of science and emminent impotent miracles
antiquarian squabbles can lift a heavy mid-day spirit:
Reparations and revenge
At the time [of the Franco-Prussian War], although Germany had become the world leader in industrial chemistry, her main export was beer. Indeed, as part of the reparations demanded of France, Germany had subsumed Alsace and Lorraine, where hops were the primary crop and where much of France's own beer production had been based. German beer outsold local brews throughout most of central Europe because it tasted better and kept longer, and its continued sale in France irritated Pasteur intensely. He planned to destroy Germany's principal export market by developing the world's best beer in France, a brew he dubbed, "the beer of revenge"4.
Beer is produced by fermenting the sugars that are leached from malted barley. The carbon dioxide that gives beer its head is released by the yeast as a by-product of fermentation. Hop flowers are added prior to fermentation because their aromatic oils act as a preservative and add to the taste of the finished product. Originally, all beers were dark and heavy, and were similar to the porters, stouts and brown ales from Britain. The major advance that was made by Germany in the 1860s was to develop strains of yeast that maintained their activity at temperatures that were near freezing. Fermentation that was achieved at such low temperatures proceeded so slowly that the beer had to be cellared over the whole winter instead of just a few weeks. Furthermore, the yeast, instead of being buoyed to the top of the brew by the carbon dioxide that was produced (called 'top fermentation'), sank to the bottom of the barrels and contributed little to the taste of the product. This was called 'bottom fermentation', or 'lagering', and the resulting lager beers were pale-straw coloured, light in flavour and body, and kept extraordinarily well.
Pasteur correctly surmised that the primary reason for beer spoilage was the presence of contaminating organisms. He quickly identified those that were most commonly spoiling brewery yeast samples and developed methods for excluding them from large-scale fermentation. He also developed new strains of heat-stable yeast that acted more rapidly, without significantly contributing to the taste of the beer.
By this time, Pasteur had returned to his old haunt at the Ecole Normale. He bought a brewery kettle and installed a fermentation vat in the basement of the, as yet unfinished, laboratory complex nearby. Bertin's interest in Pasteur's experimental progress increased dramatically, which betrayed a fond familiarity with the subject under scrutiny. Bertin had developed a fancy for fine ales when he had worked in Strasbourg, and a strange collaboration developed between the two men. Bertin's sober responsibility was to steadily drink his way through Pasteur's experimental results, in order to provide a critical appraisal of each batch. Bertin's high-spirited laughter and good humour did much to enliven the laboratory, and he pointed out to Pasteur more than once that there is much more to good beer than just keeping it free from infection. "First make me a good bock," he said, "and then you can talk learnedly about it!"3.
Pasteur travelled widely throughout Europe to show the key aspects of his methods to commercial brewers. The Whitbread brewery in Britain and the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark still attribute their success to visits by Pasteur in the 1870s. An even greater influence was attained with the publication of his book, Studies on Beer1, which immediately became the essential brewer's manual. Pasteur also saw a parallel between the infection of an ale and human disease. "Seeing that beer and wine undergo profound alterations because these liquids have given shelter to microscopic organisms..." he wrote, "how can one help being obsessed by the thought that phenomena of the same kind can and must sometimes occur in humans and animals"6. It was this analogy that formed the foundation of the germ theory of disease and drove him to study anthrax, the life cycle of which had been meticulously elucidated by Robert Koch.
...
Repercussions
Even shortly before he died in 1895, Pasteur's memories of the Franco-Prussian war remained strong enough for him to refuse the Prussian Ordre Pour le Mérit. Although he insisted on the use of the term 'microbiology' instead of 'bacteriology' (which he considered 'Teutonic'), his efforts to outdo the Germans in the field were never especially successful. His interests turned to developing a vaccine for rabies - a filterable virus that could not even be isolated, let alone cultured in vitro. As a consequence, his major contribution in immunology was to our understanding of factors that affect the generation of specific immunity. Together with Chamberland and Roux, he showed that attenuated vaccines were more effective than killed vaccines - a model which is only now being challenged. Pasteur also had a principal role in improving the microbiological standards in European breweries, except those in Germany, as he refused permission for a German translation of his book on beer. His 'beer of revenge' was so successful that to this day, very little German beer is exported, even though some are widely regarded as being among the best in the world. The irony is that the German breweries rendered idle by Pasteur's strategy were eventually adapted to manufacture acetone for cordite production. So, Pasteur's vengeance indirectly helped to equip Germany for their attack on France in the First World War.
secret stain: red whine
wish i was someone else, somewhere else. again - the best intentions get shot down and explode into an atomic blast fallout of anxiety, by no initiation of war on your part, so what else can you do but hide out and read nabokov until class starts? needs new focus, needs new drive. this dust bunny (messy nesting) can't control her chemical emotions, might need more chemicals, and that makes reaction kinetics seriously more complicated. needs to stop worrying about what others are doing when she can't observe because superposition is a maddening way to describe the world, painted onto the window, she'll never see into. still hopeful things are going to work themselves out of the box. someday. for someone.
life is nothing but hard work, body aches and beer from here on out.
