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John Bryce
Host of Master Brewers Podcast
John Bryce loves all things technical brewing. He built his first brewery (Blacksburg Brewing Co.) on a shoestring budget in 2002 and his career continued at several Virginia breweries, including Capitol City, Old Dominion, Starr Hill, and Mount Ida Reserve. He graduated from Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei (VLB) in 2008, has helped countless breweries as a consultant, served as MBAA's Technical Outreach Director from 2015 to 2017, and is President & CEO of The Lupulin Exchange. John has been the host & producer of Master Brewers Podcast since its inception in 2016.
John Bryce has hosted 289 Episodes.
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Episode 174: WHAT IS BEER?
July 22nd, 2024 | 1 hr 10 mins
"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).
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Episode 312: Foam
July 15th, 2024 | 1 hr 7 mins
A deep dive on beer foam with a couple of familiar guests, one of whom literally wrote the book on foam.
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Episode 182: De-skunking Beer
July 8th, 2024 | 33 mins 27 secs
Just when you thought light-struck flavor in beer was permanent...
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Episode 311: Preventing Heat Illness in the Brewery
July 1st, 2024 | 35 mins 28 secs
A couple of experts offer tips to help your brewery beat the summer heat.
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Episode 049: Breathe, Breathe, Breathe, Scream
June 24th, 2024 | 45 mins 27 secs
Kerry Caldwell suffered severe injuries from an accident in the brewhouse. She was airlifted and overcame the 34% chance of survival calculated by the hospital. This episode is both the story of her accident and a description of a simple, inexpensive device that should be installed in your brewery to prevent similar accidents.
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Episode 310: Identifying and Eliminating Pectinatus in a Craft Lager Facility - A Sensory Case Study
June 17th, 2024 | 27 mins 44 secs
If you have the same canning line as Jack, you might want to listen up.
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Episode 191: Too Much Noise!
June 10th, 2024 | 28 mins 29 secs
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.
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Episode 309: Predicting and improving complex beer flavor through machine learning
June 3rd, 2024 | 56 mins 37 secs
Can chemical analytics be used to predict what a sensory panel will taste? Can machine learning be used to improve a beer?
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Episode 177: The Art & Science of Roasting Specialty Malt
May 27th, 2024 | 1 hr 57 secs
Specialty malt freshness, roaster technology, flavor development & complexity in specialty malts, and more.
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Episode 308: Location, Genotype, Year
May 20th, 2024 | 38 mins 3 secs
A unique study of California malting barley and its practical takeaways for brewers.
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Episode 176: Functional Terroir
May 13th, 2024 | 53 mins 33 secs
Three people who know a lot about malting talk about base malt flavor development and the variables driving a lot of creativity in brewing.
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Episode 307: Green Chemistry for Beer
May 6th, 2024 | 39 mins 17 secs
What is green chemistry? How and why should you apply it in your brewery?
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Episode 175: Know Barley, Know Beer
April 29th, 2024 | 30 mins 18 secs
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.
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Episode 306: Barley Lipids
April 22nd, 2024 | 43 mins 13 secs
Brewing process and quality tips related to barley lipids
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Episode 183: Dry Hop Creep During In-Package Conditioning
April 15th, 2024 | 28 mins 19 secs
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.
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Episode 305: COGS
April 8th, 2024 | 38 mins 51 secs
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.