#Climate change could make beer taste differently

By James Leggate, Fox News

For years, an increasing number of scientists have warned about the side effects of climate change like rising oceans and unpredictable changes in weather patterns.

But this may be the most serious repercussion of climate change identified to date: Beer may taste different.

That’s according to the research of Colleen Doherty, an associate professor of molecular and structural biochemistry at NC State University.

Doherty studies the connections between time and stress in plants, according to the university. In a recent post on the university’s website, she explained how changing temperatures will affect hops and other beer ingredients.

Growers have cultivated different varieties of hops that produce different chemical compounds in order to provide distinctive flavors in beers.

However, factors like climate, soil and weather can affect how plants used in beer taste by altering their internal chemistry, according to Doherty. She compared it to the concept of “terroir” in wine-making, which can affect grapes and then affect the wine made from those grapes.

One of the most concerning climate change factors is that nights are getting warmer faster than days, Doherty wrote. Research has shown that “subtle changes in daytime temperature are amplified at night.”

That can throw off a plant’s timing for processes like when it produces chemicals that help it combat bugs, bacteria and other threats. Warmer temperatures at night can also allow those pests to be active for longer, giving them more time to target plants.

“In other words, warmer nights mean that the temperature difference between night and day is shrinking,” Doherty wrote. “And that can cause an effect in plants similar to jet-lag – they find it harder to set their circadian clock. In consequence, their clock may be less sensitive to changing conditions and can become out of sync with the environment.”

While the Earth’s climate has changed before, the changing temperatures are unprecedented since agriculture began thousands of years ago.

“These changes in daily and seasonal temperature patterns – warmer nights, earlier springs – disrupt how plants function, hurts yields, affects the cost of the ingredients and affects how beer tastes,” Doherty wrote.