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How is IBU measured?

30 Dec 2022

I tried over 50 new beers in 2022. From Les Grands Bois here in Quebec all the way to Ucluelet Brewing across the country, my friends and I embarked on our own sort of brewery tour. The most...

The Sweet and Sticky Science of Sugar

3 Dec 2021

Sugar is sweet and sticky.  That’s a fact.  In fact, during the reign of Edward the Confessor in the early eleventh century, "ale tasters" were employed to check on the work of brewers.  They would...

The Link Between Alcohol and Breast Cancer

10 Jul 2019

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

The Truth Behind "Beer Before Liquor"

6 Jun 2019

Have you ever heard the saying "beer before liquor never been sicker"? Or “liquor before beer, you’re in the clear”? What about “grape or grain but never the twain”? Well, it turns out that there...

Beer Can Survive a Nuclear Fallout

8 Mar 2018

In 1957 the U.S. government conducted a study aptly named “The Effect of Nuclear Explosions on Commercially Packaged Beverages”. The researchers placed cans and bottles of beer and other drinks in...

Monks and Beer

10 May 2017

In the Middle Ages much of beer brewing was carried out by monks. Water is a source of many disease causing organisms which cannot survive in alcohol. Trial and error demonstrated that beer...

Beer Foam and Artificial Hips

20 Mar 2017

Forty eight years ago there was an epidemic of heart failure in Quebec City. The clue was that the thirty men affected were all beer drinkers. In a round about way, the culprit was the introduction...

Why does lipstick cause beer to lose its foam?

20 Mar 2017

It just wouldn’t be the same without the foam, would it? Beer I’m talking about. You don’t want the glass to be full of it, but you certainly want enough to tickle your lips when you go bottoms up....

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