BeerSci: What Running Marathons Can Teach You About Beer
Mmmmm, beer Martha HarbisonMartha Harbison, a senior editor at Popular Science and former physical chemist, introduces a new column on the science of homebrewing. The United States has an estimated 1 million homebrewers, according to the American Homebrewers Association. That's just slightly under the estimated number of nutjobs in the U.S. who have run a marathon. No word on what the Venn diagram of those two looks like, but I know that there's at least one intersection between the two datasets because I live and brew with him: my spouse Doug. He and I have been homebrewing for a couple of years, and we're about to get on a plane so Doug can run his second marathon. Even though the two activities seem pretty unlike each other--the payoff for one is a 26.2-mile slog while people scream at you; the payoff for the other is being able to sit in...