Hi Sean. You wrote: <It didn't seem to be any more carbonated than the Cokes I usually buy>
Aha! Modern drinks are getting very complicated with their delivery chemistry... Guinness, and many other beers, are actually fizzed up on Nitrogen rather than Carbon Dioxide. This has commercial advantages in storage life and so on. In the UK, beer is dispensed, not with CO2 as in days of yore, but with something called Brewing Gas, a sterile cocktail of CO2 and N2. Does nothing for flavour but makes the beer last longer. Before the days of gas delivered beer we did, of course, have buxom barmaids working their pectorals on Hand pumped Ale, which delivered a foaming pint of fresh Bitter into a crystal clear jug. But that isn't the subject of this mail, sadly. In the UK, and maybe in the rest of the world too, beer is often packed in cans that contain a 'widget' (Guinness initiated term for these devices). When the can is opened, the Widget releases a stream of high velocity gas which stirs up the beer, so that when it is poured it develops a 'head' or a thick layer of sticky unpleasant foam, which the marketing people will have the proletariat believe is a good thing. The gas used in thick beers like Guinness is in fact artificially introduced Nitrogen, but as this stuff stays in solution much more readily than CO2 it needs a higher velocity gas stream to excite the beer to lose some gas and therefore form the glutinous 'head' so beloved of advertisers, but not of Ale afficianado's. The N2 in Guinness is also blamed for the fact that one gets Hiccups more easily from getting drunk on Guiinness than say a 'proper' live warm flat Ale like Brakespears 'Old Peculiar', which is brewed with yeast and Malt and is fizzy because of the natural CO2 produced by the fermentation process. But I digress. The point of all this is that your Giant Bottle of Dr. Pepper may be fizzed up on a different gas than Coke, and may have a much different rate of evolution of dissolved gasses, whatever they are. The warning label may be there to protect against law suits etc., or even used as an implied sales aid, as in "Our sugar solution with flavourings is much more fizzy than THEIR sugar solution with flavourings". Just a few ramblings on a subject dearer to my heart than most... Chris Dupres Surrey, UK. --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
