Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: It's July twentieth, twenty twenty two, and this is an
Speaker 2: encore episode of an ology I personally love. I don't
Speaker 2: love beer, actually, but I love this ology. So it's
Speaker 2: a great and often overlooked episode. So I'm taking a
Speaker 2: week to plan your grandpad's burial and funeral and taking
Speaker 2: a little bit of a break. I thought you might
Speaker 2: enjoy just a hot app about cold beers. Get into it.
Speaker 2: I love you. Oh hi, Hi, there it's your weird
Speaker 2: step cousin Ali Ward, rumbling up to the family barbecue
Speaker 2: in a transam and offering you your first room temperature beer.
Speaker 2: Are you ready to get YEASTI okay, good. So this
Speaker 2: episode touches on something that is all over and inside you,
Speaker 2: devouring your garbage, single celled fungus that covers every surface
Speaker 2: of the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeast.
Speaker 2: It's also in beer. And I got a hot tip
Speaker 2: by being alive that people like beer and so on
Speaker 2: a recent trip to Portland, I was very generously chauffeured
Speaker 2: through the woods and to the shore on a road
Speaker 2: trip by the wonderful Sister Duo and my own personal
Speaker 2: merch Queen's Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch and they had
Speaker 2: an inn at Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon. I got
Speaker 2: a tour and I sat down to chat with a
Speaker 2: microbiologist and food scientist about zymology, the study and science
Speaker 2: and practice of fermentation people, which is how you take
Speaker 2: a sack of grain and water and turn it into
Speaker 2: Dad's wash away the work day elixir. Now, before I
Speaker 2: take you on a quick tour, I want to confess
Speaker 2: two things. Number One, I used to pour beer on
Speaker 2: myself as a child in the shower. More on not
Speaker 2: in a minute. Number Two, I read all of your
Speaker 2: reviews on iTunes and I silently thank each and every
Speaker 2: one of you. So this podcast is a one hundred
Speaker 2: percent independently made a lot of people I guess didn't
Speaker 2: know that. So listeners pay to keep it going through
Speaker 2: life sustaining Patreon donations at patreon dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 2: and also by buying merch at ologiesmirch dot com, and
Speaker 2: also for supporting for free by rating and reviewing and
Speaker 2: subscribing on iTunes, which boosts it in the charts. It
Speaker 2: helps the podcast get seen by other people. So we've
Speaker 2: remained in the top thirty or so science podcast totally
Speaker 2: independently on iTunes since September, and last week Ologies broke
Speaker 2: its own download record. It truly means a world to me,
Speaker 2: and this project is my favorite thing I've ever worked on.
Speaker 2: So I love that you guys love the show and
Speaker 2: are spreading the word. So each week I read a
Speaker 2: snippet of a review that really made my day, and
Speaker 2: at least ten twenty one said I love this podcast
Speaker 2: so much. Some episodes I start listening to and have
Speaker 2: no interest in the topic, and by the end I'm
Speaker 2: so fascinated and intrigued. For example, I almost skipped Ichthyology
Speaker 2: because fish who Cares? And that was my favorite episode
Speaker 2: to date. Okay, back to simology. So the word it
Speaker 2: comes from the Greek naturally for the workings of fermentation,
Speaker 2: it's pretty straightforward, Zimo and Louis Pastor was the first zymologist.
Speaker 2: He was the first person to get the yeasts were
Speaker 2: making fermentation happen. Oh. Also, the reason I showered myself
Speaker 2: in course as a child is because beer was supposed
Speaker 2: to make hair shiny, and I had lama hair and
Speaker 2: even my parents were like, sure, man, try to do
Speaker 2: whatever you gotta do, and it didn't work. And to
Speaker 2: be honest, I've never really loved beer, but I have
Speaker 2: mad respect for the craft of it and the bubbly,
Speaker 2: yeasty science of it, and I'm fascinated by the history
Speaker 2: and the role that beer plays in good old American culture.
Speaker 2: So I visited this brewery to find out how beer
Speaker 2: is made in both small and big scale batches, and
Speaker 2: to chat with someone who's truly deeply knowledgeable about tiny funguses. So,
Speaker 2: amid some forklift beeping and tasting room hollering in the background,
Speaker 2: we walked through a maze of like these twenty foot
Speaker 2: metal tanks storing and fermenting beers. That's a lot of bruskies.
Speaker 2: Did We learned some basics.
Speaker 1: How familiar are with homebrewing?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: None, zero, that's basically all the CO two blowoff so
Speaker 1: is experimenting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's where it burbs and farts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: I sniffed some yeasts. That's some ripe business. And I
Speaker 2: learned that the staff of this brewery gets to pick
Speaker 2: their own titles. So I was told this by a
Speaker 2: guy named Jake, who is technically Rogues level ten spirits wizard.
