About time this thread gets another hit.
I like a good India Pale Ale. I used to like the sweet stuff, like Alaskan Amber. In my old age, the bitterness of the IPA's are more to my liking. I know a lot of people my age who have gone that way as well. Must be something about growing old. Anyone else experience this same phenomenon? Seems as though someone should do some research on this and come up with a reason why it is so. It would make for fascinating reading.
A good Guinness, at the right temperature and served properly, also sates my palette. I usually prefer it during the cold winter months, however. It has been claimed that Guinness does not travel well. What they mean by that statement is that the line from the keg to the tap should be short. The longer line probably makes it foam too much.
An interesting study on Guinness, quoted at the following site:
http://www.aiaa-sf.org/ffmf/ffmf0204.html
"WHY BUBBLES FLOAT DOWN IN A GLASS OF GUINNESS A computer simulation has been used to show that even though bubbles float up, they also go down in a glass of Guinness. Professor Clive Fletcher and students at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, used FLUENT computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software from Fluent Inc. to illustrate that bubbles go both up and down in a glass of Guinness. Fletcher's team used the software to simulate the motion of the bubbles and discovered that, as expected, most bubbles do move upwards. The bubbles in the center of the glass, free from the effects of the glass wall, move upwards most quickly and drag liquid with them. But the liquid moving up in the center of the glass, having nowhere else to go, must eventually turn towards the walls and start to move downward. The liquid moving downward near the walls tries to drag down bubbles with it. Larger bubbles have sufficient buoyancy to resist but smaller bubbles are continuously dragged to the bottom of the glass."
Only in Australia would they bother with such a study. It would have been a fun project to participate in, however. I wonder how many cases of the stuff they drank while trying to figure this out?
