Continuing a day of Pasadena-centric posts, we head out to the Huntington. A fabulous museum and garden that has recently added some special documents of beer importance.
At the intersection of beer-science-history, sits Louis Pasteur. Pasteurization came from his study of fermentation and the museum has recently purchased “eight leaves of Pasteur’s lab notes on beer brewing from the 1870s”
These notes led to the advancement of beer quality by simply heating to at least 122 degrees to kill off the bad microbes that were making beer of that age spoiled and rotten.
I also found this quote from the Huntington website to show how far craft beer has made inroads. “These notes provide a key window into a particular area in the history of science, but my sense is that these may well be of interest to researchers who more and more are investigating the history of food and drink, as well as hand-crafted beer.”