ARTSETC.
Carbonation: Chemistry behind prickly past
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by Jason Engelhart
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Champagne, legend has it, is the invention of a Benedictine
monk named Dom Pérignon,
after whom one of the world’s most famous brands of bubbly is named. His
invention has produced a slew of imitation sparkling wines, a term that refers
to champagne-like drinks made outside the Champagne region of France.
Before Pérignon pioneered his peppy libation, bubbles in
wine were actually the bane of winemakers’ existence. Occasionally, residual
yeast would find its way into wine, causing the bottles to shatter or their
corks to shoot out. Somewhere along the line, though, Pérignon must have
discovered the wine from these “defective” bottles tasted pretty good. Realizing
this, he began to employ strong bottles and good, solid corks in order to make
a purposefully sparkling wine.
It is little wonder no one discovered this carbonation
method, called the méthode champenoise,
before Pérignon; it is a very complicated process. Because most champagnes are
dry — that is, they have almost no residual sugar — and because winemakers
filter out yeast before bottling, it is necessary to add sugar and yeast to the
bottle to produce carbonation. This mixture is called the liqueur de tirage, which is French for “bottling liquor,” and the
marriage of its two ingredients produces the tiny bubbles immortalized in a Don
Ho song and fuzzy memories of countless New Year’s Eves.
The yeast live a very good life in the bottle, blithely
eating nothing but sugar and producing gas all day. Indeed, it is a life I have
long dreamed of living, but it cannot last forever. Eventually, the yeast die,
and they sink to the neck of the bottle due to a process called riddling, which
involves manually turning the bottles or having a machine do it.
Once the wine has aged enough and the riddling has pushed
all of the dead yeast to the neck, it is time for disgorging. Although this
sounds like something that should be kept oneself, it really just involves
dipping the neck of the bottle into a very cold solution to freeze the yeast
and force it out of the bottle.
At the end of this long process, the méthode champenoise produces an almost ethereal beverage, one that
is prickly on the palate but smooth and refreshing in the throat.
Not to be outdone by champagne (or “sparkling wine,” if you
want to be proper), beer also became carbonated at around the same time.
Traditionally, the tasty barley sodas had been fermented in large vats,
allowing all the precious bubbles to escape. However, brewmasters of the 17th
century discovered their ales would have a pleasant effervescence if they put
them into sealed containers. It took a while for the bubbly, bottled beer to
catch on, but once it did it quickly dominated the market.
The history of carbonated soft drinks is about a hundred
years shorter than the history of bubbly booze. By the turn of the 18th
century, there were plenty of sparkling wines and fizzy beers available, but it
would be a long time until teetotalers would be able to enjoy carbonated
drinks.
In 1772, an English chemist by the name of Joseph Priestly
discovered the process for capturing carbon dioxide in water. Just 11 years
later, Jacob Schweppe, of ginger ale and tonic water fame, began selling fizzy
water in the U.K.
Sparkling water is not the only application of Priestly’s
invention, however. In fact, much of the beer and sparkling wine sold in the
world has at least some artificial carbonation in it. Priestly’s process allows
brewmasters and sparkling winemakers to use carbon dioxide to correct for
batch-to-batch differences in effervescence, producing a consistent mouthfeel consumers
can identify with a brand.
But the most important application of artificial carbonation
came in 1819, when an American named Samuel Fahnestock started the world’s
first soda fountain. His pioneering mixture of the bubbly stuff and flavored
syrup produced the delicious, tooth-rotting nectar on which so many of us grew
up.
The American soda market would not be complete until 1886, however,
when an enterprising pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton invented a syrup
that would come to define the world’s soft drinks. He dubbed his mixture of
sugar, vanilla, the kola nut, the coca leaf (the source material for cocaine,
which is no longer in the soda’s recipe) and other flavorings of Coca-Cola, and
it quickly proved to be a hit. In fact, one could make the case that Coke has
done more than any other beverage to spread fizzy drinks to the world.
Whether in champagne, beer or soft drinks, carbonation makes
otherwise pedestrian potables far more interesting. Especially on the
beautiful, sunny, warm days that inevitably accompany spring finals week, a
cold, carbonated drink can refresh and rejuvenate like no still beverage can.
Anonymous (April 22, 2008 @ 5:09pm):
maybe you can search a little more i think that i ahve to be like one f touser iinwi
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