Master Brewers Podcast
United We Brew™
About the show
Each week, thousands of brewers download The Master Brewers Podcast to hear interviews with the industry's best & brightest in brewing science, technology, and operations. The show is known for featuring technical deep dives, a bit of brewing history, cutting edge research, hard lessons learned, important industry contributors, and no fluff. If you make beer for a living, this show is for you.
Thank you, sponsors!
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Master Brewers Podcast on social media
Episodes
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Episode 192: PPE in the Brewery
November 9th, 2020 | 46 mins 38 secs
Employer responsibilities, hazard assessments, finding the right safety glasses, the pitfalls of respiratory protection, employee buy-in, and more.
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Episode 191: Too Much Noise!
November 2nd, 2020 | 28 mins 28 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 190: Variation in Starch Structure
October 26th, 2020 | 38 mins 35 secs
Did you know that the gelatinization temperature of your malt could be as low as 136F or as high as 154F? Charlie Bamforth's successor joins us to talk about variations in starch structure and what that might mean for your mash.
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Episode 189: Long Term Yeast Storage
October 19th, 2020 | 25 mins 42 secs
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.
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Episode 188: Impossible Beer
October 12th, 2020 | 41 mins 44 secs
More engineered brewers yeast strains capable of "impossible" feats.
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Episode 186: CO2 Systems & Quality
September 28th, 2020 | 1 hr 13 mins
A Master Brewers member requested an episode about CO2 systems, CO2 quality, and best practices. Here it is.
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Episode 185: Filler Cleaning Meets Quality at Surly
September 21st, 2020 | 40 mins 40 secs
To avoid having every brewery reinvent the wheel with filler cleaning practices and save the time and money it takes to trial new processes, we share one brewery’s story of developing a robust cleaning program on both of its canning lines.
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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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Episode 182: De-skunking Beer
August 31st, 2020 | 34 mins 50 secs
Just when you thought light-struck flavor in beer was permanent...
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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.