b-que meat products, blow up fireworks, and drink beer. If you’re tuning in from abroad, you are probable sober enough to read Daniel’s upcoming post on gravitational waves. For the rest of the drunken US crew, you can probably handle the Muppets.

PS. While we’re talking beer, I must recommend the current Full Sail Limited Edition L.T.D. (Recipe No. 3), sold in bottles with the pale blue label. Seriously. Try some.

(h/t: Again with the CakeWrecks)

I never thought the phrase “External Fuel Tank” could sound so, well, dirty.

Picture below the fold to protect the children. (From the always entertaining CakeWrecks).

“We’re going to split the bill,” said the organizer at my friend’s ninth grade birthday party. I didn’t think much of it until I ended up paying $40 for a $10 entrée. I felt cheated because I didn’t order a drink like most others. I was afraid to ruin the party mood, so I concealed my own anger, and that ended up ruining the night for me.

Now, I almost have sympathy; if you’ve ever gone to dinner with a collection of scientists, you’ll find that their vaunted mathematical skills tend to whither under the pressure of calculating tax and tip, and the person who volunteers to collect the money often ends up chipping in extra to cover the shortfall. But Mr. Talwalkar goes far, far overboard, devising an elaborate scheme by which everyone in the party receives emails ahead of time informing them that they will be strictly limited in the menu options once they reach the restaurant. It’s a common syndrome among people with something of a quantitative bent; fixating on the relationship between the money they are paying and the tangible goods in front of them in the form of food and drink, they completely discount the goods associated with having a good time in a social atmosphere and not worrying too much about who had how many bites out of which appetizer.

Admittedly, this guy probably gets more enjoyment out of solving a game theory problem and enforcing conformity with his rules than he would by relaxing and telling stories at dinner. That’s why you have to choose your dining companions carefully.

Our holiday season is filled with the joyful noise of loved ones asking “Would you like some bacon with that?”

One of the great things about being a physicist, it turns out, is the travel. I’ve had the opportunity to travel all over the world, including to some destinations that I might not otherwise have put on the must-see list. In fact I am at one right now, along with Robin and our five month old, Ian.

We’re in Taipei, Taiwan, at a joint UC Davis – Taiwan workshop somewhat grandly titled “From the LHC to the Universe”. The participants are just from UC Davis and Taiwan universities including National Taiwan University, Academia Sinica, and National Tsing Hua University. The workshop grew out of the fact that there are strong ties between the Davis faculty and that of NTU, especially in the area of particle theory. Our present dean, Winston Ko, a particle experimentalist, is from Taiwan, as is one of our recently retired but still very active particle theorists, Ling-Lie Chau. A number of the former postdocs and students of our theory group leader Jack Gunion are now at NTU, as is one of his close collaborators George Hou. And so the idea for this workshop was born, to further strengthen the ties between the particle phyiscs and cosmology groups at the two institutions, hopefully leading to more collaboration.

Perhaps the most striking thing I’ve found about Taiwan is the absolutely amazing friendliness, generosity, and hospitality of the people. Our NTU hosts have set the bar very high in terms of the organization of the meeting, our local accomodations, and events like the fantastic 10-course banquet we had last night atop Taipei 101, presently the tallest building in the world.

Wherever we travel, we love to eat, and the food here in Taiwan is superb. On Saturday we ate at the unpretentious but world-famous dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung. The service was amazing – for example, when I went to change little Ian’s diaper they set up a special changing station for me and stood there to assist me! For a battle-hardened parent of a five month old, this was incredible,
but it happened at the next restaurant at which we ate too!

Later in the day Saturday we ate on the street at the Shilin Night Market. It was a tough choice, and very inexpensive. We found a stall where you take a basket, and put into it lots of different food items on skewers, which they subsequently grill for you with a delicious garlicky sauce. Just grab a couple of what we call “walking around beers” and you are set.

Wherever we go, the sight of little Ian in the front pack inevitably brings smiles to people’s faces, who, with little hesitation, come straight over to coo at him and elicit smiles (and mostly he obliges). Clearly the sight of a western baby is a novelty here, and, of course, he’s pretty cute anyway.