Speaker 2: It's on his business card. He showed me a warehouse
Speaker 2: of aging whiskeys and charred oak barrels, and we won't
Speaker 2: get into that much in this episode, but I will
Speaker 2: leave you with the takeaway from him that the opening
Speaker 2: of a barrel of aging spirits is called the bunghole,
Speaker 2: and they smell delicious. I wanted to add scented candle
Speaker 2: and in the flavor of bunghole. Then our group checked
Speaker 2: out the yeast lab and sat down to a very
Speaker 2: mellow tasting. Am I gonna get sir?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Finally we went in for the interview and talked about
Speaker 2: the history of cold ones and how beer goes from
Speaker 2: a slurry of wet fungus in a bucket to a refreshing,
Speaker 2: cool friend in a bottle, and the grossest things you
Speaker 2: can culture and make into beers. There's some home brewing tips,
Speaker 2: some food science triumphs, and some early names for light
Speaker 2: beer that just didn't quite cut it. So get ready
Speaker 2: to tip back this refreshing episode with zimologist Quentin Sturgeon.
Speaker 1: Well, my first name is John, actually, so I go
Speaker 1: my middle name, So yeah, my phone name is John
Speaker 1: Quentin Sturgeon. It's not a weak name. Any means no, it's.
Speaker 2: Not tell me what you're idol is here QAQC.
Speaker 1: Manager or lead. But my actual title is a Minister
Speaker 1: of Truth.
Speaker 2: Did you get to pick that?
Speaker 1: It was? Yeah, but it was kind of given to me.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, you just you don't have a filter.
Speaker 2: So truth is it kind of like a tribal name
Speaker 2: where it's given to you based on your characteristics.
Speaker 1: You know, most people pick them themselves, so it's like
Speaker 1: a self given nickname. And it wasn't. I wasn't given
Speaker 1: to me. Somebody actually mentioned it.
Speaker 2: So every time you're wrong, does that really come back
Speaker 2: to bite you? Uh?
Speaker 1: Oh, I just don't ever be wrong. But no, no,
Speaker 1: of course doesn't mean I'm correct. Means I'm just telling
Speaker 1: the truth as best I know it, your true, my
Speaker 1: version of the truth. Yes.
Speaker 2: Now tell me about your degrees. What did you study?
Speaker 2: How long did you study it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So my bachelor's was in food science at Universe Idaho,
Speaker 1: and then I made the epic eight mile track across
Speaker 1: state border to Washington State and got a master's in
Speaker 1: food science.
Speaker 2: What does that entail? Getting a master's in food science?
Speaker 1: A laborious person, this project that includes everything from sensory
Speaker 1: to microbiology, a lot of biochemistry. I had a resurrect
Speaker 1: in old HPOC.
Speaker 2: What's an HPLC.
Speaker 1: It's a high performance liquid chromatography.
Speaker 2: So Quentin has two degrees in food science, one of
Speaker 2: masters that involved analyzing amino acids in wine fermentation. But
Speaker 2: he had a history with beer and began home brewing
Speaker 2: at nineteen in his fraternity's kitchen. And he's a burly dude.
Speaker 2: He's very Pacific Northwest. He's like wearing a hoodie. He's
Speaker 2: got a beard, those car hearts pants and a battered
Speaker 2: ball cap. And Quinton's worked in wheat genetics, cheese, wine, beer, kombucha,
Speaker 2: all involving, in his words, one cell critters that nobody
Speaker 2: cares about. But hello, hi, if you like cheese and beer,
Speaker 2: you have to care about these critters. They're so important.
Speaker 2: So yeast r indeed single celled fungi. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: until the late eighteen hundreds, after Louis Pastor, that we
Speaker 2: even knew that a living organism, a fungus, was instrumental
Speaker 2: in brewing and baking bread. And we put some shit
Speaker 2: under microscopes, we were like, whoa huh, well, why do
Speaker 2: you look at that? Now? A common bruise yeast to
Speaker 2: make ales in particular is a single round, smooth, flat
Speaker 2: cell and it's kind of a cream color. It's called
Speaker 2: sachromiaces servasia something like that, which translates to sugar fungus
Speaker 2: of beer. So not unlike Minister of Truth. It's a
Speaker 2: good title. So what is happening? Can you walk me
Speaker 2: through what fermentation is like? Just for tend I'm an
Speaker 2: alien that just landed on a spaceship and my first
Speaker 2: question is like, how y'all make booze?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, and basically you can choose something up and
Speaker 1: spit into a bucket or really it's the conversion of
Speaker 1: sugar and starch. Well, starch goes to sugar into ethanol
Speaker 1: and carbon dioxide, and that.
