Drink up!

It is good for you, even if they don't want to admit it. [Link]

So the more you drink—up to two drinks a day for woman, and four for men—the less likely you are to die. You may have heard that before, and you may have heard it doubted. But the consensus of the science is overwhelming: It is true.

Although I dispute many of the caveats offered against the life-saving benefits of alcohol, I will endorse two. First, these outcome data do not apply to women with the “breast-cancer gene” mutations (BRCA 1 or 2) or a first-degree (mother, sister) relation who has had breast cancer, for whom alcohol consumption is far riskier. Second, drinking 10 drinks Friday and Saturday nights does not convey the benefits of two or three drinks daily, even though your weekly totals would be the same: Frequent, heavy binge drinking is unhealthy. But then you knew that already, didn’t you? If you don’t distinguish binge drinking from daily moderate drinking, that would be due to Americans’ addiction-phobia, which causes them to interpret any daily drinking as addictive.

The global summary of alcohol’s benefits raises a key question: How much do you have to drink regularly before you become as likely to die as an abstainer? We’ll see below.

First, let’s address some typical objections to these findings. Of course, abstainers may not drink because they are already ill. Thus the meta-analysis relied on studies that eliminated subjects who are abstaining due to illness, or else contrast drinkers with lifetime abstainers. Additionally, objectors note, drinkers showing such longevity may be wine-sniffling, upper-middle-class professionals (virtually no study has ever found that the type of alcohol consumed impacts these results), people who exercise, eat right, and don’t smoke. To counter this argument, researchers from the prestigious Harvard Health Professionals Study published a paper which found that even men with four healthy life factors (diet, weight, non-smoking, exercise) had one-third to one-half the risk of suffering a heart attack if they had one to two drinks daily, relative to comparable men in each category who abstained.

Now let’s turn quickly to four special topics—biological mechanisms; cognitive benefits of drinking; the resveratrol myth; and the answer to our key question: If you drink just a little too much alcohol, doesn’t your death rate shoot up way over that of abstainers? (This is the so-called “J–shaped curve.”)

Auto-Brewery Syndrome

Making beer in your gut. [Link]

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.

So the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.

Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut.

That's right, folks. According to Cordell and McCarthy, the man's intestinal tract was acting like his own internal brewery.

The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy reported the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.

When we first read the case study, we were more than a little skeptical. It sounded crazy, a phenomenon akin to spontaneous combustion. I mean, come on: Could a person's gut really generate that much ethanol?

Brewer's yeast is in a whole host of foods, including breads, wine and, of course, beer (hence, the name). The critters usually don't do any harm. They just flow right through us. Some people even takeSaccharomyces as a probiotic supplement.

But it turns out that in rare cases, the yeasty beasts can indeed take up long-term residency in the gut and possibly cause problems, says Dr. Joseph Heitman, a microbiologist at Duke University.

"Researchers have shown unequivocally that Saccharomyces can grow in the intestinal tract," Heitman tells The Salt. "But it's still unclear whether it's associated with any disease" — or whether it could make someone drunk from the gut up.

The Golden Age of American Beer

Mmm, beer. [Link]

Today's golden age of beer has been a long time coming. We haven't drank this much beer from this many breweries for a hundred years. Sure, most of the 204 million barrels of beer made in America last year came from two monstrous brewing conglomerates--Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors--but 97% of the breweries in operation are small, independently owned craft breweries. The big are at their biggest, but the underdogs are gaining steam.

George Washington’s Personal Beer Recipe

Being made by a brewery. [Link]

The New York Public Library is teaming up with the Coney Island Brewing company to recreate Ol' Washington's beer using his handwritten recipe. It's going to be called: Fortitude's Founding Father Brew and will only be available during the NYPL's Centennial gala on May 23rd. If you can't make it to the part-ay, here's the recipe in full:

"To Make Small Beer:

Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30 Gall[ons] into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons] Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses (sic) into the cooler & St[r]ain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover it over with a Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask-leave the bung open till it is almost don[e] Working-Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed."

Giger Bar

Drink in a creepy bar. Very creepy. [Link]

Looking to quaff a drink in a watering hole that resembles a xenomorph's hive? Famed Alien designer H.R. Giger has designed several "Giger Bars" throughout his career, and you can still visit two of them in Switzerland.

The baby wall is watching me again!

Qwest Field has some explaining to do

About why their large beer (which costs $1.25 more than the small) appears to contain the exact same amount of liquid. [Link]

A few observant fans made a little video showing how the liquid in a large cup fits perfectly into the small cup. So really, those large brews are just an optical illusion, disguised in a taller vessel. Shame on you, Qwest Field. Shame. On. You.

Pride of Pyongyang

North Korean commercial for a locally produced beer. [Link]

North Korea's latest launch is not missiles, but a TV advertising campaign for a locally-brewed beer.

In a rare nod to commercial motives in the resolutely communist nation, the TV advert features a thirsty worker holding a mug of frothy beer.

Young women in traditional Korean dress are shown serving trays of beer to men in Western suits.

Billed as the "Pride of Pyongyang", the advert promises drinkers that the beer will help ease stress.

"It represents the new look of Pyongyang," the two-and-a-half minute advert says. "It will be a familiar part of our lives."

Taedonggang Beer Factory has been making the brew since buying a British brewery and shipping it lock, stock and barrel from the UK in 2002.

The beer has been occasionally available in South Korea and is said to be of high quality.

Onw cool robot, one creepy robot

Cool. A beer segway. [Link]

It's important to keep your guests properly hydrated at a party, but it's hard to not feel awfully demeaned while wandering around with a cocktail tray. Since hiring servants is so passe, the solution is Table Robot from Laskmi-Do Corp, a two-wheeled, self-balancing bot that features a particularly unsteady looking design. It's tall and slender, balancing a tabletop on two scrawny little wheels, a feat it showed off at last week's FOOMA Japan, Tokyo's biggest gathering for foodies and related geeks.

Creepy Hand. [Link]

Sure, a few still photos of the sushi-making Chef Robot now on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo are all well and good, but there's nothing quite like a high def video to really bring all that creepiness home, and one has now surfaced courtesy of the brave folks at DigInfo.

How to brew beer in a coffee maker, using only materials commonly found on a modestly sized oceanographic research vessel.

For the next time you are on a research vessel at sea. [Link]

Beer brewing is as much an art as a science. Finding the right blend of delicate grains, hops, malt, adding just the right flavoring agents, boiling for exactly enough time to release the tannins, starches, humic acids from you wort, these are all skills that take a lifetime to master. Perfect beer is meticulously planned and carefully crafted.

Screw that.

You’re six days into a 2 month expedition, and if you were lucky enough to not be on a dry ship, it’s de facto dry by now anyway. You’re eying the ethanol stores, the crew is eying each other, and all hell will break loose if y’all don’t get some sweet water soon. This is no time for artistry.

This is not, as a rule, a terribly good beer (though, with a good brewmaster on board, it can be). This is a beer to pass the time. I can guarantee that if you are careful, it will be at least as good as the cheapest commercial alternative.