Lewd Food

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On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a beer.

Unknown: Mass-market beers contain "foaming agents" to help them form or maintain a head.

Very few North American breweries admit to using additives or preservatives of any kind, of which "foaming agents" are one. Aside from one old ingredients list for one Miller beer, urbanlegends.com has found no documentation to prove or disprove any use of particular additives. It is often claimed that major breweries like Anheuser-Busch or Coors use foaming agents, but no list of ingredients verifies this, and the breweries are very secretive about their full processes. It is true that there are many ingredients that can legally be added to beer - and some are foaming agents, but until an actual listing of ingredients is available to the public it will remain unknown whether or not major breweries actually use any of them.

Another issue to keep in mind is that many ingredients are removed during filtering, making them part of the process of brewing the beer but not the final product.

A company claiming their beer is "Made from only the finest all natural ingredients" could use foaming agents, as many such agents are natural and using the "finest" could simply mean using the best of each particular agent chosen, and is not proof or disproof that the company has disclosed the absence or presence of a particular ingredient.

FAQ part 2 on beer from rec.food.drink.beer includes section on foaming agents and why they would be used. The RFDB FAQ can be found here.

Using the search engine on the Anheuser-Busch site for "foaming agents" delivers 0 hits. Coors and Pabst claim no additives or preservatives are added to their beers. Molsons says no preservatives, but does not mention additives: their ingredients list says, "Made primarily from just four natural ingredients". Miller, specifically Miller Reserve Ale, lists no additives or preservatives, but Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope said here, "I don't mean to single out Miller company, but you may be interested to know that Miller Lite contains propylene glycol alginate, water, barley malt, corn syrup, chemically modified hop extracts, yeast, amyloglucosidase, CO2, papain enzyme, liquid sugar, potassium metabisulfite, and Emka-malt, whatever that is."

"Dr. H", a regular of rec.food.drink.beer, in private correspondence, had this to say regarding foaming agents:

"Most of these beers -- now -- don't use heading agents, and while some of them may have used them at one time, it's doubtful that most of them ever did. The reason is that it's simple to produce a beer that forms a good head as a normal part of the brewing process -- and it's cheaper to do so. ... Now while many big breweries probably didn't use heading agents, some of them undoubtedly did use 'foam stabilizers' -- also known as 'head retention agents'. There are two likely reasons for this: one is to counteract the effects of certain other beer additives, such as preservatives, and clearing agents, which might have adversely affected head retention."

It is possible to test for the presence of foam stabilizing agents: put a diluted drop of milk in the bottom of the glass, pour the beer in, and wait a few minutes. If the head remains, it most likely contains foam stabilizing agents.

Documented: Some English beers contain "fish guts".

This is true, but it is present in trace amounts if it was used at all. Some British (and possibly other) breweries use isinglass as part of the beer filtration process. Isinglass is made from the air bladders of sturgeons: thus, "fish guts". People unsophisticated enough to be disturbed by this need to be kept ignorant of what rennet is, so they may continue to enjoy cheese.

Debunked: Corona beer is made with urine.

Luce & Sons, a Heineken distributor in Nevada, fostered this rumour when Corona first rose to prominence in the US. Corona sued and won in settlement: Luce was required to publicly state that Corona has no urine in it. Corona took out many ads to eradicate the rumour, but like all good urban legends, it takes more to kill it than a marketing department. Just ask Proctor & Gamble.

References:

• rec.food.drink.beer FAQ
• Cecil Adams on beer ingredients