Master Brewers Podcast

How Two Roads Brewing keeps its customers safe…alcohol or not.Special Guest: Karen Stangl.

Employer responsibilities, hazard assessments, finding the right safety glasses, the pitfalls of respiratory protection, employee buy-in, and more.Special Guests: Andrew Dagnan, Corey Martin, and Jim Kuhr.

How to tap into the power of consumer testing for even the smallest of breweries.Special Guest: Tessa Schilaty.

A Master Brewers member requested an episode about CO2 systems, CO2 quality, and best practices. Here it is.Special Guests: Dave Thomas, Eric Meyer, Gabriel Dominguez, Jeff Carter, and Mark Fischer.

An update from the fast-moving world of gene editing, as it relates to hops.Special Guest: Chris Willig.

For smaller brewers, yeast management can be a challenging prospect. Many mid-size to small breweries attempt to make a wide range of beer styles that require a plethora of yeast strains. Due to production limitations, brewers are often forced to stretch yeast pitching windows or purchase brand new yeast pitches at a dramatically high cost. A study was performed to evaluate potential media that would allow for adequate dormancy and viability of harvested yeast slurries for long term re-pitching opportunity. Various media were added to decanted yeast slurry and viability was measured over determined time periods to track health of the stored yeast. Results indicate that monopotassium phosphate, standard distilled water, alkaline mineral water, and a solution with sunflower oil all provide varying degrees of health preservation of long storage periods up to one month. Minimal changes were observed with adequate dilutions and these results will be discussed.Special Guest: Matt Couch.

An overview of the options for pasteurizing beer, and how pasteurization works at Goose Island.Special Guests: Gus Grosenbaugh and Michael Owens.

Filling equipment within a brewery is ironically one of the best places for microbial growth to thrive. There are nooks, crannies, and blind spots that beer can sneak into, which are also challenging to clean. Beer filling equipment is also constructed using a variety of different materials that require specifically tailored cleaning chemicals to prevent corrosion while working effectively to remove soil. Every brewery has a different filling operation including equipment, surrounding space, and utilities, therefore different needs for chemicals and cleaning practices. As a brewery optimizes its filler cleaning practices and chemicals, it is also essential to validate that the chemicals and method of cleaning are both working effectively. To avoid having every brewery reinvent the wheel with filler cleaning practices and save the time and money it takes to trial new processes, this presentation will share one brewery’s story of developing a robust cleaning program on both of its canning lines. We will discuss how we worked directly with our chemical supplier and equipment manufacturers to find the best compatible chemicals for effective cleaning on both of our lines. We will also discuss the microbiological and chemical quality checks that were put in place to validate filler cleaning process and chemicals to ensure product integrity, and share the improvements that were made from a quality management lens to empower employees to make informed quality decisions.Special Guests: Levi Bainum and Riley Seitz.

What's the buzz in omics all about and how can it help you make better beer?Special Guests: Glen Fox, Harmonie Bettenhausen, and Laura Burns.

The Inspiring History and Legacy of American Lager Beer is envisioned to be a nine-volume series of books covering the history of the American lager brewing industry from the 1840s to the 1940s and the evolution of adjunct lager beer as America’s “national beverage.” The “surprising” aspect of this history is that it ever happened at all, given the half-century-long assault on the industry between the 1870s and 1910s to impose an “American Reinheitsgebot.” Unified in this objective were a plethora of the nation’s political, cultural, and agricultural institutions—all seeking to ban to use of rice and corn-based products in the brewing of American ales and lagers. Equally united in opposition to this effort were the brewers and brewing scientists of America. In battles that were passionate, highly public, and intense in nature, these brewing industry advocates successfully defended the right of American brewers to brew with the ingredients of their choice. It is a powerful legacy not only for America’s first revolution in beer (the adjunct lager brewing industry) but also for the nation’s second revolution in beer (the American craft brewing industry). Special Guest: Greg Casey.

A deep dive on beer foam with a couple of familiar guests, one of whom literally wrote the book on foam.Special Guests: Ashton Lewis and Charlie Bamforth.

Just when you thought light-struck flavor in beer was permanent...Special Guests: Catherine Villa and Keith Villa.