Traveling with a five-month-old is a challenge: probably most of you reading this think we’re nuts to take him half way around the world…and you are probably right. But we’ve gotten along fairly well, hiring a baby sitter here who watches him in a back room of the physics department library. He’s gotten pretty fussy a lot of the time, partly due to jet lag, but he does that at home too!

Taiwan has a rich and turbulent history, right up to the present day. In fact, the day we arrived, the first non-Kuomintang president of the country, Chen Shui-bian (elected in 2000 and re-elected by a slim margin in 2004), was indicted for embezzling millions of dollars. A few days later, for the first time in decades, direct flights and shipments began between Taiwan and the mainland. The economic crisis is taking its toll on industry here, with people debating the relative merits of reducing pay or reducing hours (furloughs).

Our only regret is that we don’t have more time to see all there is to see on this beautiful island! We return home tomorrow, but hope to be back here some day.

Now, we all know this is not a martini at all. But it looks pretty good.

I just wanted to post it before Cynical-C. I’m still miffed that he beat me to the Bacon Flowchart.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

There is also a vegetarian version, if that’s how you roll. And a FAQ, for those of you who frequently ask questions.

Apparently I have eaten quite a bit, but still have a ways to go! No cross-outs; that would be a sign of weakness.

Suggested soundtrack: Bhindi Bagee.

It’s a magnet from a disemboweled hard drive, mounted right underneath a bottle opener. Snags the bottle cap like a charm.

The reasons for this should be familiar to any solid state physicist (or at least, they were to the one who made my wedding cake and first clued me in). Cocoa butter, one of the dominant ingredients in chocolate, contains several triglycerides that lock into a crystal form when cooled. However, there is not just one form that the triglycerides can lock into, but six of them (β(I) through β(VI)). Each successive form is more stable and has a higher melting point. Almost all commercial chocolate is in the β(V) form — from what I can tell, you only get to sample β(VI) in the afterlife, if you’ve been very, very good. When chocolate goes all wrong, it is usually a failure of the melted and cooled chocolate to recrystallize into the β(V) state. Similar problems can affect commercial chocolate suppliers as well, leading to chocolate that develops that unsightly chalky film we associate with old chocolate. Even previously stable β(V) chocolate can wind up with the same unsightly film after temperature fluctuations break down the crystal structure, or melt and reharden a thin layer on the surface. Given the commercial implications, there’s been some solid technical work on the structure of the magical β(V) form, which has been studied with x-ray diffraction using synchrotron radiation (more technical data here).

Given the above, when cooking with chocolate, one’s goal is to coax the cooled chocolate back into the β(V) form if one wants the end product to look glossy, be solid at room temperature, and have a nice crisp snap when bitten. The traditional mechanism for this is known as tempering (video here). Traditional tempering involves carefully controlling the temperature of the chocolate as it cools, so that the chocolate favors the preferred crystalline state. However, there is a vastly simpler mechanism, namely, seeding the crystal. If you take a lump of unmelted commercial chocolate, toss it into your bowl of melted chocolate, and stir for a bit, you’ll melt the new lump while cooling the melted chocolate. The cooling chocolate will then prefer the same crystal structure as the melting lump, such that when it hardens completely, you’ll find it in the luscious β(V) state.

PS. I can verify that the above works exactly as advertised. Last weekend I made the wedding cake above for the same solid state physicist who made mine a decade ago. (The cake was alternately described as looking like the Heatmiser‘s hair, Mordor, and Garrett Lisi’s E₈ symmetry group, so you can imagine it was a pretty techie crowd). Making the thin chocolate sheets from which I cut the decorations, I got huge swaths of perfectly glossy chocolate. Occasionally, though, there’d be a small section with a matte surface, that was clearly a different crystalline form. Science. It works, bitches.

[T]he ’47 Cheval I drank that night now ranks as the greatest wine of my life, a title I doubt it will relinquish. The moment I lifted the glass to my nose and took in that sweet, spicy, arresting perfume, my notion of excellence in wine, and my understanding of what wine was capable of, was instantly transformed—I could almost hear the scales recalibrating in my head. The ’47 was the warmest, richest, most decadent wine I’d ever encountered. Even more striking than its opulence was its freshness. The flavors were redolent of stewed fruits and dead flowers, yet the wine tasted alive; it bristled with energy and purpose. The ’47s signature flaws—the residual sugar and volatile acidity—were readily apparent, but it was just as Lurton had said: In this wine, the flaws inexplicably became virtues….

