John Bryce
Host of Master Brewers Podcast
John Bryce 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 Founder & CEO at The Lupulin Exchange, where he answers every single support ticket personally and agonizes over making life easier for brewers. John has been the host & producer of Master Brewers Podcast since its inception in 2016.
John Bryce has hosted 318 Episodes.
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Episode 193: Killer Yeast
November 16th, 2020 | 22 mins 58 secs
Could beer infected with diastaticus be rescued by killer yeast?
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Mainstage
September 16th, 2020 | 1 min 5 secs
John Mallett (Bells Brewery), Rebecca Newman (Lagunitas Brewing Company), Paul Pettinger (New Belgium Brewing), and Jason zumBrunnen (Ratio Beerworks) will be answering YOUR questions about Business Continuity in a Covid-19 Environment during the #worldbrewingcongress Mainstage Panel Discussion this weekend. We'll hear about how their breweries have pivoted, as well as topics like ensuring employee safety, rethinking the workplace, exploring brewery culture, and controlling external factors. Submit your questions for the panelists via the link below.
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Episode 184: Just Say No to Leaking Can Seams
September 14th, 2020 | 46 mins 50 secs
Cans have become the primary packaging type in the U.S. craft brewing scene. While cans are a near-ideal package for maintaining the quality of the beer, it's important to understand the seaming process and how to diagnose and fix issues with the seamer. Failing to do so will lead to tremendous damage to brands and consumer confidence in canned craft beer. This presentation will focus more on the key quality indicators of seams, how to identify seam issues, tools needed to fix the issue, and how to adjust the seamer to fix the issue.
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Preview: 2020 WBC
August 27th, 2020 | 3 mins 2 secs
The 2020 World Brewing Congress is almost here! Have you registered yet?
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Episode 181: Tracking Biotransformation of Sulfur Compounds in Beer
August 24th, 2020 | 38 mins 40 secs
A growing demand in utilizing biotransformation, a general term for the conversion of compounds through biological pathways, to improve the organoleptic profile of beer has changed the way hop forward beer recipes are approached. While the analysis of terpene biotransformation has been well documented, there remains a gap in knowledge in sulfur compounds due to their extremely low concentrations (sometimes in concentrations of parts per trillion) and high volatility. Analysis of sulfur compounds requires precise and sensitive analytical methodology in order to detect them. While sulfur compounds have been successfully detected using gas-chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) a pulsed flame photometric detector (PFPD), and a GC sulfur chemiluminescence detector (GC-SCD), the research presented here utilizes a GC-SCD via stir bar-sorptive extaction (SBSE) methodology previously used to track aroma intensities in optimizing harvest picking windows. This work shows an identification of various thiols and sulfur compounds found in both un-hopped and hopped wort (with Amarillo® (VGXP01), Cashmere, Idaho grown Saaz (Osvald-72 c.v.), and Czech Saaz) and tracks them through the fermentation process confirming the volatility of some thiols and most notably the presence of 4-methyl-4-mercaptopentan-2-one (4MMP) in the final beer at a retention time of 9.5 minutes, a compound that contributes a catty, black currant/Sauvignon Blanc aroma character. Differences in hop varieties were compared with an American ale yeast, and the effect of yeast strain as well as temperature on thiol production with VGXP01 was compared between an American ale, German lager, Belgian saison, and Brettanomyces bruxellensis strain.
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Episode 001: Total Oil Content ≠ Aroma
August 17th, 2020 | 16 mins 46 secs
This was the very first episode of The Master Brewers Podcast, recorded during the 2016 WBC. As we prepare to kick off the all-virtual 2020 WBC in just a few weeks, this seems like the perfect opportunity to listen in on what was happening during the 2016 WBC.
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Episode 180: Exogenous Enzyme Applications in Malting
August 10th, 2020 | 33 mins 27 secs
We continue conferencing vicariously from the Master Brewers Live event during the 2019 Master Brewers conference in Calgary, where former Master Brewers Technical Director Mark Sammartino joined me to talk about trials using exogenous enzymes in malting to get brewers more consistent malt and make life easier in the malthouse.
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Episode 179: Reuse of Spent Dry Hop Slurry in the Brewhouse
August 3rd, 2020 | 26 mins 52 secs
Isn't it a shame to just throw out all of that spent hop slurry after dry-hopping a tank? Ola Oladokun from Carlsberg sat down with me during last year's conference in Calgary to talk about brewing trials designed to put that "spent" hop slurry back to work.
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Episode 178: Friends Don't Let Friends Drink Oxidized Beer
July 27th, 2020 | 23 mins 33 secs
Audrey Skinner joins us to talk about bright tank purges and other important battles in the war you should be waging against dissolved oxygen in your brewery.
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Episode 040: What is Aleppo?
July 20th, 2020 | 21 mins 3 secs
Need to remove haze? Need to add haze? Need to stabilize flavor? This week, we're talking applications for tannic acid in the brewery.
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Episode 173: Using Exogenous Enzymes to Boost Biotransformation
June 8th, 2020 | 35 mins 45 secs
Biotransformation has become a buzzword in the brewing community, with many brewers even performing dry hopping at certain specific times to hit what is considered to be the “biotransformation sweet spot.” Academic literature does not support these claims. With the aid of enzymes developed for the wine industry, two experimental IPA beers were brewed: one with an enzyme preparation aimed at hydrolyzing glycosides and the other with a β-lyase preparation aimed at releasing bound thiols. Triangle tests for each treatment were carried out by a panel of over 25 participants, composed of brewers and judges, and showed that both beers were significantly different from the control, yet preference was overwhelmingly toward the no-enzyme IPA control beer. Furthermore, the descriptive analysis carried out by the same panel showed a clear trend toward both enzyme beers being less tropical/fruity and more herbal and/or citrusy, the exact opposite of the purported benefit of biotransformation.
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Episode 047: Whirlpool Trub Carryover Effects on Beer Sensory Quality & Clarity
May 25th, 2020 | 20 mins 10 secs
Does increasing the whirlpool trub carryover by 20% significantly affect beer quality? That's what Hayley & Tom set out to determine at Stone's Richmond, VA brewery.
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Episode 038: Comparison of the Contributions of Hop Pellets, Supercritical Fluid Hop Extracts, and Extracted Hop Material to the Hop Aroma and Terpenoid Content of Kettle-Hopped Lager Beers
April 27th, 2020 | 26 mins 10 secs
Our friends from OSU join us to talk about a peer-reviewed paper comparing hop pellets, CO2 extracts, and spent hop material in kettle hop additions.
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Episode 167: Manufacturing Hand Sanitizer in the Brewery
April 13th, 2020 | 48 mins 8 secs
Three different perspectives on the realities of producing hand sanitizer.
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Bonus: The New Normal
April 10th, 2020 | 27 mins 48 secs
Now that we've got some historical COVID-19 sales data, Ross is back with insights on the new normal.
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Episode 045: Spoiler Alert
April 6th, 2020 | 36 mins 12 secs
Eric Jorgenson joins us to talk about his approach to microbiology and his quick reference guide of significant bacteria found in the brewery environment.