FOOD

Local brewery serves up science between beers

Darla Carter
@PrimeDarla

For a while, it seemed like a typical night at the local watering hole as patrons milled around, chatting with each other and nursing their beers at Against the Grain Brewery & Smokehouse on East Main Street.

But the real purpose of the night became evident as Levi Beverly took to the microphone — not to sing karaoke but to introduce his program: Beer with a Scientist. It's a series of casual seminars designed to convey scientific knowledge to ordinary people.

Beverly, a cancer researcher affiliated with the University of Louisville and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, picked up the idea in New York, where he previously lived and encountered a similar program.

"I always thought that it was such a different and interesting thing to be able to have scientists and doctors come and just talk to a general audience in a relaxed setting ... so I thought, wherever I ended up, eventually, I would like to start something similar to that," he said.

For the last few months, Beverly and the brewery have teamed up on the local series. It takes place roughly once a month, and is drawing strong crowds of curious folks, whether the subject is star formation, stem cells, aging or the Ebola virus.

"The goal is to get people in the know," said Sam Cruz, co-owner of the brewery, located at Louisville Slugger Field. After the main talk, "they can ask questions. There's no need to be intimidated."

Beverly led the first talk, "Why Haven't We Cured Cancer?" in May, and selects the topics. He chose Ebola for last Wednesday's talk because of its timeliness. An ongoing outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 5,000 people in recent months and sparked fears in this country despite few actual cases in the United States.

"It clearly is at the forefront of everybody's minds right now," said Beverly, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at U of L.

Beverly said he hopes the Ebola session and others help to combat misinformation that people pick up about science-related issues. "It's really difficult for somebody in the general public to get real information from the Internet or from the people around them that might not themselves know very much information about a particular topic," he said. "So it perpetuates a cycle of ignorance or not being able to find the answers."

Last week's presentation included discussion about how viruses behave, and specifics on Ebola, including its history, previous outbreaks and how it's spread. It helped to put Ebola into perspective, some said.

"You hear a lot of hype about it and I don't think it's as alarming as the media makes it out to be," said Cassy Beyerle, a pharmacist in the crowd. "I think they did a good job of explaining the background behind it," though she wished they'd gone more into African burial rites and their effect on Ebola's spread.

Beyerle praised the general concept — Beer with a Scientist — as a fabulous way to educate the public. "This is amazing," she said. "I don't think we have enough science, and it's really cool."

Jeremy Camp, one of the night's co-presenters, had gotten the crowd of about 100 people laughing during his opener by revealing he and fellow speaker Rachael Gerlach's passion for viruses.

"We're really excited to talk about viruses," said Camp, a graduate student in immunology and microbiology from U of L researcher Colleen Jonsson's laboratory. "... We're so excited to talk about viruses that sometimes I may say something like, 'Isn't Ebola awesome?!' And I don't necessarily mean that Ebola is awesome. What I mean is that it's a very fascinating virus to us, and it's also a very lethal and a very serious disease that Ebola causes."

Susan Watson, a member of the crowd, has been to every session since the series started in May. "I think it's an absolutely wonderful series, and every month, I try to bring more and more people here," she said. "I absolutely love it."

Watson said some people come to the series mistakenly thinking that the night's speaker will be discussing beer, but most of the crowd seems pretty attentive, she said. She came to the first session on cancer research because she is a cancer survivor but has found many of the other subjects interesting, too.

"I do this for fun; I am a perpetual student," she said. "This is right up my alley. I wish there was more like this."

The program is promoted on Facebook under the heading "Louisville Underground Science" and the page has attracted more than 400 followers.

When the program started, the audience was mainly people affiliated with the university, Beverly said, but now more of the general public has started coming. "People seem to really enjoy it," he said. "It's been basically packed, like standing-room-only, inside the bar."

Coretta Wolford, a longtime Louisville resident in last week's crowd, said she thought the event was wonderful and she learned much about Ebola. "This is the first time I've been to something like this," she said. "This is very high-caliber. It's very informative."

Reporter Darla Carter can be reached at (502) 582-7068 or on Twitter @PrimeDarla.

BREW TALKS

Beer with a Scientist is held at Against the Grain Brewery & Smokehouse at Louisville Slugger Field. The sessions at 401 E. Main St. are usually monthly, but there will be none in December. The next dates are Jan. 14, Feb. 18 and March 18. For more information: facebook.com/LouisvilleUndergroundScience.

INSIDE LOOK

See Levi Beverly discussing Beer with a Scientist at courier-journal.com/lifestyle.