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 208: Understanding Thiol Precursor in Hops & Malt
April 19th, 2021 | 47 mins 8 secs
We catch up with a guy who's been studying thiols since before most of us understood why they matter. If you're chasing tropical flavors in beer, this episode is a must listen.
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Episode 206: Practical Sustainability
April 5th, 2021 | 43 mins 37 secs
We take a look at the carbon footprint of barley and hear about how a maltster's procurement contracts have drastically reduced that carbon footprint at no cost to farmers. We'll also hear about some case studies from the malthouse, as well as how & why every brewery should take a practical approach to sustainability.
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Episode 066: Sulfate to Chloride Ratio
March 29th, 2021 | 28 mins 5 secs
Aaron Justus from Ballast Point discusses targeting sulfate to chloride ratios to enhance hop & malt character. This research, which informed recipe development for gold medal winner Manta Ray, was presented during the 2017 Master Brewers Conference.
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Episode 205: Brewing vs. Distilling
March 22nd, 2021 | 55 mins 9 secs
We explore some of the similarities and differences between brewing & distilling.
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Episode 079: Brewhouse Efficiency for the Small Brewer
March 1st, 2021 | 42 mins 31 secs
How a simple case study conducted at 35 Rock Bottom breweries more than 10 years ago can inform your process to increase brewhouse efficiency and make better beer.
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Episode 200: Reconsidering the Congress Mash
February 8th, 2021 | 49 mins 6 secs
Should the numbers on your malt COA be produced from a mash that's more similar to your brewery mashes? Did you know that's already happening when you buy UK malt? Listen up, then join the conversation.
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Episode 053: Improved Flavor via Trub Removal at Dogfish
February 1st, 2021 | 29 mins 34 secs
In today's competitive craft beer market, if you're standing still, you're dead. Continual improvement is a required survival skill. This episode tells the story of how Dogfish Head Craft Brewery went about reducing perceived mercaptan via fermentor trub removal.
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Episode 058: What Yeast has taught me about Brewing over the years
January 4th, 2021 | 34 mins 12 secs
Tom Eplett joins us to talk about some anecdotal fermentation problems, lessons learned, and his go-to papers, books, etc. for troubleshooting and learning about brewing. If you still think the best yeast is in the middle of the cone, you should listen to this episode.
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Episode 028: Draught Line Cleaning P2
December 28th, 2020 | 35 mins 10 secs
This week, we continue our draught line cleaning discussion with Keith Lemcke.
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Episode 027: Draught Line Cleaning P1
December 21st, 2020 | 35 mins 45 secs
Draught beer line cleaning is a critical factor in the service of excellent draught beer. Cleaning your system frequently ensures beer quality but increases the cost of service due to beer lost when preparing the lines for cleaning. Throughout the industry, there is debate over the "best practices" in draught cleaning, including what defines a "clean" draught system. With the ever-increasing selection of draught beers, it is imperative not only to the brewer but all the way to the consumer that the beer provided as draught is representative of the beer provided by the brewer. The challenges of clean beer lines have never been more evident than today. Many of the draught beers on the market come with active yeast cultures, wild yeast cultures, and bacteria, all part of the flavor mix. These organisms can contaminate draught lines for the next beer to be tapped on those lines. Additionally, the intrusion of contaminant microorganisms from various sources and breweries needs to be eliminated and controlled within draught systems to ensure that the beer poured is exactly as intended.
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Episode 195: Thiol-releasing Capability of Brewers Yeast
December 7th, 2020 | 33 mins 43 secs
It is well known that hop-forward beer styles exhibit tropical fruit aromas. These aromas are conferred by a range of hop-related volatile compounds, including polyfunctional thiols such as 3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol (3SH) and 4-methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one (4MSP). These compounds are present at relatively high concentrations in hops and are extracted into beer during dry-hopping. Polyfunctional thiols are also abundant as non-volatile glutathione and cysteine conjugates in hops, and to a lesser extent can be found in barley (and therefore, malt). These conjugates are cleaved into amino acids and free thiols by enzymatic activity of yeasts, thus bound precursors may represent an important pool of tropical fruit flavor in beer, particularly in beer styles where dry hopping is minimal. In order to successfully liberate this pool of flavor, yeast with strong carbon-sulfur ß-lyase activity are needed. In wine research it has become evident that only a small number of commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae starter cultures possess this capacity. High-activity strains may release 10-30x higher concentrations of free thiol from the same amount of available precursor, relative to low-activity strains. This variation has been linked to a range of inactivating mutations in the carbon-sulfur ß-lyase encoding gene, IRC7. In this study we have catalogued several additional mutations in IRC7 that are found in brewing strains of S. cerevisiae. Based upon known mutations that affect wine strains we compare predicted IRC7 activity for various brewing strains, and actual measurements using a model substrate. Furthermore, we show that one of the mutations only found in brewing strains inactivates IRC7. Overall, the data show that brewing S. cerevisiae strains vary widely in their potential to release polyfunctional thiols from conjugated precursors, and that efforts to extract maximum flavor from malt and hops should include consideration of yeast strain.
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Episode 010: Free Education
November 23rd, 2020 | 19 mins 23 secs
Master Brewers is dying to pay for your education; it's part of what we do.
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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?