What is a Chemist?

2/13/2011

We are all chemists if you really take a look at just about everything you put into your body that is not shrink wrapped or canned drinks. I am about to go make a glass of iced tea and I am not just going to pour my tea into a glass. I will add some lemon to it and ice to cool it off. There you have it. Chemicals added and a catalyst to change it from room temperature to a nice cool drink. No I do not add sugar to my tea but many do. Yet more chemical reactions when you do that. When I make coffee I add sugar and cream. Not only do I sweeten the drink but I change the density and texture with both the sugar and the cream.

Cooking dinner is the greatest act of chemistry. This is where you take base components and add them together to make something that is amazing. Taking that fish you caught or purchased from the store and adding breading then cooking it in a light olive oil and you have something that was never meant to be in nature. Thanks Giving you take a turkey and add stuffing put it in the oven and ONLY IF YOU ARE GOOD you get a very juicy and amazingly tasty dinner that will help you sleep. I think we as Americans don't eat enough turkey. Even making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is an act of chemistry.

Everyone that prepares their own drinks and food are chemists. I think the colleges have diluted what is real chemistry. They want you to think you have to spend years in school learning what this chemical and that chemical can do and what happens when you add them together in certain circumstances. I totally disagree with these people! Chemistry is when you add two things together to make something different. WE DO THIS EVERY DAY!!! We are all, at worst, armature chemists! Maybe it is time we tell Yale and Harvard they have it wrong! They are raising people up to a standard that we all have the capability to do and we do it every day. I will bet you money that most of those chemists can't do what my wife does in the kitchen. I will bet you they can't make a pork chop that is as juicy and tasty as she can. In my opinion that makes her they better chemist.

Brewing is chemistry at a pretty high level. We really do take basic ingredients and put them through a complex process to make something that is so different than what we stayed with. We use single celled organisms and harness their abilities to do something really remarkable. We coddle our experiments and talk to them and hope that everything works out like we hope it will. Most of the time we are surprised to find out that we are better chemists than we actually thought we were. We as home brewers are able to do what brewing companies can't do. We can put anything into our chemical experiment and change processes and the environment to break out of the box to make things that are beyond what you can get off the shelf. What is surprising is that many of these people don't think they are master brewers when if fact they are. Am I a master brewer? No, I have not bottled anything so I have no claim to fame. Can I become a mater brewer? Yes I think I could over time. Anyone can if they think out of the box and work beyond what others do and make things that nobody ever though could be made. Making the same thing over and over is not the trade mark of a master brewer. Making things nobody ever thought could be made is that mark. Master brewers ARE some of the best chemists in the world.

Keep it bubbling!
Chuck