A few weeks ago Emily and I had a visit from another Purdue alumni couple: Andrew and Melissa. Go Boilers! So all day was spent wandering Boston and doing cool things.
As both Andrew and I are chemists we decided that the first item on the agenda would be learning about the local labs.
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| Notice the beautiful flowing fields of barly.. or hops... whatever. |
At the Samuel Adam's Brewery the brewing experts take anyone who shows up (and is over 21) on a tour of the brewery. The tour starts with an overview of the ingredients, hops, barley and the like. You can even eat the samples! They don't taste that great, but some smells strongly of pine. The "chocolate" ones are unfortunately too bitter to eat. (I tried.)
Upon close inspection of one of the metal containers a discovery was made:
That's right: THINK ACID. I'm not sure what it means, but perhaps I need to think about titrations or web standards in order to understand. All this thinking though is getting me a headache - Let's continue onward... Chemists HO! To the wet lab!
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| The Purdue Chemists prepare for the experiments. |
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| English majors can do science too! |
In the Samuel Adams's wet lab, brave experimenters are allowed to test out the chemical compositions of a number of solutions and mixtures that are manufactured at the plant using their taste palate. Three double shots of beer is none too shaby for a free tour! (We all got to keep the glasses too!)
Inside this magical barrel is some Samuel Adams secret recipe known only as Utopias. Apparently its the strongest beer known to man: 27% alcohol or so. It's also only released once every few years as the batch takes a couple years to mature as the yeasts feed on pure maple sugar. Sounds and Smells delcious. Unfortunately no free samples.
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The day continued on after Samuel Adams. The next attraction was the Boston Book Fair. After a quick stop at Faneuil Hall for food and Starbucks for coffee we were good to go.
At the fair there were publishers, book stores, writers, speakers, musicians, and more! Many places offered free shwag like Google Books t-shirts. After wandering for a bit we decided to explore the Boston Public Library itself.
While there certainly are books in the library most of our time was spent analyzing the meanings of the large and beautiful murals that line much of the building's interior and viewing interesting dioramas.
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As we were leaving the library, our day was suddenly interrupted by a storm of crazed
ZOMBIES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
Oh never mind just crazed protesters, carry on with your normal lives. Apparently these people just like being angry about things because many of the signs contradicted each other with followers of Ron Paul supporting the socialist movement.
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Earlier in the afternoon we also made a quick stop into one of the older churches near the Boston common. The building is very old and quite an interesting site to see. My favorite part however, was probably the seating arrangements. Apparently each family would get a pod of very comfortable looking benches for themselves. I think this is an idea that needs to have a resurgence!
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The day ended with an amazing Italian dinner at Maggiano's, and then it was time to say farewell to our Midwestern friends. Nearing their car in the parking lot however we realized they may not have parked in the safest of places...
Until next time,
Matt
If you really want to learn the process of beer-making you ought to find Dave Barry's column on the subject. Unfortunately I was not able to locate it online but I did come across a couple of quotes:
ReplyDelete"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." - Dave Barry
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer." - Dave Barry