Drunk on Volcanology - Old Faithful Ale

The next Drunk on Geology is for the Old Faithful Ale from Grand Teton Brewing out of Victor, ID. 

To fully describe the geology of Old Faithful, and why it falls into the "Drunk on Volcanology" group, there is a bit of background geology that is needed. Old Faithful is located towards the center of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone itself is the volcano of which Old Faithful not only sits on, but is powered by. While I am going to give a summary overview of the geology of Yellowstone here, you can find I had done a much more in-depth look at the Geology of Yellowstone National Park here.   

Yellowstone's magma plume below the surface of the Earth. Image courtesy of National Geographic.

As you can see in the image above, Yellowstone National Park is a volcano with a rather large magma chamber located below it. This magma chamber also extends significantly across the surrounding areas as well. The Yellowstone volcano is a type of volcano known as a hotspot. A hotspot is a volcano that starts off as a plume of magma that emanates from deep within the Earth, in the mantle. This plume of magma then rises through the crust and heats up the rocks on the surface. What makes a hotspot truly unique is that the plume of magma is fairly stationary as the crustal plates then move over it, creating a string of volcanoes. The Hawaiian Islands are a good example of this hotspot string of volcanoes. 

Movement of the North American plate across the Yellowstone Hotspot. Image courtesy of NPS.gov.

You can see this movement of the Yellowstone Hotspot by a trail of eruptions that move across the northwestern United States in the map above, specifically creating the topographic feature known as the Snake River Plain. And if you didn't already figure it out, the currently location of the Yellowstone Hotspot, is ... Yellowstone National Park. 

Within Yellowstone National Park there are many geological features that are tied to the Yellowstone Hotspot volcano. We are going to focus on Old Faithful here. Named in 1870, Old Faithful is what is known as a geyser. By definition, a geyser is:

A type of hot spring that intermittently erupts jets of hot water and steam, the result of ground water coming into contact with rock hot enough to create steam under conditions preventing circulation. 

Dictionary of Geological Terms 3rd Ed.   

Old Faithful erupting. View is facing south towards the Old Faithful Lodge.  

Below the surface of a geyser there are a series of cracks and fractures in the ground. These are typically referred to as the "plumbing" of the geyser. Geysers work when rain and snow percolate into the ground, creating ground water. This groundwater is heated up by the presence of a heat source, the Yellowstone magma chamber in this instance. This heated water then rises through these cracks and fissures in the ground. As the hydrothermal waters heat up and rise, they slowly dissolves the surrounding silica within the rhyolite rocks. 

Plumbing beneath Old Faithful. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine.

For Old Faithful, the majority of the cracks and fractures that make up its plumbing lie within glacial sands and gravels, not within historic lava flows that cover much of the surrounding country side. The dissolved silica within the super heated waters starts to precipitate out of the hydrothermal fluids, stabilizing, and slowly constricting the cracks and fissures that make up the network. As the water is heated up, it also expands. However, since the cracks keep the heated water contained, the water is not allowed to expand, resulting in water that has become "super heated" (a phenomenon where water can surpass the boiling point but remain as water and not turn into steam). 

Eruption of Old Faithful. View is facing north, away from the Old Faithful Lodge.

As the water moves upwards through the plumbing network, eventually the water reaches near the surface where there is no more overriding pressure from the surrounding rocks and the water is allowed to expand. Since it is super heated, the expansion immediately causes the water to turn to steam. It is this sudden expansion and steam production that produces the semi-regular geyser eruptions. The regularity of the eruptions is due to the complexity of the fracture network, the ground water inflow, and how many external vents there are. The more vents connected to a system the less regular the system is likely to be. Since Old Faithful's plumbing network is not connected to any other geysers, this isolation is likely what leads to the regularity of eruptions. 

Old Faithful eruption. View from the Visitor's Center.

Within the Old Faithful system, the cracks and fissure plumbing network expands over 650 feet and holds more than 79 million gallons of water leading to ~8,000 gallons of water released per eruption shooting over 100 feet in the air. Although known for the regularity of the eruptions, the interval between eruptions is actually fairly variable, with eruptions occurring every 60 to 110 minutes. This variability is due to several factors including earthquakes altering the geyser "plumbing", seasonality of water supply, and continuous changes to the cracks and fissures due to mineral precipitation and collapse. 

