Barley is the basis of the best beers

Answers for Globle, Metazooa, and Chronogram from June 17 - June 23

The Trainwreck Labs Newsletter

Coming to your inbox every Monday with educational fun-facts and all the answers to Trainwreck Labs games from the past week.

This week, we have…

  • Newsletter sponsors

  • A fun fact inspired by a recent Metaflora answer

  • Answers to last week's games

  • A language update to Metazooa and Metaflora

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Barley is the basis of the best beers

Barley may come in first at beer making, but grapes always crush it at the biathlon. Image generated by DALL-E.

The art of beer making dates back thousands of years. Archeologists have found chemical traces of the drink on the insides of jars from 7,000 years ago, and the first known recipe from 3,000 years later. Although these artifacts are from the Middle East, many civilizations invented beer independently, and a variety of ingredients and methods were used. Modern brewers, unlike their ancestors, use a much more consistent set of ingredients across the world. This list prominently includes Metaflora answer #266 right at the top: barley.

More than just the grain, every step of this process has evolved over the timespan we’ve been drinking brews. For example, the yeast which is necessary for fermentation used to have to come from baked bread or from old jars that had yeast growing within the cracks. In very stark contrast, modern brewers can precisely select the species and exact amount of yeast in each batch. As well, hops flowers used to be one of many ways to flavour beer, but they persisted to become the winning flavour by also being a stabilizing agent. With hops, beer could last a long time without spoiling. Furthermore, beer is iconically a fizzy drink because of carbon dioxide produced by fermentation. Some of today’s big brewers use filters in their machinery that remove the naturally created bubbles, so the fizz is added back in artificially.

But none of those ingredients matter without a source of sugar for the fermentation. When making wine, the sugars of fruit are easily released by crushing the fruit into juice. For beer, however, the sugar is trapped in the starch of grains, so you have to get a bit more crafty. Brewers access the sugar by tricking the grain into germinating: that is, soaking them in water then drying them out before they can sprout. This process is called malting, and malted barley has more sugar for fermentation than any other any grain. That’s why barley is most brewers’ number one choice.

Of course, there are nonetheless plenty of non-barley based beers available. Wheat, being abundant and similar to barley, is an obvious choice. Wheat beers tend to have a lighter, fruitier taste. Another grain, rice, can also be fermented, but the fermentation process is much more efficient so it produces more alcohol and is typically classified as a wine.

Although beer-making today is a lot more streamlined and consistent than the methods of ancient peoples, there is no single right way to brew a batch. Hidden in the fancy marketing of pretty fonts and colours, the label of a bottle of craft beer might have some more interesting information about what makes that brew unique. Take a look the next time you crack open a cold one!

Answers to last week's games

Monday, June 17 to Sunday, June 23.

Globle

  • Jun 17 Serbia

  • Jun 18 Lebanon

  • Jun 19 South Africa

  • Jun 20 Bangladesh

  • Jun 21 Mongolia

  • Jun 22 Ethiopia

  • Jun 23 Dominican Rep.

  • Jun 24 Play now!

Globle: Capitals

  • Jun 17 Reykjavik

  • Jun 18 Beijing

  • Jun 19 Washington DC

  • Jun 20 Nuku`alofa

  • Jun 21 Port-Vila

  • Jun 22 Warsaw

  • Jun 23 Singapore

  • Jun 24 Play now!

Chronogram

  • #443 Cleopatra

  • #444 Albert Einstein

  • #445 Francisco de Goya

  • #446 Douglas MacArthur

  • #447 Alexander Graham Bell

  • #448 Johannes Brahms

  • #449 Che Guevara

  • #450 Play now!

Fictogram

  • #211 Dana Scully

  • #212 Elizabeth Swann

  • #213 Hagar the Horrible

  • #214 Oskar Schell

  • #215 Spock

  • #216 Darth Vader

  • #217 Jon Arbuckle

  • #218 Play now!

Metazooa

  • #322 banana slug

  • #323 weasel

  • #324 termite

  • #325 badger

  • #326 sperm whale

  • #327 sea urchin

  • #328 hercules beetle

  • #329 Play now!

Metaflora

  • #261 senna

  • #262 avocado

  • #263 baobab

  • #264 bok choy

  • #265 bamboo

  • #266 barley

  • #267 pumpkin

  • #268 Play now!

Linxicon

The following are the shortest paths from last week:

  • #126 proud -> effective -> efficacy -> medication -> prescription

  • #127 era -> eras -> history -> paperwork -> permit

  • #128 literature -> authorities -> official

  • #129 beginning -> initiate -> transact -> trade

  • #130 boundary -> borderline -> mediocre -> terrible

  • #131 acknowledge -> announce -> commercial

  • #132 member -> nonmember -> exclude -> ignore

  • #133 Play now!

Forgeous

"Marion Lenbach (1892–1947), the Artist's Daughter" by Franz von Lenbach


Forgery of the week, from June 23
93.3% accurate

Lenbach, Franz von. Marion Lenbach (1892–1947), the Artist's Daughter. 1900, oil paint on canvas, 149.5 cm x 105.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no. 436876.

Play Forgeous for June 24.

Metazooa is now available in German!

…and Metaflora too! You can now play Metazooa in 7 languages and Metaflora in 3. If you can beat both games in all available languages, I’ll send you a medal of multilingual honour in the mail.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!

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