As someone who writes a blog about beer, I feel acutely the responsibility on me regularly to drink different beers and tell you about them.
So what have I been drinking over the past month or so? Reader, it grieves me to say… nothing.
This is not something crude and virtue-signalling like “Dry January”. Rather it is that I have long been battling minor but irritating health challenges, the details of which I will spare you. But for which the received medical opinion points to a six week sharp shock of food low in FODMAP. Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols. As diets go, it’s actually not bad. But substances which feature the dreaded FODMAP encompass all alcoholic drinks, including beer.
This period of fast comes to an end (slightly earlier than would strictly be the case) on the occasion of my daughter’s 18th birthday, which falls on 18 February. I am then advised to shift to a Mediterranean diet, which includes the smug consumption of red wine, with beer in the “rarely” category.
This has, however, inspired me to take up the medical cudgels for beer by reviewing the medical evidence out there to challenge the assumption that it might be a bad thing.
The case for the prosecution can be found in the cheerfully named Global Burden of Disease study from 2016. This concluded that there was no minimum level of alcohol consumption that minimises health problems. A depressingly large number of academics put their name to this, too many to list. So I will only name and shame the people who bankrolled them - Bill and Melinda Gates.
The counter-argument is based on two elements present in beer - probiotics (ie friendly bacteria) and polyphenols. A shout out at this point to the academic researchers of Spain for having explored this issue in a very reputable way. In November 2019, researchers at Malaga University Hospital established that the polyphenols in beer could indeed interact with gut microbiota to positive effect. This was followed up in October 2020 by the Institute of Food Science at the Spanish National Research Council, who confirmed the potentially beneficial effect of moderate beer consumption on intestinal health.
For a long time, the idea of beer containing probiotics was challenged by scientists who held that anything beneficial was killed off by the fermentation process. Step forward a wonderful transatlantic collaboration. In November 2019, the University of Nebraska got together with Professor Eric Claasen of Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit and determined that bottle conditioned beer retained its probiotic qualities. So if you are keen to nurture your microbiome, the magic words to look out for on a bottle are “refermentee en bouteille”. Many of the stronger Belgian ales have it; so does Hoegaarden if you want something more gentle.
We must, unfortunately, maintain a sense of proportion. Beer does indeed contain polyphenols, but our Spanish friends noted that the polyphenol content in red wine is higher by an order of magnitude. And everyone seems to add the caveat that “once you drink too much of it, the balance of advantage turns negative”. But then again, beer should always be about quality not quantity.
Having come across the University of Nebraska, I was moved to dig a bit deeper. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a major hop growing state, they have a very strong Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, which has as its mission to “enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Nebraska and the world”. Last year, for example, Professor David Mabie carried out an excellent piece of research on the optimisation of hop drying and storage techniques.
Their Social Science Department has shown a determination not to be left behind. In December 2017, Abbey Riemer, Sarah Gervais and David de Lillo published a paper called “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder”. The aim of this research was to test the whole “beer goggles” theory of human intimacy and reproduction (as best summarised in the learned T-shirt slogan: “Beer: helping ugly people to have sex since [insert random date]”). They took two sample young male populations and gave them large amounts to drink. One group received a beverage that was actually alcoholic; the other received something that only imitated the taste and smell of alcohol. They were then shown pictures of women. The “alcohol” group were more inclined to look at the womens’ breasts than their faces. But - fascinatingly - this was not true in the case of women that they rated as “intelligent” or “warm”.
There is a moral there. Somewhere. Academic research at its finest. But I know what you are thinking, dear reader. This cries out for research with two samples of women to see if their line of sight is impacted in the same way. Over to you, my friends in Nebraska.
So I am now counting down the days until I will allow myself to taste a beer again. One of the complications of beer for people like me with delicate constitutions is the fact that wheat, barley and rye are all gluten grains, and gluten can be rough on the digestion. So massive praise to Siren Craft Brewery for their Futurist gluten free session IPA - by a mile the best gluten free beer I have ever tasted, and simply a great beer.