Popularist Masculinity and Beer.

I took the piss out of the pub owner the first time I saw it on the bar. I know him well enough to take the piss, I guess he's a mate and a good customer. In any case, he rips the piss regularly, especially when I'm trying to play pool, so I didn't feel much of a shred of guilt.

It went off, then came back again, so it seemed he had re-ordered, or taken more than one cask. I guess it had been a week or so since my first expression of concern regarding such an intrusion into my appreciation of what is otherwise a splendid pub.

"Really?" I exclaimed in a rather more serious tone "You feel comfortable putting Dizzy Blonde on the bar?"

"People have asked for it and it sells really well" came the apparently sincere reply. Further explanation regarding what sells well and what doesn't could very much depress me. Needless to say it was a bit of a readjustment to my world view on the subject.

He runs a good pub. I respect his business skills tremendously and he's much better at running a pub than I ever was. He sells stuff I wouldn't, because he wants to cover his overheads; if it were me I'd probably dig my heals in and suffer commercially as a result.

The imagery is all over the roads in the NW of England....

I am reminded about this exchange as a result of recent media interest in sexism in beer the beer world. I am fairly sure that I have never bought Dizzy Blonde and when I have found myself unfortunately faced with only Robinsons beers I opt for something else. Although my boycott possibly isn't going to make a jot of difference, the only way to stop this sort of nonsense is by it becoming commercially unattractive for it to continue. I cannot bring myself to support such a thing.

Robinson's are not going to stop making Dizzy Blonde any time soon, not so long as it clearly makes them money. Likewise, other companies will carry on with varying degrees of sexist imagery and beer names so long as the general public has a panache for such things. So, is it really the fault of the businesses for propagating sexism in the beer industry? Or is it more the end consumer?

I recently commissioned artwork for a project to help promote Azimuth. We started from the premise that generally folk don't get the name. Far too obscure. It relates to navigation using heavily bodies and hooks into the by now well established folklore surrounding the story of IPA¹.

I wanted to create a mythical scene of ancient mariners and imaginary sea creatures. A mermaid crept into the scene and refused to leave. She was initially far too sexy. My artist was cajoled into making her more powerful and less demeaningly sexy.

Did we get it right? I am still unsure, but hope that it is mysterious enough, and we've empowered the female character in the scene sufficiently to not raise the hackles of any potential critics. The dragon we could imagine to be male, indeed the mermaid is quite clearly in charge and is fighting to help against a relentless macho wind, which for me is symbolic of the masculinity which sadly is all too prevailing in the world of beer.



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¹With apologies to all beer historians. I am not a beer historian. I am not sure if I understand where beer history truth ends and myth begins. I do care, but just haven't got the time to keep myself properly informed on such matters.

Urban Underground

It's taken a while, perhaps even best part of 50 years, but I've got to the point of realising I am not normal. It seems the world is a mass of homogeneity and I mostly don't fit into any of it. But then, what is normal? Normal, when referring to the characteristics of the human condition, is very probably an amalgam of the average of us all. In reality we are all very different.

This is the back-story to our new beer, Urban Underground. I feel I'm almost in my own little underground world on occasions. Part of an alternative to the mainstream and a happier place for me to be. This beer is something of an outward expression of that feeling of misfit, and an empathy with anyone else who feels the same.

One cannot help one's height. As adults we have grown to a certain vertical dimension and stopped. We then start to shrink as we head inevitably to old age¹. I suppose some people like to wear high heels when they feel challenged vertically,  although that isn't one of my particular kinks. The colour of our skin, our numerical age, and our genetic sex are rooted in our conception. More variable characteristics such as where we may feel we sit in a gender spectrum, sexuality, social status, how young we actual feel or where generally we fit in any sort of spectrum of personality² add together to make each and every one of us completely individual.

Moreover, we are really quite plastic in the way our personalities develop. I know that I have changed in many ways over the years. Part of that is due to me bucking the preconceived ideas of what is normal and deciding to reject the straight jacket of societal pressure. The life journey I am on only really hit overdrive when I cast away the rigours of academia. If you'll pardon further powered travel metaphors, that journey only became turbo-charged when I ceased PAYE status. School eh? How many people just don't get along with school and later in life find out what they are really all about?³

We want Hardknott to be all-inclusive. We try hard to avoid alienating anyone based on age, race, sex or sexuality, background or any other defining feature. More than that we hope to positively appeal to anyone who doesn't fit normal, mainly because I'm needy for new friends.

We've tried hard to make this beer more accessible and therefore more inclusive. We've put just as many hops in as we do in Azimuth or Intergalactic Space Hopper, but less has gone in copper and much more have gone in post fermentation. This has reduced bitterness whilst maximising aroma making a very drinkable beer.

