Kevin Wepasnick, Beer Homebrewer, Featured in C&EN Article

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Kevin Wepasnick, Beer Homebrewer, Featured in
CEN Article

• BY
• Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc.
• http//www.andersonmaterials.com/

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Our own Dr. Kevin Wepasnick guided a Chemical
Engineering News (CEN) investigation of the
properties of a helium-pressurized beer in an
article entitled Helium Beer, From Prank to
Tank in its 2 November 2015 issue written by
Craig Bettenhausen. CEN is a publication of the
American Chemical Society.  Kevin brewed a
5-gallon batch of a cream stout beer for CEN
over a two-week fermentation period at Anderson
Materials Evaluation, Inc. with writers from CEN
visiting our laboratory at the start and the end
of the process.  He used a kegging process, but
instead of pressurizing the keg with carbon
dioxide, he pressurized it with helium.  The
experiment was set up to test the claims that
drinking a helium-pressurized beer would cause
the drinker to speak with a high-pitched voice,
as demonstrated in some on-line videos.
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Scientifically, issues are to be expected.
Foremost is the difference between a polar
molecule with excellent solvent properties such
as carbon dioxide and the inert gas helium.
Carbon dioxide has a solubility in water of 1.7
g/kg, while helium has a solubility of merely
0.0015 g/kg in water! It would be a challenge to
dissolve enough helium in a beer to turn a
drinker's voice squeaky! Kevin pressurized the
keg at 50 psi in a chilled keg, which is a much
higher pressure than is used with carbon dioxide,
and he held it at this pressure for five
days. The resulting beer had an excellent head
of very fine bubbles, which it maintained as the
visiting three writers from CEN and the
scientists of Anderson Materials Evaluation,
Lorrie, Kevin, and Charles, sampled the beer at
our laboratory. Because the beer had little
carbonic acid in it, it was a mellow beer. The
alcohol by volume was measured to be 6.2, so it
had a kick. Yet, the beer was definitely flat and
no one developed a high-pitched voice.  The
Internet videos claiming such a result are
fabricated!  Can you imagine that?
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Well, yes, thinking as a scientist, the more than
a thousand times lower solubility of inert helium
compared to the highly polar carbon dioxide
molecule, told us those videos were faked prior
to doing the experiment.  Nonetheless, the
experiment was fun for all.
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