A couple of experts offer tips to help your brewery beat the summer heat.Special Guests: Nick Donofrio and Rissa Spalding.

If you have the same canning line as Jack, you might want to listen up.Special Guest: Jack Van Paepeghem.

Noise exposure may not be on your brewery's radar, but this is an area in which an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.Special Guest: Jonathan Borntrager.

Can chemical analytics be used to predict what a sensory panel will taste? Can machine learning be used to improve a beer?Special Guests: Kevin Verstrepen and Michiel Schreurs.

Specialty malt freshness, roaster technology, flavor development & complexity in specialty malts, and more.Special Guests: Aaron MacLeod, Chris Schooley, and Jeff Bloem.

A unique study of California malting barley and its practical takeaways for brewers.Special Guest: Maany Ramanan.

Three people who know a lot about malting talk about base malt flavor development and the variables driving a lot of creativity in brewing.Special Guests: Aaron MacLeod, Curtis Davenport, and Sebastian Wolfrum.

What is green chemistry? How and why should you apply it in your brewery?Special Guest: Dana Garves.

Beer consumption per capita in the US has declined steadily since 1980; meanwhile, consumption of wine, cider, and spirits has increased. Keith Armstrong joins us to talk about why, as well as what brewers should be doing about it.Special Guest: Keith Armstrong.

Brewing process and quality tips related to barley lipidsSpecial Guest: Aaron Golston.

Understanding a particular beer's fermentability—and how it changes over time—is a prerequisite to managing in-package conditioning. It’s not uncommon to observe some level of over-attenuation during refermentation, similar to how forced-fermentation tests frequently finish at a lower gravity than production fermentations. In order to reduce the risk of over-pressurization in package, it’s important for brewers to quantify the expected over-attenuation for each brand. Typically, and ideally, the over-attenuation is consistent and can be accurately accounted for within priming sugar calculations. However, this is not always the case—especially with dry-hopped beers. At Allagash Brewing Company, we created a model for our Sixteen Counties brand in order to predict and more accurately account for variable levels of over-attenuation in package due to hop creep.Special Guest: Heather Muzzy Caron.

How a brewer who didn’t know the cost of his flagship beer, implemented a unit economic process that transformed the brewery from dry hopping to high gravity brewing.Special Guest: Teddy Gowan.

The Guinness brewery was founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness. The Guinness brewery group were early exponents of the advancements in microbiology, and particularly yeast husbandry that took place in Europe at the end of the 19th Century. This led Guinness to establish the Watling laboratory in 1901 and subsequent St James’s Gate yeast Library. 16 Guinness yeast isolates were taken from the St James’s Gate yeast library and sequenced using next generation whole genome sequencing. Using Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) analysis, the genetic lineage of the Guinness yeast were established, with the Guinness yeast forming a monophyletic group (all descendants of a common ancestor). Previous yeast studies have attributed geographical location to domestication; using this information the Guinness yeast were placed with yeast domesticated in the United Kingdom and the United States. Within the 300+ yeast stored in the St James’s Gate yeast Library there are yeast from historical Irish Brewers. Using the same methods that established the genetic lineage of the Guinness yeast, 8 Irish brewing yeast were similarly assessed. In addition to the genotypic analysis of the Guinness and Irish yeast, the phenotype of the different yeasts were determined. In this paper we present an understanding of the Guinness and Irish yeast from a genotypic and phenotypic perspective. This analysis established that despite the different brewing attributes of these Irish yeast they all have a common genetic ancestry which is different to that of the United Kingdom yeast and the United States yeast. Consequently, we suggest that there is potential scope for an Irish brewing terroir concept based upon brewing with Irish yeast.Special Guest: Daniel Kerruish.

What is Kernza and does it belong in your next recipe?Special Guests: Alexandra Diemer , Harmonie Bettenhausen, Juan Medina Bielski, Tessa Peters, and Xiang Yin.

This is what happens when someone reaches out to suggest a great podcast topic. Becky Rudolf had questions about centrifuge operation so we mobilized a small army of Master Brewers members to provide answers.Special Guests: Andrew Conlon, Becky Rudolf, Christopher Clausen, Louwrens Wildschut, Marco Garcia, Morgan Harry, Steven Lyerly, and Zach Kelly.