Speaker 2: Is done by introducing a little tiny single cell critter one,
Speaker 2: so little.
Speaker 1: Fun guy, sacrimices, And we'd like to use sacramice the
Speaker 1: SERVICEA because it's more consistent and not nearly as temperamental
Speaker 1: and pissy as all the other eastrains. So that's why
Speaker 1: you see that Sacrimices SERVICEA as the go to yeast.
Speaker 2: Is that for wine and for beer?
Speaker 1: Wine and beer, but they are different strains.
Speaker 2: So how do you choose which strain to use?
Speaker 1: So that's actually that was what I did after grad school.
Speaker 1: That was ninety percent of my job was because all
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of east vendors out there. All these
Speaker 1: vendors have all this yeast. You don't know what is
Speaker 1: sales and marketing and what's true.
Speaker 2: Do you have to culture them and see what eats
Speaker 2: what and what the byproducts are and what temperatures they
Speaker 2: can withstands to hide.
Speaker 1: Basically the best way to do it if you're going
Speaker 1: to be doing like I think I did one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty something strains when I was there in just
Speaker 1: over a year in triplicate with little bioreactors that are
Speaker 1: temperature controlled. You take sterile juice and you dump in
Speaker 1: the exact the amount of yeast three times, and then
Speaker 1: you ferment it and you track everything you can chemically
Speaker 1: before and after enduring, and then you try it at
Speaker 1: the end. And basically that's it. Because you worked off
Speaker 1: the same juice for all those YA strains, You've got
Speaker 1: the same baseline. And all right, this one was farty.
Speaker 1: That one's awesome party is a term?
Speaker 2: Is it really?
Speaker 1: Yeah? H twos? Yeah, it is a nasty it smells
Speaker 1: like fart.
Speaker 2: Wait, do you use that term professionally like this one
Speaker 2: I have?
Speaker 1: It depends on how lax the panel would be. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean everything from rotten cabbage, sewerdrain. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: since your terms get fun? Yeah, and how do you
Speaker 1: how do baby vomit is? One?
Speaker 2: That baby vomited is when you're fermenting something and it
Speaker 2: smells like baby vomit or cabbage farts or whatever. Are
Speaker 2: you making notes on smell and compounds? Are you analyzing
Speaker 2: them through your own senses or a combination of like
Speaker 2: chemical determinants and your sense in both?
Speaker 1: So, I mean the human knows unless you can in
Speaker 1: sensory terms, it's useless. Right. You tell somebody, all right, cool,
Speaker 1: you have x and x milligrams per leader of vanilla. Well,
Speaker 1: vanilla's one vanilla. That's pretty simple. Then you say, isopluric acid?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where the hell's that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly? So I mean that's just it alor like yeah,
Speaker 1: some of these terms, and when they get just down
Speaker 1: to chemicals, I don't know what the hell does that
Speaker 1: mean or where did that come from? How do I
Speaker 1: control is it a good or a bad thing? It
Speaker 1: gets way too complex when you just do on the chemistry,
Speaker 1: so you focus it down into flavor buckets and just
Speaker 1: make it easy. But sensory, I don't know. Your nose
Speaker 1: is still amazing. And if you can train yourself to
Speaker 1: be as good of a machine as possible, setting yourself
Speaker 1: up pretty well.
Speaker 2: Side note, isn't it weird how you smell something and
Speaker 2: it usually reminds you of your past in some way,
Speaker 2: Like if you huff a perfume your freshman year of college,
Speaker 2: like forget about it, Like you are a slave to
Speaker 2: nostalgia for the rest of the day. So why is that?
Speaker 2: Why does that happen? So I looked it up, and
Speaker 2: smell is linked in intimately to parts of the brain
Speaker 2: that deal with emotion. So you have an old factory
Speaker 2: bulb that's part of the limbic system that includes the
Speaker 2: amygdala and the hippocampus of the brain. Those also deal
Speaker 2: with memory, learning and your emotions. So in order to
Speaker 2: identify a smell, you may find that first you have
Speaker 2: to figure out what does this remind me of before
Speaker 2: you can figure out what the smell is. So humans
Speaker 2: have about six million ol factory receptors, and scientists recently
Speaker 2: learned that we can smell up to a trillion smells.
Speaker 2: But your dog, see your dog over there, Your dog
Speaker 2: has not six million, three hundred million compared to our
Speaker 2: six million, So every butt sniff is like Shakespeare to them.
