BeerSci: Is That Water In Your Pint Glass? I was going to write about hops and the people who crave them this week but got distracted by the unfolding drama around AB-InBev. The booze giant has had a crappy run over the last few weeks: First its merger with Modelo was quashed by the Department of Justice on anti-monopoly grounds. And this week news broke that someone launched a class-action lawsuit against the company for watering down its beer. The basis of that lawsuit as far as I can tell rests on the claims from former Anheuser-Busch employees that the beer is diluted just before bottling suggesting that there's less alcohol in the bottle/can than what is stated on the package. My colleague Paul and I decided to run some tests this week on some of the beers named in the lawsuit -- Budweiser Bud Ice and Hurricane -- to see if we could detect unusually low alcohol content. Paul has a refractometer whereas Team BeerSci kicks it old school with a hydrometer. Beer people will already see the pitfalls of these approaches: One needs to know the pre-fermentation values (gravity or Brix) of the beer in order to figure out the eventual ABV. But putzing about on the Internet at least in the case of the gravities gives one a very general idea of what the original gravity of the King of Beers is supposed to be. The principle behind calculating ABV using density is pretty simple: solutions with a lot of sugar in it are denser than solutions that don't have a lot of sugar. So the brewer tests the density of the beer before adding yeast then tests it again after fermentation is finished. By calculating how much sugar was metabolized by the yeast one can roughly calculate the alcohol by volume. Our estimates are close to what is stated on the can of Budweiser: depending on OG we got ABVs of between 4.8 and 5.1%. That lower end does jibe with the lawsuit's claim that the beer is watered down by three to eight percent -- but as you can tell with the data spread my numbers are not sturdy enough to be used in court for either side of the debate and we didn't even both measuring the Bud Ice values. Happily for us (and apparently Anheuser-Busch) White Labs of San Diego also tested AB's beer including Budweiser Bud Light Lime and Michelob Ultra right out of the packaging. White Labs for those who aren't into brewing is an independent company who sells yeast strains and a variety of analytical services to wine and beer makers. White Labs' method which uses a precise near-infrared laser spectrometer to directly measure the amount of ethanol in a sample is more precise than my kludgy hydrometer reading and one doesn't need to know the starting gravity -- in fact they offer their testing services to microbreweries and home brewers so that everyone with $100 can test for what big breweries routinely do: chill haze IBUs ABV turbidity calorie content etc. According to NPR (who commissioned the tests) and a White Labs analytical lab employee Kara Taylor the Anheuser-Busch beers all had the proper amount of alcohol by volume. For example cans of Budweiser say that the beer is 5% ABV; a can of it tested to be 4.99% ABV. Why the plaintiff's lawyers couldn't manage to pony up $100 of their own to get the offending beer tested before launching the lawsuit is beyond me and just about anyone else out there who knows a thing or two about brewing. As for the idea of adding water to beer to dilute it -- that's a pretty typical practice even for homebrewers and especially those who use all-extract or partial-mash recipes. It's simply more efficient in time and energy costs to boil smaller volumes of water. Our boil volumes are always around three gallons. After the boil is finished but before we pitch the yeast we add another two gallons of water to the fermenting bucket to bring the beer up to the final five-gallon volume. For larger breweries more-concentrated worts and beers mean that one can brew a lot of strong beer then dilute it to the proper ABV at bottling. This is especially useful in a beer like Budweiser (a light American lager that uses a lot of adjunct such as rice and corn) which doesn't have a whole lot of body or flavor to be ruined during dilution. Out of curiosity I tasted the Budweiser that didn't get used in our hydrometer test as I haven't had the beer in many years -- certainly not since I started brewing again. The result: Sweet faintly musty fizz water. If I were the type to file a class-action lawsuit I'd be demanding to know where the hell the hops went. Miller has been doing this for years whats the big deal ;0)I tried opening this article four times and got a report error dialog box which caused the window to collapse each time.  This is the fifth time.  The reason seems to be that I placed a comment on the NPR article on the testing of Anheuser-Busch beer that seems rather difficult to genuinely fight.  