References
https://grandtetonbrewing.com/

https://www.thegeologypage.com/2013/08/geology-of-national-parks-in-pictures.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seeing-beneath-old-faithful-180965230/
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/volcano.htm
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/yellowstone-magma-plume/
https://www.yellowstonetreasures.com/2015/01/20/yellowstone-geyser-eruptions-how-do-they-work/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/drought-stopped-yellowstones-old-faithful-800-years-ago-climate-change-could-end-it-permanently-180976050/

https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/archive/23/6/article/i1052-5173-23-6-4.htm

Drunk on Volcanology - Lava Lake Wit

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Lava Lake Wit from the Crazy Mountain Brewing Company, out of Denver, CO. 

To start off, a "lava lake" is just what it sounds like, a lake of lava, or to be more technical per the NPS:

A lava lake is a pool of molten lava that persists in a vent or crater of a volcano...

Of which the only lava lake in the United States is found on the Big Island of Hawaii in the caldera of Mount Kilauea.

View of the lava lake within Mount Kilauea's Halemaʻumaʻu Crater in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park

Lava lakes, at over 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, are not very common across the planet at all, for obvious reasons. There must be a specific set of circumstances to maintain that liquid lava and not to eventually cool down forming igneous rocks. The lakes are maintained by the stream of volcanic gasses including sulfur within the caldera of the volcano that prevents the lava from cooling enough to solidify. 

Although the lava lakes are essentially "permanent" they do frequently drain and refill depending on the plumbing going on beneath the surface of the volcano as earthquakes and other forces redistribute the magma paths. 

Mount Nyiragongo in Congo. image courtesy of National Geographic. 

There are currently eight known lava lakes on Earth. Besides Mount Kilauea in Hawai'i, there are lava lakes in Ethiopia (Erte Ale), Antarctica (Mount Erebus), Vanuatu (Mount Yasure and Ambrym) and Nicaragua (Mount Masaya), with the largest known lava lake located in Congo (Mount Nyiragongo) measuring 820 feet in diameter and up to 2000 feet deep.

Looking at the back of the can, it says:

Slow down and take in the scenery with Byamba, one of the brighter creatures on Crazy Mountain. She boils the water for brewing with a zest for life that is contagious. Her personality is lively, refreshing and a little complicated. So pause for a moment and join her for an afternoon amid the blooming chamomile on Lava Lake. 

The text on the can made me wonder if that indeed we weren't only referring to a lava lake, as in a boiling lake of lava, but an actual place called Lava Lake. And it turns out that there is indeed a lake located kind of near Vail, CO called Lava Lake in White River National Forest. 

Lava Lake, CO

Which looks just like a cute little mountain lake on Lava Creek, although I'd prefer to take an afternoon next to an actual lava lake. 

References
https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/nature/lava-lakes.htm
https://weatherology.com/trending/articles/Professor-Paul-Lava-Lakes.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/nyiragongo-volcano-hike
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lava+Lake/@39.8191782,-106.5274406,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x876a0a71b6b10db1:0x907744c8a78ce2e7!8m2!3d39.8193024!4d-106.5247113!16s%2Fg%2F1hhhhyxxb?entry=ttu

Drunk on Paleontology - Tricerahops Double IPA

The next Drunk on Paleontology is for Tricerahops Double IPA from the Ninkasi Brewing Company out of Eugene, OR.

Although, obviously named for the dinosaur Triceratops, the Ninkasi website also states that this beer, along with three others, are part of a comic series produced by Dark Horse Comics called Legend of Ninkasi: Rise of Craft.

And according to their comic lore:

Legend has it that Tricerahops, loyal companion to the goddess Ninkasi, acquires his abilities from the goddess’ mystical hops. While our brewery is working on propagating these hops for the good of all, we brewed this Double IPA to showcase all that’s possible. Its floral aromas collide with a splendor of resinous hop notes to create a beer suitable for a magical beast like Tricerahops himself.

