Indeed, Louis Pasteur studied bacteria by examining beer through a microscope. Søren Sorensen developed the Ph scale while working in the lab at the Carlsberg Brewery.
Barth, who wrote the course's textbook, leads the class from the very basics of beer, the chemistry of water, through the entire brewing process: milling, mashing, boiling, hopping, fermentation, sterilization, bottling and quality evaluation.
The course also includes a class trip to the Victory brewery in nearby Downingtown, where they'll meet Tim Wadkins, the brewery's director of quality assurance, who has a doctorate in biochemistry.
Though Barth and at least three of his colleagues in West Chester's chemistry department are homebrewers, the course is not designed to teach students how to make their own beer.
After paging through the textbook, I'd guess that even most professional brewers aren't conversant in the chemistry behind, say, sugars and starches. (Quick: What's the difference between D-glucose and L-glucose?)
During the class I visited this week, Barth looked suitably rumpled, with chalk dust covering his wool jacket and a loosened tie decorated with beer mugs. Lecturing on ion exchanges and osmosis, he quickly scribbled chemical formulas, explaining how adding O2 to water can remove unwanted iron.
I was completely lost in less than 10 minutes.
Other students furiously jotted notes, then polished off a surprise quiz in less than five minutes.
Because West Chester's campus is dry, Barth is prohibited from bringing beer into his classroom. Instead, he uses photographs and those hieroglyphic diagrams of chemical reactions.
