A Shamrock in a Pint of Guinness

Photo: freefoto.com

I was brought up in a Catholic school and almost everyone there was Irish to some extent. You could not go back more than two generations of about 98% of everybody’s ancestors without finding an Irish connection somewhere, including most of the teachers.

When we were first taught about the concept of the Trinity, the most common analogy that was used was that of the shamrock. The three leaves represented the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet they all made up this one leaf that is God.

Whilst recently drinking a pint of Guinness, which happened to have a shamrock drawn into the head, I was telling a friend about the constant references to Ireland that came up during my school life, and jokingly suggested that it wouldn’t have surprised me if God had been described as a pint of Guinness! After thinking about this for a while, I have come up with a theory that may well be able to justify this idea and so here goes with an explanation…

Last year, as part of my physics degree and in particular the communication skills module, we had to prepare a fifteen- minute presentation on any aspect of physics that we liked. After considering just about everything from supernova to the physics of football, I decided to do a talk on the physics of beer! Therefore, for a few weeks I carried out research (in many of York’s fine pubs) about this amazing beverage. My research concluded that the most amazing of these beers is the Irish stout Guinness, with its properties which are very different to other beers.

All beer heads decay exponentially with time, with most taking around three minutes to decay almost completely. Guinness is different: the head does decrease but at a much slower rate than other pints. No matter how long you leave a pint of Guinness, there is always some head present. This is because it is the only beer which contains nitrogen gas — these bubbles are responsible for producing the white creamy head. This head is always present when poured the correct way either on tap or using a can containing a ‘widget’. Therefore, the head could be compared to God the Father: he was always present and always will be.

The second aspect of the Trinity is that of God the Son. This is the ruby red colour of the beer that makes up the majority of the pint — the bit we can associate most with. Guinness is made up of entirely natural ingredients. These ingredients are barley, water, hops and yeast and it is rumoured that there is a secret ingredient that makes Guinness so special.

Need I say anything more about water — we all know its significance: being the source of all life etc. The water in Guinness in Dublin comes from a spring in County Kildare.

Yeast is one of the main components of bread — the food of life — and as a living organism, it lives within us when we drink it.

Barley produces the starch and sugar necessary for the brewing process to occur. This produces the ruby red colour of the Guinness. Barley crops up several times in the Bible: the loaves in the feeding of the five thousand are barley loaves and again bring life and significance to people. It also appears quite a few times in the Old Testament as a symbol of life and a way of producing food. (Type in ‘barley’ on an internet Bible page for references). The hops used are of the female species, allowing flavour into the beer, and enhancing its quality — God is there for all!

The secret ingredient… who knows what that may be… but it is obviously there!

All the waste from Guinness making goes on to other things which support life: hops become fertiliser and animal feed, and surplus yeast goes on to make Marmite (some like it, they say), and health products.

Guinness is good for you: one pint of Guinness contains the goodness and iron of a Sunday roast. It has often been prescribed by doctors to cure anaemia, to pregnant mothers and to patients in the process of recovering from illness.

Now, coming on to the third part of the Trinity, that of God the Holy Spirit. The bubbles in Guinness distinguish it from other beers. It is the only beer in which carbon dioxide and nitrogen are present. If the beer is served at the right temperature — 6 degrees — and in a specific glass, it is possible to see Guinness bubbles travelling down the glass. In recent years, reasons for this have been investigated. Professor Clive Fletcher and his students from the University of New South Wales used FLUENT — a computer package that simulates fluid dynamics — to show the currents that are present in Guinness. These simulations can be seen on www.fluent.com/news/pr/pr5.htm. They use the theory that the bubbles of gas rising in the centre of the glass away from the walls will rise fastest. However, as they reach the head, some of these fast flowing bubbles are pushed down the sides of the glass by the currents. Larger carbon dioxide bubbles resist this but the smaller nitrogen bubbles are pushed down the sides and back up in a loop — could this represent the submersion and rising associated with baptism?

The other bubbles pop when they reach the top and the gas is released into the atmosphere maybe going into the cells of plants, which produce oxygen and enter the human body whether people are aware of it or not at the time and whether they like Guinness or not.

So, that is the theory, maybe a bit strange but it amused me for a few hours. Three parts of the same pint. At the risk of going back to physics, there are quantum effects in water and therefore Guinness and quantum theory can explain how God can be all three parts at the same time. It is only when you study the whole picture that God can be seen fully but the individual aspects strengthen our faith.

Okay then — God is like a leprechaun. Well, he’s truly there if you believe in him! Or maybe I have had too many pints of Guinness!

Tara Cooke