Reparations and revenge
At the time [of the Franco-Prussian War], although Germany had become the world leader in industrial chemistry, her main export was beer. Indeed, as part of the reparations demanded of France, Germany had subsumed Alsace and Lorraine, where hops were the primary crop and where much of France's own beer production had been based. German beer outsold local brews throughout most of central Europe because it tasted better and kept longer, and its continued sale in France irritated Pasteur intensely. He planned to destroy Germany's principal export market by developing the world's best beer in France, a brew he dubbed, "the beer of revenge"4.
Beer is produced by fermenting the sugars that are leached from malted barley. The carbon dioxide that gives beer its head is released by the yeast as a by-product of fermentation. Hop flowers are added prior to fermentation because their aromatic oils act as a preservative and add to the taste of the finished product. Originally, all beers were dark and heavy, and were similar to the porters, stouts and brown ales from Britain. The major advance that was made by Germany in the 1860s was to develop strains of yeast that maintained their activity at temperatures that were near freezing. Fermentation that was achieved at such low temperatures proceeded so slowly that the beer had to be cellared over the whole winter instead of just a few weeks. Furthermore, the yeast, instead of being buoyed to the top of the brew by the carbon dioxide that was produced (called 'top fermentation'), sank to the bottom of the barrels and contributed little to the taste of the product. This was called 'bottom fermentation', or 'lagering', and the resulting lager beers were pale-straw coloured, light in flavour and body, and kept extraordinarily well.
Pasteur correctly surmised that the primary reason for beer spoilage was the presence of contaminating organisms. He quickly identified those that were most commonly spoiling brewery yeast samples and developed methods for excluding them from large-scale fermentation. He also developed new strains of heat-stable yeast that acted more rapidly, without significantly contributing to the taste of the beer.
By this time, Pasteur had returned to his old haunt at the Ecole Normale. He bought a brewery kettle and installed a fermentation vat in the basement of the, as yet unfinished, laboratory complex nearby. Bertin's interest in Pasteur's experimental progress increased dramatically, which betrayed a fond familiarity with the subject under scrutiny. Bertin had developed a fancy for fine ales when he had worked in Strasbourg, and a strange collaboration developed between the two men. Bertin's sober responsibility was to steadily drink his way through Pasteur's experimental results, in order to provide a critical appraisal of each batch. Bertin's high-spirited laughter and good humour did much to enliven the laboratory, and he pointed out to Pasteur more than once that there is much more to good beer than just keeping it free from infection. "First make me a good bock," he said, "and then you can talk learnedly about it!"3.
Pasteur travelled widely throughout Europe to show the key aspects of his methods to commercial brewers. The Whitbread brewery in Britain and the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark still attribute their success to visits by Pasteur in the 1870s. An even greater influence was attained with the publication of his book, Studies on Beer1, which immediately became the essential brewer's manual. Pasteur also saw a parallel between the infection of an ale and human disease. "Seeing that beer and wine undergo profound alterations because these liquids have given shelter to microscopic organisms..." he wrote, "how can one help being obsessed by the thought that phenomena of the same kind can and must sometimes occur in humans and animals"6. It was this analogy that formed the foundation of the germ theory of disease and drove him to study anthrax, the life cycle of which had been meticulously elucidated by Robert Koch.
...
Repercussions
Even shortly before he died in 1895, Pasteur's memories of the Franco-Prussian war remained strong enough for him to refuse the Prussian Ordre Pour le Mérit. Although he insisted on the use of the term 'microbiology' instead of 'bacteriology' (which he considered 'Teutonic'), his efforts to outdo the Germans in the field were never especially successful. His interests turned to developing a vaccine for rabies - a filterable virus that could not even be isolated, let alone cultured in vitro. As a consequence, his major contribution in immunology was to our understanding of factors that affect the generation of specific immunity. Together with Chamberland and Roux, he showed that attenuated vaccines were more effective than killed vaccines - a model which is only now being challenged. Pasteur also had a principal role in improving the microbiological standards in European breweries, except those in Germany, as he refused permission for a German translation of his book on beer. His 'beer of revenge' was so successful that to this day, very little German beer is exported, even though some are widely regarded as being among the best in the world. The irony is that the German breweries rendered idle by Pasteur's strategy were eventually adapted to manufacture acetone for cordite production. So, Pasteur's vengeance indirectly helped to equip Germany for their attack on France in the First World War.
secret stain: red whine
wish i was someone else, somewhere else. again - the best intentions get shot down and explode into an atomic blast fallout of anxiety, by no initiation of war on your part, so what else can you do but hide out and read nabokov until class starts? needs new focus, needs new drive. this dust bunny (messy nesting) can't control her chemical emotions, might need more chemicals, and that makes reaction kinetics seriously more complicated. needs to stop worrying about what others are doing when she can't observe because superposition is a maddening way to describe the world, painted onto the window, she'll never see into. still hopeful things are going to work themselves out of the box. someday. for someone.
life is nothing but hard work, body aches and beer from here on out.