Speaker 2: I would now like you to imagine a dog in
Speaker 2: a lab coat, because, as a food scientist sniffing stuff
Speaker 2: in this case yeast, super important. Dogs would be excellent
Speaker 2: at this. So when you applied for this particular job,
Speaker 2: did you come in saying I have a lot of
Speaker 2: experience testing the yeast and they were like, we need
Speaker 2: you on our team.
Speaker 1: Uh, I have enough jack of all trades background to
Speaker 1: be able to do something like this, but yeah, a
Speaker 1: ton of lab and micro experience. So it was like, cool,
Speaker 1: we can shove this guy in there and leave him alone.
Speaker 2: What's your day to day job?
Speaker 1: Like, oh god, it is literally one third microbiology, one
Speaker 1: third chemistry, and one third century and then trying to
Speaker 1: make sure we don't kill anybody by making beer or
Speaker 1: floating bottles and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So if you have the chemistry wrong, your bottles will explode.
Speaker 1: Not so much the chemistry, the microbiology, because then you've
Speaker 1: got potential for secondary fermentation. So when you pop that top,
Speaker 1: you might shoot a cap into the ceiling, or it
Speaker 1: will just build up so much pressure that the glass
Speaker 1: itself will shatter. And then, yeah, I mean that's the worse, worst,
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. I don't know if that happening here.
Speaker 1: So that's good.
Speaker 2: Can you want through the basics of like, in an
Speaker 2: absolute nutshell, how is beer made?
Speaker 1: So malt is the sugar source. Our starch converts starch
Speaker 1: into sugars, which the yeast, which we'd then later add,
Speaker 1: chomps up and converts, through its own metabolism from glucose
Speaker 1: and sucrosa maltose into ethanol and carbon dioxide. So then
Speaker 1: you get basically, beer is yeast farts and piss and
Speaker 1: other flavorings.
Speaker 2: Okay, how much do you already love this guy? Now?
Speaker 2: I'm going to recap and give you some basics because
Speaker 2: I had to look this up after our interview and
Speaker 2: after the tour because I still didn't get it. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna break it down. You're about to understand how beer
Speaker 2: is made? Are you ready? You're never gonna look at
Speaker 2: beer the same way again. And next time you're at
Speaker 2: a barbecue and you have nothing to talk to anyone about,
Speaker 2: you can just tell them this okay. Cool, So grain
Speaker 2: like barley or wheat is malted, and malted means it's
Speaker 2: germinated just a wee bit and then it's kilmed or heated,
Speaker 2: and that stops the germination. So doing that german and
Speaker 2: heating it breaks down some starch into sugar. And next
Speaker 2: it's milled or crushed so that the starches are more
Speaker 2: accessible and they're easily broken down. Water is then added,
Speaker 2: and when it's added, it's called a mash mashing. It's
Speaker 2: added to this big tank called a mash ton, and
Speaker 2: it's mixed with hot water and that activates the enzymes
Speaker 2: in the grain that helps turn them from starch into sugar,
Speaker 2: and it makes this syrupy sweet liquid called wart. And
Speaker 2: the wart is separated from all the solids left over
Speaker 2: in the grain in a process called watering, so many terms.
Speaker 2: So the wart is then boiled for a few hours
Speaker 2: which sterilizes it, and hops are added, giving it some bitterness,
Speaker 2: some essential oil, some flavor. And this mix is whirlpooled
Speaker 2: to collect any solids, and then it's cooled down and finally,
Speaker 2: after malting, milling, warting, mashing, after all of that, it's
Speaker 2: ready for fungus. It's fungus o'clock. This is called pitching.
Speaker 2: Now the cooled downward, it's put in this big fermentor
Speaker 2: tank and yeast is added and it ferments anywhere from
Speaker 2: a few days to a month, depending on the beer,
Speaker 2: and the type of yeast will also determine if it's
Speaker 2: an ale or a lagger.
Speaker 1: I did not know that fermentation really in the bulk
Speaker 1: of it actually happens in the first seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: but generally we have tank times that range anywhere from
Speaker 1: eight days to twenty plus days.
Speaker 2: Okay, And there are hoses that run out the carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: And it sounds kind of like a rhino farting in
Speaker 2: a bathtub. Fuck. That gurgle is very soothing. And now
Speaker 2: you has beers almost.
Speaker 1: And then basically you remove the yeast if you want,
Speaker 1: and so you get a clear product, a more stable
Speaker 1: product because of all sorts of biochemistry. But it is
Speaker 1: much more stable than it was before the east took effect.
