Lots of Bottles of Beer on the Wall

 Here's a picture of the hop flower. Today we're trying to figure out how many bottles of beer 4300 pounds of hops could make. There are about 110 varieties of hops worldwide, but they all breakdown into two categories: aroma hops and bittering hops. The difference is in the ratio of alpha and beta acids in these glands at the base of the flowers.

Besides the two acids these glands also secret resins that differ from variety to variety.

OK, finding out how much hops to use in a beer is complicated. We all know that different styles of beer require different amounts of hops-a brewer making a Budweiser knock-off probably just waves some dry hops over the vat while someone making an India Pale Ale would use lots of hops. Another problem is that most brewers use hop extract which is much more consistent than the flowers themselves. However, your intrepid reporter managed to track down a recipe that says you can need about an ounce of hops for  10 gallons of beer.

4300 lbs of hops is 68,800 ounces. Times 10 is 688,000 gallons of beer. There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon so that is 88,064,000 ounces of beer. Pour that into 16 ounce bottles and you get 5,504,000 bottles of beer on the wall. Or enough bottles to drive from here to Pluto. So take one down and pass it around, and there's 5,503,999 bottles of beer on the wall.

Just a couple more things. You might run across hops at a historical site or in the backyard of a home brewer. Don't touch! Many people report getting a rash after touching hops and about 3% get horrible skin lesions that sound worse than poison ivy. Also, don't let your dog eat hops because it will cause a fatal case of hyperthermia. You probably shouldn't let your dog drink beer either; because then they wouldn't be able to serve as your designated driver.