When you think about what the brewing industry has given the world, beer is naturally the first thing that comes to mind. It makes sense—after all, over 192 billion liters of beer were guzzled globally in 2022 alone. But given that brewing has been honing its craft for about 5,000 years, it’s not just about the beer. Here are 7 ways beer changed the world

1. Money. It’s a hit.

Given the staggering 192 billion liters of beer consumed worldwide in 2022, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that someone, somewhere is making a significant profit. While it might seem logical to think that brewing companies are the main beneficiaries, the truth is more complex. Revenue flows through the entire supply chain, encompassing all the products and services provided to the brewing companies, as well as those directed toward consumers.

According to 2019 estimates, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the global beer industry stands at USD 555 billion. To put that into perspective, if the global brewing industry’s GDP were compared to that of a country, it would rank 26th out of 177 countries, nestled just behind Belgium, Sweden, and Norway and surpassing the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Israel. That would indeed make it quite an impressive, beer-fueled financial powerhouse.

2. Jobs For Everyone!

The substantial gross domestic product generated by the global brewing industry does more than just translate into economic figures; it drives significant employment. Estimates from 2019 indicate that the industry supports about 23 million jobs worldwide. This is more than the entire workforce of Canada, which stands at an estimated 20.4 million, and is on par with Italy’s employed population of approximately 23.7 million. This highlights not only the economic impact of the brewing industry but its vital role in job creation globally.

3. Fighting the Germs!

If you are reading this, you’ve already heard a thousand times that water was unsafe in ancient times, so naturally people of all times have preferred some alcohol in their drink to water full of nasty germs! Well, that may be a bit exaggerated (making beer is a LOT of work!) beer would have certainly been a preference in any large-scale human settlement.

Let’s dive into this a bit. One of the lesser-known benefits of the brewing process is its inherent ability to inhibit microbial spoilage, thanks to a combination of factors. These include the elevated temperatures during wort production, the antimicrobial properties of hops, the dominance of yeast during fermentation that outcompetes other microbes, as well as the presence of dissolved carbon dioxide and alcohol, and the acidic nature of wort and beer.

Together, these elements help purify the water used in brewing. For example, with moderate alcohol levels (over 4% ABV), pathogens like E.coli and Salmonella are unable to thrive in beer. This purifying effect has been utilized for centuries to provide a safe, drinkable alternative to water, which may otherwise have dubious purity.

4. Guinness Tests Against Cancer!

Now you are thinking: come on, there is no way beer ever saved someone from cancer. Alcohol – a natural poison – certainly never saved anybody. But the scientific methods for quality control bled over science all over the world. Here is an example: When testing new medicines, it’s really important to figure out if the drug actually works differently compared to a dummy pill, known as a placebo, given to another group. The go-to method for making this comparison is something called the Student’s T-test. And here’s a fun fact: this method didn’t come from a lab or a medical study; it actually came from the Guinness Brewing Company!

At the end of the 19th century, Guinness was keen to adopt a scientific experimental approach to enhance their products and brewing processes. One of the significant challenges in production brewing was that due to operational pressures, any trial would generate a small amount of data compared to the large volume from the production plant. This discrepancy made it challenging to meaningfully compare the two datasets to determine the trial’s impact. Enter William Gosset, a mathematics and chemistry graduate employed by Guinness, who tackled this problem of limited trial data. He developed a statistical test that enabled effective comparisons to be made.

This test proved to be extremely useful, and naturally, Gosset was eager to share it with the broader scientific community. However, he encountered a hurdle: Guinness’s policy at the time prohibited him from publishing his work under his own name or associating it with the Guinness brand. Therefore, Gosset opted to publish his findings under the pseudonym taken from the title of the notebook he used at the time, « The Student’s Science Notebook. » Consequently, he simply called himself « Student » (without any initials), and his method became known as Student’s T-test. This test has since been widely adopted across various fields, including medicine, industrial quality control, education, and psychology—its applications are extensive and varied.

5. Water Safety is in the Hand of the Beer Holder

During the 1870s, France faced issues with its wine and beer—not due to poor quality, but because the products spoiled quickly, a problem we’d now refer to as poor shelf flavor stability. This issue significantly impacted their ability to be transported to export markets, resulting in considerable financial losses. To address this, France called upon the esteemed Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur was ideally suited for the challenge, bringing with him his recently developed germ theory. He demonstrated, contrary to the prevailing beliefs of the time, that food and beverages spoiled and fermented due to contamination with germs (bacteria and yeast), which were invisible to the naked eye, and not because of any ‘spontaneous’ reaction.

At the time, it was known that exposing foods in their containers (jars and cans) to prolonged high temperatures, such as immersion in boiling water (~100 degrees C), would extend the shelf life of food, though the underlying mechanism was not understood. However, such high temperatures were not suitable for beer and wine as they would degrade the products.

