Master Brewers Podcast

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Episode 306: Barley Lipids

April 22nd, 2024  |  43 mins 13 secs

Brewing process and quality tips related to barley lipids

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.

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.

Episode 187: The Guinness Yeast

April 1st, 2024  |  40 mins 34 secs

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.

Episode 304: Kernza

March 25th, 2024  |  58 mins 40 secs

What is Kernza and does it belong in your next recipe?

Episode 170: Centrifuge Operation

March 18th, 2024  |  1 hr 3 mins

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.

Episode 303: Cheers to a Decade of Craft Malt

March 11th, 2024  |  50 mins 15 secs

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.

Episode 169: Oak

March 4th, 2024  |  44 mins 12 secs

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.

Episode 302: World Brewing Congress 2024

February 26th, 2024  |  29 mins 13 secs

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.

Episode 301: Ask The Brewmasters

February 19th, 2024  |  41 mins 46 secs

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.

Episode 171: Best Practices - Container Rinsing with Water

February 12th, 2024  |  48 mins 55 secs

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.