Speaker 1: And so carbonated up for some good mouth feel and
Speaker 1: fizz and there you go. That's beer. It is simple.
Speaker 2: So you carbonated after the fact, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a good portion of the carbonation will come
Speaker 1: from natural fermentation, but not enough. It's not that lively
Speaker 1: bubble pain bubble break that you experienced with beer, where
Speaker 1: soda has so much more carbonation. Yeah, because you do that,
Speaker 1: that's a term, is bubble pain, and it's I feel
Speaker 1: those like pop rocks right exploding on your tongue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing as.
Speaker 2: A person who's literally drinking a lacroix right now and
Speaker 2: trying not to burp into the microphone. I was greatly
Speaker 2: enthused about bubble pain as a term, and I looked
Speaker 2: it up. Gidaly and carbonation does thrill us because it
Speaker 2: triggers pain receptors on the tongue, the same ones that
Speaker 2: respond to like wasabi. Now, some people hate carbonation because
Speaker 2: it just hurts. They're like no, But I couldn't find
Speaker 2: much mention of the specific term bubble pain. I looked
Speaker 2: it up. I was like, I thought this was a
Speaker 2: term until I came across an article about it. But
Speaker 2: it was published by a researcher at Quentin's alma mater.
Speaker 2: So it's possible that this term is super common to
Speaker 2: Quentin in the way that as in Northern California. I
Speaker 2: thought everyone said Hella all the time, and so you
Speaker 2: have to strain off the yeast when you're done fermenting
Speaker 2: it to where you want it. You've used a centrifuge
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: We use our s interfuge, yeah, to just get rid
Speaker 1: of it, and the clarifies the crap out of that beer.
Speaker 1: More typical you'll see a filter beforehand or after to
Speaker 1: really clarify it. And we do pretty well with our senterfuge,
Speaker 1: and we just run with that.
Speaker 2: What happens to the yeast once you're like a later
Speaker 2: day is.
Speaker 1: Thanks, it goes into a tote and then into a
Speaker 1: dump vessel. But that's not to say that we haven't
Speaker 1: pulled off east before that. And we will reuse that
Speaker 1: yeast over and over, and so once we start with
Speaker 1: a little bit, it will grow and grow and grow
Speaker 1: many many babies, and we harvest that off and use
Speaker 1: it again.
Speaker 2: What does it look like? Is it like a murky
Speaker 2: I imagine something that looks like murky yellow whale blubber.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, so.
Speaker 2: You're holding up a bottle of beer, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of the it's kind of that murky precipitate in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it just looks muddy murky and hazy, just
Speaker 1: kind of all sorts.
Speaker 2: To know good and do different beers use different yeasts
Speaker 2: or do you use that one? Do you use that
Speaker 2: one's species and genus but a different strain for say
Speaker 2: a logger ipa.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we use anywhere from five to upwards of
Speaker 1: whatever test patches we're doing of random idea of beer
Speaker 1: strains here at Rogue. Pac Man is the one we
Speaker 1: use by far and away. It is a workhourse of
Speaker 1: a yeast. They can just power through a huge amount
Speaker 1: of sugar. But yeah, we definitely use them because they
Speaker 1: do different things. You know. Some are more phenolic, more
Speaker 1: band aid, more spice notes, some are more fruity. Others
Speaker 1: are just clean and neutral, and sometimes you want that.
Speaker 1: It really depends on the style and what you're trying
Speaker 1: to go for in the finished product.
Speaker 2: So pac Man is the name of a special proprietary
Speaker 2: strain that Rogue uses for a bunch of their beers,
Speaker 2: and it's supposed to be really robust and reliable. People
Speaker 2: love this. I looked online and some people try to
Speaker 2: use the dregs of other Rogue beers to culture their
Speaker 2: own pac Man batch. And one message board I looked
Speaker 2: at said this pac Man is the most forgiving yeast ever.
Speaker 2: I had to pitch some slurry that just finished a
Speaker 2: cider ferment as an emergency measure, and it still got
Speaker 2: like eighty percent attenuation in an all grain ward. What okay?
Speaker 2: So thanks to Quentin, I kind of know what that
Speaker 2: jargon casserole of a sentence means. So you can buy yeasts,
Speaker 2: you can try to culture them from other beers, or
Speaker 2: if you're like some wild animals, you can just wait
Speaker 2: for fruit to rot. Evidently, moose and elk eat fallen
Speaker 2: apples and they stumble around a bit, they get a
Speaker 2: little crazy, and some monkeys will eat fermented fruit and
Speaker 2: just lose it. Elephants, however, seem to be apocryphal drinkers.