This is a big, fruity, laid-back IPA, with notes of orange, mango and a hint of pepper. At 5.9% it is certainly not run-of-the-mill, certainly not part of the average mainstream and hopefully will be in the niche sweet-spot helping you to find your true self.

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¹Indeed, fear of my own mortality, although perhaps tangental to my points here, is non-the-less something that concerns me. I'm unsure quite how far I've worked through my own mid-life crisis, but it is most certainly there. It is a fact that life is a terminal disease, it is therefore important to live it to the full and with gay, straight, bi or any other type of abandon, depending on how you feel.

²I'm hoping I've avoided any specific technical psychological term here. It is quite possible this whole post skates on thin ice in order for me to get across my point. Mental health is a subject that deserves sensitivity. For me, I've never been formally diagnosed with any issues, but there have been dark times. I suspect a huge number of people feel the same. There are many diagnosable personality "disorders" - but then when does someone who is a bit different actually have a personality "disorder". I have on many occasions considered if I might exhibit some characteristics that indicate I may be both dyslexic and on the autistic spectrum. I've come to the conclusion that I am just me, and that I work and feel a certain way and the world should just live with the way I am.

³And I could rant on about how I feel the education systems fails many who do not fit the standard academia model. There is way too much emphasis on league tables in my view. Totally insufficient focus on skills and knowledge that might actually be useful to students in a vocational setting. A general lack of understand that some people just don't get on well if all they are forced to to do is sit at a desk all day. Some people don't work well with words and numbers, would rather spend time doing something much more practical and might even thrive if they were allowed that stimulation.

Chips should be brown

I do like chips. I also like roast potatoes. Pies with a thick crisp pastry are also quite lovely. Fresh baked bread with lashings of butter melting through that gooey yeast-formed lattice of heartening carbohydrate, all held together with a nice, crunchy brown crust is just the ticket. Oh, and toast, just at that point of not quite being burnt, but almost there. Heaven!

Recent scientific health research pours terrible doubt on the future of foods that are naturally browned through baking, grilling or frying, which I feel is something of a terrible shame. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the results of the scientific research is inconclusive regarding the actual health hazards associated with naturally browning food at elevated temperatures. In being overzealous with caution regarding the health of the population I fear the Food Standards Agency are propagating what I believe to be a food risk myth and in so doing turning science into pseudoscience. There is no proof that eating burnt toast or crispy roast potatoes increases your risk of cancer.

I enjoy eating these things. I enjoy cooking these things. I always enjoy these food stuffs most when I make them myself. You see, there seems to be an ever increasing trend these days to make stuff anaemic rather than the colour they should be, a nice deep brown.

Browning of food during cooking, and incidentally the colouration of malted barley that goes to make your beer, occurs due to the Maillard reaction. This reaction changes the colour, flavour and brittleness of food. It becomes darker, tastier and more crunchy. The reaction is between reducing sugars and amino acids. The reactions, and therefore the resultant compounds can be complex and are dependant on the particular types of amino acid present, as well as the time, temperature and chemical conditions (PH for example) of the cooking process.

From a culinary point of view this is often referred to as caramelisation. Chemically, caramelisation is different to the Maillard reaction and therefore does not produce acrylamide. But in starchy foods both reactions tend to occur together and contribute to the overall deliciousness of properly cooked items such as chips.

Roast potatoes, made by me. Probably quite high in acrylamide, but they were delicious.

The problem it seems is that there has been scientific research that links a substance called acrylamide to cancer in laboratory animals. It is thought that acrylamide is formed as one of the products of the Maillard reaction, in any case it is present in starchy foods that have been heated over 120ºC. Such foods include chips, bread, biscuits and crisps.

Recently the FSA have issued advice that is designed to decrease the consumption of acrylamide. This advice includes cooking chips until they are "golden" rather than brown. It also includes the advice that cooking times should be reduced and preferably that cooking temperatures be lower.  Advising that production of acrylamide is reduced by reducing the surface area to volume ratio, for instance by making chips chunky rather than skinny¹.

Now, if dietary acrylamide was proven to be a significant risk to human health then perhaps we should consider these recommendations. If reduction of cancer rates could be guaranteed by simply ensuring the population was eating pale food then there would be some point to the FSA scaremongering.

However, no epidemiological study has yet found a link between dietary acrylamide and cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund has carried out their own research and "this study didn’t find any strong evidence for a link between eating overcooked starchy foods that contain acrylamide and cancer risk in humans". Moreover, although they are falling short of calling out the FSA for overzealous caution, they do list the issue amongst 5 diet and cancer myths debunked. Indeed, there is no report anywhere that I can find that shows a link and even in the FSA reports there is yet to be a proven link.²

There is new legislation³ coming into force in April that is designed to manage the levels of acrylamide in food that are produced by food business operators. This bothers me hugely. Legislation brought in to address a problem that has yet to even be proven to exist seems over the top in the extreme. Legislation which will inevitably cause food producers to worry more about meeting the demands of the rules rather than making tasty food, and goes some way to explaining in my mind why most chips these days have virtually no colour about them at all.