Triceratops horridus skeleton and cast from the Field Museum in Chicago, IL. 

The first discovery of  material attributed to Triceratops, was in 1887 by George Lyman Cannon near Denver, Colorado, who had found a set of the brow horns attached to a skull roof. He sent the material to O.C. Marsh who, assuming the rock dates were Pliocene, determined that it was from a prehistoric bison, which he named Bison alticornis. However after a more complete specimen was discovered in 1888 from Wyoming's Lance Formation by John Bell Hatcher, as well as a couple of other discoveries, Marsh reevaluated the initial find and eventually added all the finds under a new species, Triceratops, which he named in 1889, meaning "three-horned face". 

The side of the Tricerahops box notes:

This is our monument to the big and beautiful beasts that came before us. Tricerahops is an ancient field of floral hops with a deep, earthy taste and a balanced finish.

Triceratops belongs to a group of animals known as ceratopsians.

Ceratopsian wall at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Triceratops is the one located in the far right at the top.

Ceratopsians were prolific during the Cretaceous, with many different varieties evolving with various numbers of horns and frill adornments. Triceratops was one of the last ceratopsians to have evolved with remains having been found in rocks dating from ~69 million years ago to the end of the dinosaurs ~66 million years ago. It is estimated that Triceratops could grow up to 30 feet in length and weigh 12,000-16,000 pounds. There are currently two recognized species of Triceratops, T. horridus (pictured above in Chicago) and T. prorsus. 

The skull of Triceratops is one of the largest skulls ever discovered, approaching 10 feet in length in some individuals and not only had the three primary horns (one above each eye and one on the snout), it also had a series of spikes along the edge of the frill known as epoccipitals, and hornlike projects on the jugals (cheekbones). The horns are thought to serve multiple functions, such as defense from predators as well mating display structures. 

References
https://ninkasibrewing.com/
https://www.gbif.org/species/113684498
https://www.britannica.com/animal/Triceratops

Drunk on Geomorphology - Salt Flats Slipstream IPA

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Salt Flats Slipstream Indian Pale Ale from the Salt Flats Brewing Company out of Salt Lake City, UT. 

For this post we'll focus on the name of the Brewing Company, Salt Flats. The Salt Flats Brewing Company from Salt Lake City is named after the nearby Bonneville Salt Flats, a large flat pan covered with a hard salt crust which lies to the west of the Great Salt Lake. 

The Bonneville Salt Flats

Although used as a race track in the dry season, the Bonneville Salt Flats have an extensive geological history. The formation of the salt flats started when this region of North America, known as the Basin and Range Province, started to form. At one point in time the western edge of North America was being compressed by the Farallon Plate pushing up against North America, squeezing the continent as the Farallon plate subducted (went beneath) North America.

Graphic of the Farallon Plate subducting beneath North America. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Eventually most of the Farallon Plate was entirely subducted beneath North America, especially along the Californian coast, and the compression was released. This essentially allowed North America to expand outwards, like a squeezed sponge being let go. This expansion thinned the crust, while also producing a series of linear mountain ranges and valleys. 

Graphic of the Basin And Range expansion producing linear mountains and valleys. Image courtesy of ISU.edu. 

As the expansion progressed, the crust was broken up into a series of smaller blocks. These blocks rotated as the crust stretched out. The rotation of the blocks produced the mountains along the upper corners, with gaps along the lower corners. These gaps eventually were filled with sediment eroded off the mountains, forming the valleys between the mountain ranged. 

Coverage of the Great Basin. Image courtesy of the NPS.

With the thinning of the crust, this area also ended up being lower than the surrounding regions. Because of this, water was not able to flow out of the Basin and Range Province, also known as the Great Basin. Unlike water along the eastern portion of the country and along the west coast, water within the Great Basin does not reach the oceans. All precipitation here eventually ends up in end- or terminal basins, such as the Great Salt Lake, where the only water outflow is through evaporation.

Where the Desert Meets the Mountains

The Great Basin currently contains many end-basins with the primary basin being the Bonneville Basin, which ends at the Great Salt Lake currently. However, during the last ice age the Great Salt Lake was much, MUCH, bigger. Referred to as Lake Bonneville, the lake covered most of western Utah as seen in the map below. 