Speaker 2: It's more legend than lit because it would take so
Speaker 2: much fruit to get them drunk. But if you've ever
Speaker 2: brewed kombucha at home or wanted to, the yeast and
Speaker 2: bacteria form this symbiotic colony. It looks like a slimy
Speaker 2: pancake or a flap of skin from a dead sting, right,
Speaker 2: And essentially all you need to do is convince a
Speaker 2: hippie to give you some of their mother slop and
Speaker 2: you dump it into a bucket of tea and sugar,
Speaker 2: and boom, A few weeks later, you have an expensive
Speaker 2: bucket of busy vinegar tea. I've done this and it
Speaker 2: filled the void in my life where a pet or
Speaker 2: an alien in the cupboard should be. It tastes good,
Speaker 2: but it looks like a nightmare. Do you ever dream
Speaker 2: about yeast?
Speaker 1: I haven't lately I have, Yeah, I mean, I've got
Speaker 1: a stuffy yeast on my desk really yeah, yeah, yeasty.
Speaker 1: He's a stuffed one million size times size of a
Speaker 1: sach My service and he's got dreepy little eyes and
Speaker 1: he's got butting scars on the head. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: she called mother cells and daughter cells, but yeah, yeasty.
Speaker 1: When I was separated, when not separated, but my wife
Speaker 1: was cross country. I was interning in California and she
Speaker 1: was working in New York. I sent that to her
Speaker 1: as a care package and kept it and held it
Speaker 1: like which, you know, it seems really really weird. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just that level of a nerd. But I
Speaker 1: did propose to you or after we saw each other
Speaker 1: that summer, so yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's.
Speaker 2: Part of your wooing. You're like, here's a stuffed YaST
Speaker 2: think about me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cute thinking about it. That's kind of weird.
Speaker 2: No, it's a torrible Did you grow things and culture
Speaker 2: things when you were a kid. What kind of kid
Speaker 2: were you?
Speaker 1: Uh no, I definitely I had a microscope. But I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, well, these are like really funny
Speaker 1: names and hard to remember. I wasn't all that interested.
Speaker 1: Is to be honest, I don't know. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell I wanted to do going in Well,
Speaker 1: in high school, I don't know. I mowed lawns. I
Speaker 1: mean I paid for my undergrad by mowing lawns.
Speaker 2: Did you really?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was like eleven years old. My dad's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're going to pay for college. So right there, it's
Speaker 1: two things aside. Number one, I'm going to college, that's
Speaker 1: not an option to not. And I was going to
Speaker 1: pay for it. So all right, cool, eleven year old
Speaker 1: walks cross the streets. Hurts a moment, law, Where did.
Speaker 2: You put all the money into a banking account?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, just straight savings and yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy.
Speaker 2: Are your parents proud of what you do? I think
Speaker 2: so that sound in the background is a level ten
Speaker 2: spirits wizard cackling at Quentin. Your buddy is laughing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't heard. Like, we're proud of you, son.
Speaker 1: You can get everyone drunk, make the world a better place.
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2: But you have a laboratory I do, and a master's
Speaker 2: an master's degree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't think they have anything to
Speaker 1: I think they're more proud of the grandkids of you.
Speaker 2: Did your wife wish that she could just butt off
Speaker 2: a baby like a yeast?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pregnancy was rough, that's not It wasn't fun. Shannon's
Speaker 1: deliberately like a champ. But yeah, oh yeah, like poster child.
Speaker 1: But but no, pregnancy was rough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was beer helpful afterward, some beer. She's not
Speaker 2: a big drinker, she's not your wife is not abuser,
Speaker 2: not a big drinker.
Speaker 1: When she does, it's more of the sour tart stuff,
Speaker 1: which I mean she can peel and eat a lemon,
Speaker 1: but I know that's the face silt make when she
Speaker 1: does it. It's like it's unbelievable and good God, I
Speaker 1: just hear your enamel screaming. But no, I mean we
Speaker 1: started making a Paradise pucker, which is a sour base
Speaker 1: and she loves that beer, but she's just not a
Speaker 1: huge drinker. So yeah, there's that you I know right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you some questions from listeners, is
Speaker 2: that Tully, because there's approximately one million of them, this
Speaker 2: is a rapid fire around. But before your questions, let's
Speaker 2: toss back some money to a charity of the ologists choosing,
Speaker 2: and this week it's going to the Rogue Foundation, which
Speaker 2: since its inception, has donated millions of dollars to charity,
Speaker 2: including acts like donating all the Juneteenth pump sales to
Speaker 2: the Coalition of Communities of Color. They donated beer to
Speaker 2: Project Pooch and the Oregon Zoo and the Newport Symphony.
