{"id":26435,"date":"2014-06-21T09:18:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T14:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26435"},"modified":"2014-06-21T09:18:52","modified_gmt":"2014-06-21T14:18:52","slug":"the-science-of-booze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/21\/the-science-of-booze\/","title":{"rendered":"The science of booze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mankind has been making alcoholic beverages for thousands of years, yet there are still some <a href=\"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2014\/06\/20\/the-science-and-miracle-of-booze\/\" target=\"_blank\">pretty basic things<\/a> we don&#8217;t know about alcohol:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Consider the number of things we still don\u2019t know: Yeast, the single-celled fungus responsible for fermentation (the conversion of sugar into alcohol), seems to have been domesticated about 12,000 years ago, but we don\u2019t know for sure where it came from, why it makes ethanol, or why some strains do it better than others.<\/p>\n<p>The physics of distillation are well established, but nobody knows who invented it \u2014 an alchemist in ancient Alexandria called Maria the Jewess? \u2014 and getting a consistent taste from the finicky process is more an art than a science.<\/p>\n<p>Aging in toasted barrels clearly does hooch good, as the wood breaks down and the liquid penetrates its pores to mix with tannins and other molecules. But the final flavor of a spirit depends on everything from the temperature in the warehouse where it is aged to the climate where the trees are grown, and attempts to create synthetic processes to season liquor quicker (read: more profitably) have come mostly to naught.<\/p>\n<p>Even at the most basic level, scientists don\u2019t yet understand why booze makes us feel the way it does. Alcohol\u2019s mode of action in the brain is much more complicated and elusive than that of a drug such as heroin, which locks into specific, identified receptors meant for natural neurotransmitters. \u201cThe truth is, we don\u2019t know at the molecular level what alcohol is binding to,\u201d Rogers quotes the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism as saying. \u201cIt\u2019s never been resolved.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mankind has been making alcoholic beverages for thousands of years, yet there are still some pretty basic things we don&#8217;t know about alcohol: Consider the number of things we still don\u2019t know: Yeast, the single-celled fungus responsible for fermentation (the conversion of sugar into alcohol), seems to have been domesticated about 12,000 years ago, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,15,131],"tags":[713,104,872],"class_list":["post-26435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-science","category-technology","category-wine","tag-biology","tag-booze","tag-chemistry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Sn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26436,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26435\/revisions\/26436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}