Mine’s a pint... with 2m bubbles

PROBABLY the last thing on a drinker’s mind as they knock back a glass of cool lager is how many bubbles there are in the beer’s head.

However, finding the answer to that puzzle has diverted scientists at the University of Reims in France and they have come up with the rather broad figure of between 200,000 and 2million. That’s the number of bubbles in a five per cent 250ml bottle of lager produced after it is gently poured. Dr Gerard Liger-Belair, lead author of the study, said: ‘Of course we enjoyed the lagers we had left to celebrate these findings. It is the bubbles which help convey the aroma of the lager straight to someone’s nose.’

In the study, published in the journal ACS Omega, the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in a 250ml bottle of Heineken was measured while high-speed photographs captured the bubbles growing in volume as they travelled to the surface.