Maximum extent of Lake Bonneville. Image courtesy of the Utah Geological Survey. 

Lake Bonneville started to form 30,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and reached its peak at 18,000 years ago. At that point it had reached it's physical maximum volume and started to overflow the glacial moraine dam that was located to the north at Red Rock Pass in Idaho. Once the water reached this level it spilled out over the top of Red Rock Pass. This spillage eventually caused the dam to collapse releasing a mega-flood on to the Snake River Plain. This mega-flood caused to lake level to drop by almost half within a matter of weeks. As the Earth slowly moved out of the Ice Age, the climate started to dry. This drying caused less precipitation within the basin and over time the water level dropped from the imbalance between precipitation and evaporation in the Great Basin. 

As the water in Lake Bonneville evaporated, salt that was dissolved in the fresh water lake started to concentrate. Each year several million tons of dissolved salts are added to Great Salt Lake basin from its tributary rivers. Most lakes worldwide have an outlet and therefore salts and other erodes chemicals don't concentrate within those lakes, being washed out as the water cycles through. However, in terminal lakes while the water is able to evaporate away, the salt is left behind, increasing the salt concentration year over year. 

Where the finish line meets hoppiness

After the water level of Lake Bonneville (which turned into the Great Salt Lake) dropped below the elevation of the Great Salt Lake desert, the Bonneville Salt Flats started to be born. Over time the salty groundwater wicked its way up to the surface, evaporated, and left the salt behind creating a thin crust of salt across the surface of the salt flats. Over time this thin layer of salt built up into a significant hard pan. In places the salt reaches several feet thick in the center of the salt flats and peters out towards the edges. Today these evaporative processes are help along by the addition of salt brine added to the salt flats from the nearby potash operations to prevent the too much salt from being removed from the area through industrial collection lakes. 

References
http://geology.isu.edu/Alamo/rocks/basin_range_uplifts.php
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/plate-tectonics-subduction-zones.htm
https://geology.utah.gov/popular/great-salt-lake/

https://www.nps.gov/articles/basinrange.htm

Drunk on Geomorphology - Dead Horse Amber Ale

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Dead Horse Amber Ale from the Moab Brewery in Moab, Utah. 

The first thing that sticks out about the beer is easily the name "Dead Horse", and although it is a grisly name, it is actually named after a geological feature nearby to the brewery, Dead Horse Point State Park, which is located outside of Moab near Canyonland National Park. The name of the park comes from a legend where cowboys would fence off wild mustang horses along the overlook, taking what horses they wanted and leaving the horses they didn't penned up to die of thirst. 

Above is an image taken from the overlook at Dead Horse Point State Park looking off towards the southeast. The river there is the Colorado River far below. Between us and the river lies 100 million years of geological history. From top (youngest) to bottom (oldest) the rock units go like this:

Entrada Formation: Jurassic (150 million years old) - This is a sandstone formed from a coastal dune environment. These are what the arches at Arches National Park are found in.

Navajo Sandstone: Jurassic (175 million years old) - Wind deposited, prehistoric "petrified" sand dunes from an ancient erg (sand sea), colored a light tan or white color. The units also preserve phenomenal cross bedding features from the sand dunes. These rocks form the majority of the rock formations in Zion National Park.

Kayenta Formation: Late Triassic (180 million years old) - A series of sandstones, shales, and limestones from a meandering river environment that frequently preserves dinosaur tracks. This formation is very well observed in the nearby Canyonlands National Park.

Wingate Sandstone: Triassic (200 million years old) - Like the Navajo, another wind deposited preserved series of sand dunes, however usually with more of a red tint to the rocks (rust). 

Chinle Formation: Triassic (210 million years old) - A stream deposited series of mudstone, sandstone, and conglomerates. Well known for containing uranium deposits, petrified wood, and fossils. You can see some of the ancient uranium mines in nearby Capitol Reef National Park.