Among other things I asked what proof is there that the can of beer they supplied for testing wasn't specifically manufactured with a correct alcohol content just for the testing?  Where is the proof the can tested was chosen randomly from a typical production line?  Also note the careful misdirection of this article's description.  It says White Labs uses a near-infrared laser spectrometer.  Maybe but that's not all the methods they use!  Just saying White Labs uses a near-infrared laser spectromete does not say they used it on this sample!  In fact if you look at the NPR article you will see a deliberately tiny photograph of results of supposed professional testing of Anheuser-Busch beer by the ASBC Beer-4E method.  ASBC is the American Society of Brewing Chemists and Beer-4E seems one of the methods used by White Labs supposedly  But if you look at asbcnet.org ASBC's official website you weill not be able to call up Beer-4E.  the fact is independent in testing circles is a joke.  It's an ugly secret of the legal practice that a staple of injury suits is the defendant calling up what is actually termed in the literature an Independent Medical Examination of the plaintiff.  Apparently they feel they can con the average gullible into thinking they must be independent because they called themselves independent.  It's also recognized that every Independent Medical Examination always comes to the conclusion that becuase the plaintiff didn't have their own doctor's examination five seconds before the defendant drove their SUV into the plaintiff's bedroom that the shattered legs the victim has must be assumed to have been a pre-existing condition!  There is no such thing as a legitimate independent lab they're all on the take to tell you genetically modified food doesn't contain cyanide or that there isn't radioactive waste in the groundwater near your home or there aren't chemtrail distributed weather modification chemicals in rainwater.@julianpenrod There is no such thing as a legitimate independent lab they're all on the take to tell you genetically modified food doesn't contain cyanide or that there isn't radioactive waste in the groundwater near your home or there aren't chemtrail distributed weather modification chemicals in rainwater.Well I hate to break this to you but genetically modified food doesn't contain cyanide there isn't radioactive waste in the groudwater near my home and chemtrails are a myth perpetuated by people with very little grasp of simple physics. Much like most any conspiracy theory. Let me guess you're someone who thinks that bouncing high frequency radio waves that are weaker than natural sources of the same frequencies off of the ultra thin ionosphere (HAARP) causes earthquakes?Scythelord is glibly contemptuous of the unconventional but like all liars Scythelord only spouts declamations but provides no proof.
     Where is Scythelord's proof that genetically modified foods don't contain cyanide.  A herd of cattle was killed by cyanide gas produced by genetially modified grass in Texas in June of last year.
     Where is Scythelord's proof that their is no radioactive contamination in groundwater near where they live?  Of course being a shill for the New World Order could have advantages like living in places where there is no contamination.
     Where does belief in chemtrails betoken little grasp of simple physics?  Where does the description of chemtrails indicate a lack of understanding of physics?
     In general conspiracy theorists don't claim HAARP rays cause earthquakes they connect the project with weather pattern alteration.  Remember the government itself built the multi million dollar project presumably because they felt it could harness the auroroa to melt battleships.  But then where is Scythelord's proof that the peculiar structure of crystals under pressure in the earth's crust doesn't cause them to resonate physically to particular radio wavelengths like barium titanate crystals that are the heart of radio transmission and sound reproduction systems?
     Basically Scythelord will only attack but never provide validation for their claims.uh oh looks like julianpenrod has been wearing tinfoil hats smokin weed and listening to Alex Jones a little to much.... LOL@julianpenrod - Wow you are correct on the cyanide: www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57459357/gm-grass-linked-to-texas-cattle-deaths
Oh wait...CORRECTION: As originally published this story referred to Tifton 85 grass as a genetically-modified product which is incorrect; it is actually a hybrid of Bermuda grass
Go nuts on the theories some may be correct but be careful about jumping through assumptions; otherwise you end up going from probable to plausable to unlikely to plain wrong without realising it.