Twitter, Sierra Nevada Brewing, and hop freshness

Here is an illuminating series of Tweets (posts on Twitter) from Ray Daniels of Cicerone.org concerning Sierra Nevada Brewing. It scans like notes taken at a lecture ... which they were.

• Fri up early for talks by Sierra Nevada's Tom Nielsen--beer flavor chemist/genius. Great insights on dry hopping (to follow) link
  


• SN's Tom Nielson talked on hopping & their torpedos. They only use whole hops=poor extraction in bags. link
  


• To improve flavor/aroma extraction, SN uses external "torpedo" filled with hops. Fill, CO2 purge, circulate post primary beer. link
  


• SN Torpedo: normal: beer circulated at 4 gal/min for 8 hrs; special maybe 2 hrs at 8-12 gals/min for lighter hop treatment. link
  


• Hop flavor: SN's Nielsen talked about "aroma scalping"--crown liners actually absorb hop aroma from beer--up to 2/3s lost in a few weeks! link
  


• SN Nielsen talked about their change from twist-off caps back to pry-off: better O2 barrier, less aroma scalping. (But all caps scalp some) link
  

That's useful information on beer and hopping and flavor freshness delivered in posts of 140 characters or fewer. Here's another, in 22 characters: Drink your beer fresh.

What exactly is Twitter? Why should you bother with it? I briefly discuss this in the context of, what else(!), beer here.