Beer

Let's talk about beer, since it lives in the fridge door and people rarely think about why it behaves the way it does.

A freshly poured beer crackles in the glass. It comes from grain — barley, mostly — malted to bring out a sweet, earthy flavor, then fermented by yeast into alcohol and bubbles. Those bubbles are carbon dioxide, trapped by the yeast's work and held in by cold and pressure. That's why beer poured warm goes flat fast: heat pushes the gas out, just like it pushes smell out of anything.

Choose beer with your nose before your mouth. A fresh bottle smells clean, a little bready, sometimes flowery from the hops. A stale one smells like wet cardboard — that's oxidation, air doing slow damage. Look at the foam too. Good beer holds a collar of foam for a minute or two. If it dies instantly, the glass was dirty or the beer was tired.

Some people say beer should be ice-cold to taste good. No! Too cold and your tongue goes numb, and you taste nothing — no malt, no hops, nothing. That's the mistake: people freeze the flavor out of their own glass, then wonder why cheap beer and good beer taste the same to them.

Per 100 g, beer carries about 43 kcal, 3.55 g of carbs, 0.46 g of protein, no fat. Small numbers, but they add up if you drink without counting.