A good while ago I wrote a whole post on the subject of chips⁴, and how I like to make them. Double frying ensures fully cooked fluffy interior and and a nice crisp brown exterior. And yes, the brown colour on the outside of chips does improve the flavour somewhat. I love bread with a thick brown crust, and pastry nicely coloured on the outside. Sadly, with the monstrosity that is Greggs bakery, the UK seems to be losing the idea of what a proper pie should be like, but make no doubt about it, no pastry item should be pale and limp.

The only remaining glimmer of hope is optimistic application of the ALARA principle, detailed at the end of this post. Standing for "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" the principle does permit some justified wriggling. If you are a restaurant, for instance, and you consciously and deliberately make the choice to create menu items designed to have a high level of browning of starch products then it is perfectly legitimate to argue that it is impossible to make such items properly without increased levels of acrylamide. However, in my experience environmental health officers lack the ability to understand the intricacies of such arguments and would rather dogmatically apply their own interpretation of the the rules.

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¹However, it was interesting that in a certain study a supermarket's own brand crispy roast potatoes with goose fat seemed to come out with a greater level of acrylamide than the skinny chips from most well known fast food chains. We all know that crispy roast potatoes with goose fat are food things to die for. It may well be that there is a reaction with certain amino acids in the goose fat and the carbohydrates in the potatoes that ensure such deliciousness, but equally cause increased levels of acrylamide. Indeed, looking down the list of things in the results of the above mentioned study and it becomes apparent to me that there is a strong link between deliciousness and levels of acrylamide.

²I want to expand a little on my thoughts regarding the effect of acrylamide on the body. The substance is potentially carcinogenic, this is true. When exposure by inhalation is at substantially elevated levels there is some proof that there is some cancer risk, for example in smokers. In laboratory animals cancer risk is shown to be present from exposure.

"The National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens considers acrylamide to be reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen, based on studies in laboratory animals given acrylamide in drinking water. However, toxicology studies have shown that humans and rodents not only absorb acrylamide at different rates, they metabolize it differently as well." - National Cancer Institute (USA)

Acrylamide can be metabolised in different ways. It is possible that ingested acrylamide does find it's way to DNA in the body and so cause the mutations, it is also entirely possible that humans metabolise ingested acrylamide in a way that prevents it being damaging to DNA.

Homo Sapiens have also ways cooked food, and we evolved out of earlier species that also cooked food. Cooking by our ancestors has probably been a thing for about a million years. Cooking is possibly one of the reasons our species has become so successful, and therefore it is also highly likely we have developed an evolutionary tolerance to acrylamide in our food. It is certain that humans and rats metabolise acrylamide differently. Rats have never evolved to use fire for cooking.

³This legislation is actually coming from the EU. More evidence, I guess, to backup the Brexiteers case. However, drilling down through the information it seems it is the UK that is driving this, and besides, I'm not convinced that we won't just copy and paste EU legislation once we are out.

⁴I'm intregued that actually the picture of my chips in that by now rather ancient post shows them to be quite pale. Some varieties of potatoes, especially early season are notoriously difficult to brown owing to low concentrations of sugars. I assume this was the case in this sample.

Some background information

Acrylamide in malted barley

Pale malts 630-660µg kg^-1
Coloured malts 2200µg kg^-1
(source http://acta-arhiv.chem-soc.si/54/54-1-98.pdf)

Calculation of acrylamide in beer

1 pint of beer = 0.568 litres

assume beer has OG = 1.050

Litre degrees per pint = 0.568 x 50 = 28.4lº

Assume yield of 300lº/kg

Mass of malt per pint of beer = 28.4/300 = 0.095kg or 95g

Pale beer acrylamide content = 0.095 x 650 = 62µg

Dark beer (20% dark malt) acrylic content = 0.095 x (650 x 0.8 + 2200 x 0.2)

        = 0.095 x (520 + 440) = 0.095 x 960 = 91µg

Safe levels of consumption

182µg/day for a 70kg human https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2009/12/08/Scientists-determine-safe-acrylamide-levels

ALARA

ALARA is an acronym for the concept “As Low As Reasonably Achievable”. This simply means that a Food Business Operator (FBO) should take appropriate measures to reduce the presence of a given contaminant in a final product to a minimum: taking account of the risk presented, but also taking account of other legitimate considerations, such as potential risks from other contaminants, organoleptic properties and quality of the final product, and the feasibility and effectiveness of controls.