Speaker 2: They renovated ask Gate Park in pouls In, Montana, where
Speaker 2: I happen to have many relatives. Hey, Paulson and Rogue
Speaker 2: Foundation is also sponsored beach and riverside cleanups in and a
Speaker 2: bunch more so, we will make a donation to them
Speaker 2: thanks to sponsors of the show, which you mean you're
Speaker 2: about now? Okay, your curiosity is a bruin. Greg wants
Speaker 2: to know any secret ease that might make for better
Speaker 2: fermenting beers.
Speaker 1: Try everything you can from wherever you can get it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of places at homebrew stores that or
Speaker 1: try culturing your own and see what's growing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see what happens. What's the worst? You just make
Speaker 1: a terrible batch of beer and then you trumpet clean
Speaker 1: everything and start over.
Speaker 2: Well, how do you know that you even have?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: So you put the work out and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Well, there, I mean a couple of steps. You can
Speaker 1: easily get stuff to get your own Peter dish set
Speaker 1: up and just to start culturing. I mean you can
Speaker 1: be into it for less than fifty bucks. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you just need a couple of glass where
Speaker 1: and you just make a small little batch of work,
Speaker 1: set it out in an orchard or something like that,
Speaker 1: and throw it on some dishes. And there's home technique
Speaker 1: to it. But it's not impossible.
Speaker 2: Wow, diy yeast.
Speaker 1: It's a thing.
Speaker 2: Bob Ogden wants to know when and where did hops
Speaker 2: come from in brewing? Are hops used for any other purpose?
Speaker 2: Do we even use hops? What are hops doing on
Speaker 2: the rest of the time?
Speaker 1: Good question. Well, I guess they're kind of an offshoot
Speaker 1: of hemp and so I believe they were at one
Speaker 1: point used for rope along those lines. They're also like
Speaker 1: a subset of like pot. I think they're somehow related
Speaker 1: to marijuana, but I don't. You're gonna have to fact
Speaker 1: check me on that.
Speaker 2: One side note, so hops aka humulus ulus humuusless lupulous,
Speaker 2: I think that's what they're called, and marijuana are indeed related,
Speaker 2: but instead of getting you all stony boloney hops were
Speaker 2: cultivated for use in beer as early as the ninth
Speaker 2: century because they have these acids and essential oils that
Speaker 2: prevent oil. They also give beer that traditional bitter taste
Speaker 2: that a lot of people who are not me like,
Speaker 2: is now an okay time to tell you I've never
Speaker 2: finished a beer. I've maybe once I finished a beer.
Speaker 2: I've started a lot of beers, but I really appreciate
Speaker 2: the craftsmanship. Adrian mcnabeles wants to know is it true
Speaker 2: that stouts and porter are good sources of dietary item
Speaker 2: I eat? Is my beer health food?
Speaker 1: There was a guy who lived off nothing but guinness
Speaker 1: for a month. Really and it's totally doable. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: unfiltered because you have the pro and prebatics of yeast. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean you people have done it. It's
Speaker 1: got a ton of nutrients in there. It's got to
Speaker 1: be doing something weird your system after a while.
Speaker 2: Did he take a sabbatical from pooping? What was the
Speaker 2: deal there?
Speaker 1: I don't know. And you're on a juice diet. You're
Speaker 1: not getting a lot of fiber that way, it's all
Speaker 1: pure liquid.
Speaker 2: Who was this guy? Was this someone you knew?
Speaker 1: Or was this? This is not Larry from my freshman year?
Speaker 1: Now I've I had heard this. This is like this.
Speaker 1: I don't know a thing.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'll look it up. Okay, So the Guinness
Speaker 2: diet is a thing. And though I found accounts of
Speaker 2: one super devout Christian slash beer lover giving up food
Speaker 2: in favor of beer for forty days of Lent, I
Speaker 2: guess he was inspired by monks, he did not seem
Speaker 2: to be drinking guinness per se. So with a Guinness
Speaker 2: diet with a stout, you'd need to drink forty seven
Speaker 2: pints of guinness a day to get your caloric needs met.
Speaker 2: This was calculated by a one hundred and seventy pounds
Speaker 2: dude who tried it plus to fulfill your daily nutritional requirements,
Speaker 2: you would need to drink a glass of orange juice
Speaker 2: for vitamin C and two glasses of milk for calcium.