Moenkopi Formation: Early Triassic (230 million years old) - A tidal flat deposited series of brown to red mudstones. The rocks will often feature ripple marks and raindrop imprints. You can see this formation especially well along the western entrance to Capitol Reef National Park.

Cutler Formation: Permian (250 million years old) - Comprised of sandstone and conglomerate, this formation was deposited along a coastal-marine beach with off-shore sands and non-marine alluvial floodplain deposits intermixed. The most notable feature of the Cutler is the White Rim Sandstone.

Honaker Trail Formation: Pennsylvanian to Permian (286-320) - Down at the level of the river lies this shallow sea deposit comprised of dark grey limestones with fossils. 

You'll note on the can though that is says "10 million years in the making" which is clearly not a reference to any of the rocks which are far older than 10 million years old. This is actually a reference to the location that this point is on, which is the Colorado Plateau. This region of the country has slowly been uplifted over the past 10 million years and the Colorado River at this overlook is a prime example of the effect of that uplift. 

Text on the side of the can:

"Dead Horse Ale is named after the scenic overlook near Arches National Park. A traditional English-style mild ale with a well balanced malt to hop ratio."

Around 10 million years ago the Farallon Plate, a large plate that was subducted below North America off the western coast of the the US, began to push upwards on the region. As the region was forced upward, the rivers that were formally allowed to meander naturally, started to erode downwards into the underlying bedrock. This downward erosion locked the rivers in place, creating a feature known as an entrenched meander. This entrenched meander is what created the "point" in Dead Horse Point, where an entrenched meander created the outcrop of rock jutting outwards.  

Drunk on Mineralogy - Ruby Hard Cider

 

The next Drunk on Geology is for Ruby Hard Cider from the Mountain West Cider Company. 

Although often referring to the strong red color, the ruby is a gemstone that comes in a pink to blood-red hue. The name "ruby" comes from the Latin ruber, meaning red. A ruby is the red variety of the mineral corundum, whereas all other colors of corundum are known as sapphires. Corundum itself is an aluminum oxide mineral, with the chemical formula of Al2O3. 

Ruby crystals from wikigempedia.com

Corundum is one of the hardest minerals on Earth and serves as the 9 index mineral on Mohs Hardness Scale (of which a diamond is 10). This high hardness means many things about the mineral, one of which is that it is very difficult to erode, often being left behind after the host rock has eroded away, but also that it can be used readily as an abrasive. Corundum also has a very high specific gravity (density), especially for a non-metallic mineral, making it fairly easy to identify. Corundum is frequently found as a metamorphic mineral in marbles, gneiss, and schists but can also be found in igneous rocks such as granite and nepheline syenite. 

Looking at the ruby specifically, the red color is created by the addition of small amounts of chromium into the crystal structure. The color can be variable though, depending on the amount of chromium and iron, with the colors themselves often ending up being region specific. Terms like "Burmese" ruby for those found in Myanmar or "Thai" ruby for those found in Thailand are then sometimes used, but the color is not always a great indication of source. 

Natural rubies, however, are extremely rare. And even when they are found, they are often imperfect specimens that require heating and chemical treatments to perfect them for gem purposes. Because of that, artificial rubies are more often used for gemstones. Artificial rubies had been produced for over 120 years and produce very high quality looking gems for a fraction of the cost. 

Text on the back of the can:

"Ruby: the cider that started it all. We sold our very first bottle back in 2015 and it's been flying off the shelves ever since. This carefully-crafted traditional dry cider is complex, yet balanced and crisp, and pairs well with just about anything. Now that it comes in a can, we hope you and your friends will find fun new places to take it."

Rubies in marble from Vietnam. Image courtesy of irocks.com.

Historically, the places most well known for ruby deposits are in Asia, however they have been discovered well outside of Asia including Africa, Australia, and the United States. The most notable ruby deposits are in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. It is because of the rarity of the natural ruby, as well as the beauty that a perfect crystal possesses, that lends the natural ruby such a high price point, even if it had been heat-treated to remove flaws.

References
https://geology.com/minerals/corundum.shtml
https://www.wikigempedia.com/ruby.html
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/ruby-jewelry-and-gemstone-information/