Review by Simone Silcock, Statoil

With a title like “A Geological Tour of Beers of Europe” you know that the September Aberdeen PESGB lecture was the YP hosted lecture.  We welcomed back Dr Stephen Cribb who had previously presented the geology of whiskey back in 2013, this time it was the turn of beer.  Not a beer drinker myself I learned a great deal from this lecture, apparently beer making is bucket and spade compared to whiskey making, with the chemistry more simple than distilling.  In simple terms we can divide Europe into wine in the south, spirits in the north with the central beer dividing these.

Geology starts to play a role when we look at the vast amount of water required in the brewing process.  Beer has been brewed in the Burton area since the 6th century and this is where we start to understand the process.  The naturally occurring groundwater in this region with Triassic salts giving us the bitters.  When we introduce transport into the equation the IPA, or Indian pale ale, where hops were added to preserve the beer when being transported to India.  In the London area the groundwater is rich in carbonates, which ruins the fermentation process and we get out dark and sweet beers.  Similarly in Dublin the calcium carbonates in the groundwater give us stout.  Listen out for the quote from Dylan Thomas on Guinness drinking during the talk!

So we get our bitters, milds and stouts from the British Isles, in Germany, Dortmund has similar groundwater chemistry to Burton; sweetness from sodium & chloride. Munich similar to Dublin; sweet dark brown stout.  In the Czech Republic we get lager, Pilsen, there is not a lot of anything in the water and it is poorly hopped so is kept underground in barrels.  Wrexham has similar water to Pilsen and introduced lager making to the UK.  In Scotland we find tenants lager in Glasgow, and Edinburgh has the heavy through to light beers, with a geology of old red to Carboniferous and blended waters thus offering a big range. The Belgium brewing region uses complex hops that don’t add flavour due to water with very little chemistry so they add fruit flavours. Lastly, back to the Highlands where we learn that heather is often used as a local flavouring.  Stephen finishing with a great beer drinking quote and we moved on to sampling the range of beers from the lecture.  Thanks once again to Dr Stephen Cribb for a great evening in Aberdeen.

Join Dr Stephen Cribb on Tuesday at the Geological Society of London from 6pm to hear this talk
Open to all PESGB Members