Through his research, Pasteur discovered that exposing these beverages to much lower temperatures (~60 degrees C) for shorter periods, which did not cause thermal degradation, effectively extended their shelf life by reducing the number of spoilage microbes. This finding has been further explored for various specific microbes, allowing the application of varied combinations of temperature and time to many heat-sensitive liquid products. One of the most common applications has been the pasteurization of milk, which, in addition to extending its shelf life, has significantly reduced the prevalence of milkborne disease outbreaks.

6. Hop against Cancer

Where would we be without hops? Well, for one thing, we might still be in the Middle Ages. The widespread use of hops to impart bitterness and aroma in brewing only began to take hold in the 13th century. Beyond their role in brewing, however, hops have also opened the door to a potential cancer treatment.

For the past 20 years, a specific component found in female hop cones, known as xanthohumol (XN), has been researched as a possible cancer treatment. XN was first identified back in 1913 by Power and his team, who were exploring various hop components for their bitterness qualities useful in brewing. Nowadays, XN is extracted from CO2-extracted hops, a method widely adopted in the brewing industry for its efficiency compared to traditional hop leaves and cones.

The potential of XN to combat cancer stems from its ability to induce apoptosis, a natural process of programmed cell death that dysfunctional cancer cells often evade. While XN has shown promise in inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, it is not without its complications. In the body, XN is metabolized into 8-PN (8-prenylnaringenin), a phytoestrogen that, paradoxically, may encourage the growth of certain cancerous tumors—an unwanted side effect. However, research into synthesized derivatives of XN that can trigger apoptosis without converting into 8-PN has shown some encouraging results.

7. Yeast for Youth!

Brewers have only been knowingly using yeast to ferment beer since the 19th century due to the work of luminaries such as Pasteur and Hansen who respectively identified yeast as the organism responsible for fermentation and isolated and grew single species of yeast. This led to brewers preferentially identifying and using targeted species and strains of yeast which exhibited beneficial brewing performance. For the last 50 years, yeast has been fulfilling a very different function for humans, and that is as a model organism to help study human aging.

Yeast is an ideal organism to use for this purpose as it has been studied extensively in its role in brewing and baking and elsewhere, hence much is known about its molecular make-up and processes. Its genome (the complete set of genetic information in an organism) was sequenced in 1996 and much of this information has been shown to apply to human cells.

From a practical perspective, yeast is a far simpler organism to handle in laboratories than animal cells, with only simple growth media required and it grows quickly and has a short life span allowing rapid experimentation. Much progress has been made in defining which genetic processes are involved in the aging of yeast whilst testing these for significance in humans.

Conclusion

The next time you’re enjoying a beer, take a moment to appreciate the broader contributions of the brewing industry. It’s not just about the refreshment; consider the industry’s role in providing jobs, generating income, offering a safe drink with an extended shelf life, and even impacting scientific and medical fields. Whether it’s demonstrating the statistical significance of new discoveries, exploring potential cancer treatments, or advancing the study of aging, these are all gifts stemming from the humble origins of brewing. All this, from a delicious beer!

Relevant resources on brewing’s contribution to Science

• Beer’s Global Economic Footprint, Oxford Economics. Jan 2022.
• Growth and Survival of Foodborne Pathogens in Beer, Menz. G., Aldred. P., and Vriesekoop. F. Journal of Food Protection. v74. n10. 2011. pp1670-1675.
• Enhancing the Microbiological Stability of Malt and Beer – A Review, Vaughan. A., O’Sullivan. T., and van Sinderen. D. Journal of the Institute of Brewing.  111(4). 2005. pp355-371.
• The role of t test in beer brewing. Trkulja. V. and Hrabac. P. Croatian Medical Journal.  61. 2020. pp69-72.
• The Probable Error of a Mean. Student. Biometrika. v6. n1. 1908. pp1-25.
• Pasteurisation: Pasteur’s greatest contribution to health. Currier. R. The Lancet. v4. Mar 2023. 129-130.
• Louis Pasteur: Between Myth and Reality. Cavaillon. J-M. and Legout. S. Biomolecules. 12. 2022. 596.
• Pasteurised Milk Ordinance, US Dept of Health and Human Services. 2019.
• Xanthohumol from Hop: Hope for cancer prevention and treatment. Girisa. S. et al. IUBMB Life. Aug. 73(8). 2021. pp1016-1044.
• Using Yeast to Discover the Fountain of Youth: Beer, Bread and mechanisms of aging. Kaeberlein. M., McVey. M., and Guarente. L. Science of Aging Knowledge Environment. v2001. n1.

Bob Stafford is an accomplished engineering and beverage consultant with over 25 years of experience in industry and academia in the fields of process & product design, process & product research & development, process improvement & innovation, value extraction, and training & education.

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