We celebrate the first decade of craft malt by catching up with a few of its pioneers and talking about what craft malt can do for beer.Special Guests: Andrea Stanley, Brent Manning, and Todd Olander.

We take a deep dive into oak barrels. You'll hear about the properties of oak, the different types, and all about the complexities of seasoning and toast.Special Guests: Amy LaHue, Andrew Wiehebrink, and Noah Steingraeber.

A preview of the Olympics of brewing conferences, the WBC, which only occurs every 4 years and hasn’t been held in person since 2016 due to the pandemic.Special Guests: Lauren Torres and Sylvie Van Zandycke.

We go behind the scenes with the 3 moderators responsible for ensuring the highest possible quality content on the industry’s best technical brewing forum.Special Guests: Andy Tveekrem, Lars Larson, and Walter Heeb.

Does your brewery can or bottle? Do you pay close attention to your rinser or just assume it does what it's supposed to? This week on the show, we take a deep dive into water rinsers with a team of Master Brewers who collaborated to publish a Best Practices document you can use to get bottle and can rinsing done right.Special Guests: Ben Bailey, Dave Duff, Eric Samp, Heather Muzzy Caron, and Tim Lozen.

We thought we'd celebrate our 300th episode by giving John Bryce they day off...kind of.Special Guest: John Bryce.

We take a look at spirit barrel aging techniques from the perspective of Julian Shrago at Beachwood BrewingSpecial Guest: Julian Shrago.

A case study at New Belgium to understand the impact of can coatings on beer volatiles.Special Guests: Brooke Gushen and Nate Burns.

This week on the show, presenters from the Juicy Dry Hopping workshop in Calgary join us to talk about their quest to maximize flavor, aroma, and efficiency in heavily dry hopped beers.Special Guests: Ben Edmunds, Daniel Sharp, Evan Partridge, and Ryan Dunnavant.

Adjusting expectations and processes to navigate an increasingly delicate malt supply chain.Special Guests: Curtis Davenport, Harmonie Bettenhausen, and Xiang Yin.

Our friends at Goose Island talk about their journey reducing TPO on small scale canning lines. This episode was recorded live during the 2019 Master Brewers Conference.Special Guests: Brooke Bell and Mike Kania.

Different paths of evolution and answers to questions about the genetic identity of commercially available yeast strains.Special Guest: Fabio Faria-Oliveira.

Dry hop geyser survivors talk about their experiences and how you can avoid repeating their dangerous mistakes.Special Guests: Cody Green, Daniel Sharp, George de Piro, Jessica Young, Lee Lonnes, and Victor Rini.

Mechanisms and Strategies to Manage Temperature Stratification in Brewery VesselsSpecial Guest: Travis Audet.

To rinse or not to rinse - what's in your can? Our friends at Community Beer take us on a journey to eliminate microbes @ can filling.Special Guests: Jamie Fulton and Mark Bagazinski.

Real-world can seamer troubleshooting courtesy of Master Brewer's award-winning technical brewing forum.Special Guest: David Garab.

Jason Perkins talks about beer development at Allagash Brewing Co.Special Guest: Jason Perkins.

Frequent MBAA course lecturer, Gabriel Dominguez, offers tips to reduce your brewery's CO2 consumption.Special Guest: Gabriel Dominguez.

A simple engineering solution with complex implementation.Special Guest: Evan Meffert.

Maitreya Dunham and Tom Schmidlin talk about an exciting study that aims to better understand yeast mutations during serial repitching.Special Guests: Maitreya Dunham and Tom Schmidlin.

Author of Quality Management: Essential Planning for Breweries and founder of Top Note Tonic, Mary Pellettieri, discusses how innovation challenges quality systems.Special Guest: Mary Pellettieri.

Charlie Bamforth discusses authenticity vs technology in lager beer production.Special Guest: Charlie Bamforth.

Does dry hopping inoculate your beer with beer spoiling bacteria? Do the anti-microbial properties of hops offer enough protection? Can dry hopping fix a dirty beer? This week on the show, our friends from Shiner set out to better understand the microbiological impact of dry hopping.Special Guest: Laura Hill.