I realized that it was silly even to try to place the ’47 in the context of other wines; it defied comparison, a point underscored when I tasted another legend, the 1945 Château Latour, later that night (yeah, it was a nice evening). The Latour was stunning—probably the second-best wine I’ve ever had—but it at least fell within my frame of reference: It was a classically proportioned Bordeaux that just happened to be achingly good. The ’47 Cheval, by contrast, was an otherworldly wine—a claret from another planet. And it was amazing.

What is the sound of scales recalibrating? I’d like to find out.

• This post about Female Science Professor’s worst jobs was one of the most amusinghorrifying reads of my winter break. For example:
  

  One summer I worked in the kitchen of a restaurant that was run by a man with a really bad temper and questionable rules to increase worker efficiency. For example, he decided that it would save time if we removed burgers from the grill with our hands instead of using implements.

• LSST (The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) is one of my fave current astro projects, and they just got a hefty influx of money from the Charles Simonyi Fund and from Bill Gates. LSST is a stumpy 8-m telescope that will scan the sky repeatedly with a wide-field camera, essentially making a deep, multi-color movie of the sky. The data stream is a software geek’s dream, with objects that appear and disappear, by changing brightness and/or position, and that have to be identifiable within a 30 petabyte database. The image below gives a taste of it, showing some RR Lyrae variable stars in the globular cluster M3.
  
• The AAS has arranged a private screening of Real Genius. I am stoked!
• I threw one of my kids a science-themed birthday recently (totally unprovoked on my part, I swear). We messed around with making “rockets” from film canisters, water, and Alka-Seltzer, looking through diffraction gratings, and turning red cabbage water different colors using acids and bases. And, in shades of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, I got to make a volcano cake:
  

Anyway, apparently the concept of the main course dominated by a single large item is, in advanced food circles, losing ground to the increasing popularity of smaller plates. From the consumer’s point of view, it just makes perfect sense — isn’t it more fun to design your own dinner from a variety of options, than to have the kitchen make all those choices for you? And isn’t it more interesting to sample several different options, than to focus on a single oversized dish? Takami, my favorite new local restaurant, features not only small plates, but dishes from three different kitchens with different specialties (sushi, robata, and everything else). If you savor the meal as a multi-level sensory experience rather than a obligatory intake of calories, it’s definitely the way to go.

Small plates mean extra work for the restaurant, of course — customization on the consumer side works against standardization and economy of scale on the producer side. So I doubt that the trend will soon be penetrating to the Bennigans and Applebees of the world. I suspect the true food snobs wouldn’t have it any other way.

From the description:

Bacon Exotic Candy Bar – New

Applewood smoked bacon + Alder smoked salt + deep milk chocolate

Deep milk chocolate coats your mouth and leads to the crunch of smoked bacon pieces. Surprise your mouth with the smoked salt and sweet milk chocolate combination.

Crisp, buttery, compulsively irresistible bacon and milk chocolate combination has long been a favorite of mine. I started playing with this combination at the tender age of six while eating chocolate chip pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Beside my chocolate-laden cakes laid three strips of fried bacon, just barely touching a sweet pool of maple syrup. Just a bite of the bacon was too salty and yearned for the sweet kiss of chocolate syrup. In retrospect, perhaps this was a turning point, for on that plate something magical happened: the beginnings of a combination so ethereal and delicious that it would haunt my thoughts until I found the medium to express it–chocolate.
–Katrina

Vosges is my favorite chocolatier (if you know what I mean). Not only do they blend excellent chocolate with a wide variety of exotic spices to create uniformly interesting and delicious combinations, but I stumbled upon them when they were just a tiny one-shop operation in Chicago, before their blossoming into international success. And a friend of mine once claimed that every type of food is enhanced by the addition of bacon, including ice cream. (Although I did manage to give her pause with my suggestion of bacon-flavored water.) So I’m thinking I’m going to have to give the new experiment a try. You only live once.