Welcome back, friends. This is your beer-buddie's first correspondence from Nashville, Tennessee; Home of country music, the Titans, and a titillating selection of brews one can't help but take a nip of on a regular basis (those are nipple jokes). It's also really chilly here. Actually, it's downright cold. Cold enough to warm the hearts of the ad execs who recommend consuming beer at temperatures just above freezing. Sooner or later we're going to see beer commercials with their perfect 10 models telling us to just freeze our beer into little cubes and skate on it. The colder the beer, the less you taste it, right? Frankly all this frosty fodder makes me want to reach for a room-temp, heavy, dark beer... one with a thick frothy head and the distinct taste of something burnt. That kind of beer seems natural as we plow through winter. It has a very real warming effect, right? Friends, I'm a lot of things, smart is not one of them. So when it came time to separate the hot air from the cold hard facts I turned to my friend Eric Elmquist (My boy's wicked smart). Eric is a scientist, beer lover, and prolific cornhole player.

So, what of the super-chilled beer? (EE) When drinking something too cold, it's as simple as numbing the ability of the taste buds to differentiate the complexity of said beverage. But what does 'numbing' really mean? It could mean simply that the nerves are numbed from the very cold temperature, or it could be something entirely different. A study published in Nature [Nature 438, 1022-1025 (15 December 2005)] addresses the discovery of microsopic channels called TRPM5 in the taste buds which are triggered as temperature increases, increasing the reaction of our taste buds and thereby increasing the flavor of the product. As a result, beer tastes more bitter when it's warmer. This is why people who enjoy the bitter taste drink their beer warm, or drink their coffee black. For the ideal taste in a brewed beverage, somewhere in the middle is ideal.

How about that heat? (EE) The idea that alcohol brings warmth is a myth. While alcohol does have a lower freezing temperature than water, it is due to chemical properties, not magical warming properties. When consumed, alcohol makes you feel warmer, but that's because alcohol causes blood vessels to dilate, which shifts blood flow to the surface of the skin where nerve endings respond to changes in temperature. A gallon of 99-degree blood flowing past our natural thermometers makes us feel all warm and cozy. However in colder temperatures, more blood at the surface of the skin increases heat loss to the outside air. The reality however is that alcohol, being a colder-than-body-temperature fluid, actually takes heat away from our inner core, making us colder. In addition alcohol blunts shivering and numbs feeling, both of which are indications of the cold feeling. This combination isn't so bad in chilly weather, but in extreme conditions it could be deadly. Add to that the fact that alcohol increase dehydration (already a problem in cold weather) and you're in for a heck of a hangover!

As always, from temperatures to tastes to styles and more, beer is an amazingly rich, complex subject deserving of far more respect than it's typically given. Be sure you're on the better end of the beer lifestyle. I'll be thinking of you when I'm at The Flying Saucer sampling one of their 250+ beers. SLD out.