Tag Archives: fermentation

Originally published January 24, 2014 by the US National Library of Medicine Circulating Now welcomes guest bloggers Diane Wendt and Mallory Warner from the Division of Medicine and Science at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As curators of our most recent exhibition, From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry, Diane and Mallory spent months researching …

This article was originally published in the Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, April 7, 1877, pp. 827-828 REVIEW On Fermentation. By P. Schützenberger (Director at the Chemical Laboratory at the Sorbonne). H.S. King and Co. London: 1876 This work forms the 20th volume of the International Scientific Series, and as might be expected from the pen of the author, it constitutes …

Louis Pasteur first devoted himself to the study of fermentation in 1856, when he is approached by M. Bigo, a local industrialist in Lille, and asked for advice concerning the production of alcohol in beet juice. Apparently Bigo was experiencing large vats of beet juice turning sour instead of alcoholic as expected. Pasteur agreed to help with the problem and …

This is an excerpt from the Discovery Channel production How Beer Saved the World. Beer was the basis of modern medicine. It all started in 1850s with scientist Louis Pasteur. He invented pasteurization. Tragically, people always link him to this, milk. But he was actually studying this: beer. Some people think he was looking at milk, but in fact, he …

This brewing process, known as spontaneous fermentation, became the standard in brewing beer until 1860 when master scientist, Louis Pasteur, was able to scientifically explain how fermentation occurs (i.e. yeast). Read full article…

…it was in 1857 that Louis Pasteur discovered that yeast generated carbon dioxide as a product of fermentation and it is, of course, the presence of this gas trapped in bubbles by the elastic strands of the protein gluten that causes the bread to rise. Read the full article…

It took scientists such as Louis Pasteur to take yeast from the metaphysical realm into something that we can now understand and manipulate. There are two basic styles of brewer’s yeast: ale and lager. Ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae – “sugar fungus ale”) works at warm temperatures (15-25C) in the brewery and forms a vast blanket of froth on top of …

Single-celled yeast organisms were first used in baking and fermentation 4,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Centuries later, famed French microbiologist Louis Pasteur discovered that alcohol was the natural by-product of yeast fermentation. Read the full article…

“In 1876, Louis Pasteur brought beer forward by describing the basis for fermentation that beer was fermented not by chemicals but by microorganisms–that is, yeast. He noted that bacteria, mold, and wild yeast were often responsible for the sour beer that plagued France and other countries. With this new understanding, he and other scientists began to refine techniques that could …

An excerpt from Bacteria in Relation to Plant Diseases, published in 1905 Among the multitude of workers in animal pathology and bacteriology during the last thirty-five years certain men tower far above the rest, their contributions to science having been more conspicuous and their imprint on their generation more lasting. If France is mentioned, we think at once of Pasteur, …