Speaker 2: So I looked up records of people who've tried this,
Speaker 2: and one account, which ran in a newspaper article in
Speaker 2: the Sonoma Sun, contained a diary from which I will
Speaker 2: read an excerpt. Day three. At one point, after enough
Speaker 2: people told me that I look like I'm dying, it
Speaker 2: all became clear. I know what hell is. Hell is
Speaker 2: a giant party where you can drink all the guinness
Speaker 2: you want. Only your friends can eat the delicious feast,
Speaker 2: and they will laugh at you, and they will constantly
Speaker 2: make comments like you look like you're dying. Another man
Speaker 2: tried the Guinness diet and reported that, after having a
Speaker 2: couple of lunch beers, quote, my stomach was starting to
Speaker 2: make noises comparable to the dragons on Game of Thrones. Now,
Speaker 2: it should be noted that both dudes who wrote their
Speaker 2: trials up of this broke down around day four or
Speaker 2: five and ravenously purchased and bought candy bars. One was
Speaker 2: a Snickers and one was a Mars bar. So, unless
Speaker 2: you are deeply alcoholic or religious, you may want to
Speaker 2: just do like slim fast or step up the cardio.
Speaker 2: Buddy Caitlin Thomas wants to know why does beer have
Speaker 2: to have so many carbs?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the whole idea of between it light and beer, right,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get those carves out. It's just a
Speaker 1: matter of what you use. Are your sugar sores and
Speaker 1: what's going to be left over. The YaST is not
Speaker 1: going to consume, and so it's one of those factors.
Speaker 1: If you want to have less carbs in your beer,
Speaker 1: you got to use the U strain and set it
Speaker 1: up that it's going to ferment out pretty dry. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, carbs are a complete balance with
Speaker 1: all the other flavors. So without carbs, you're just going
Speaker 1: to have a boozy, watered down, unbalanced hop mess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that is totally They're necessary. I mean, it's the sugar.
Speaker 1: It's all the sweet and a lot of the multi
Speaker 1: biscuit flavor. It's all from the mall and the carbs.
Speaker 2: Do light beers have they been fermenting longer or do
Speaker 2: they just add water to a regular beer.
Speaker 1: It's a different sugar source, so it fermends out cleaner,
Speaker 1: and so you end up having just more ethanol and
Speaker 1: more CO two, so it's more efficiently converted. Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of other technology into it, but
Speaker 1: I mean, so that's why it was a big thing
Speaker 1: when it hit the market. I think Miller Light was
Speaker 1: the first one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, yeah, like I knew what he was
Speaker 2: talking about, but I did not know. However, after doing
Speaker 2: some light googling, I have learned that this beer, Miller Light,
Speaker 2: was invented in nineteen sixty seven, but was originally called
Speaker 2: Gabblinger's Diet Beer. So they tweaked the marketing because, I mean,
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: Pretty revolutionary to actually be able to have a beer
Speaker 1: around one hundred galleries.
Speaker 2: Right, I love it, Like make a lobe ultras Like
Speaker 2: if you like crossbit and beer, you're like, okay, Like.
Speaker 1: No, I'm sorry those you don't exist.
Speaker 2: Brittany Krassa wants to know what ingredient is it that
Speaker 2: makes the yeast occasionally go seemingly crazy and foam up
Speaker 2: and explode during first fermentation, asking for a friend, Also,
Speaker 2: do you have any tips for new brewers or book recommendations?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that explosive early fermentation we have it I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll blow over our tubs and we use fifty five
Speaker 1: gallon drums as are blowoff. But it depends largely on
Speaker 1: how much protein was in the initial frumentation and then
Speaker 1: how much yeast they added. If they added just too much,
Speaker 1: your fermentation just went crazy and that yeast is just really, really,
Speaker 1: really active. So there's a couple of ways to get
Speaker 1: around that is, get a bigger vessel saw that foam
Speaker 1: breaks off or just stays in the vessel, or don't
Speaker 1: had as much yeast, or keep it in a bathtub
Speaker 1: with some ice. Chill it down because I mean, during
Speaker 1: your fermentation there's a lot of heat generated as well,
Speaker 1: so you have to chill that down otherwise it will
Speaker 1: just run off and go real fast.
Speaker 2: Is it better to homebrew if you're new at it
Speaker 2: during the winter months than in the summer.
Speaker 1: If you've got an inkling to do it at all,
Speaker 1: just do it. But I mean, as far as going
Speaker 1: back to the tips for homeber, sanitation got to be clean,
Speaker 1: and if you think you're clean, do it again. I've
Speaker 1: had so much bad homebrew because they didn't clean something properly,
Speaker 1: or they oh no, I just ran bleached through it. No, Well,
Speaker 1: it's just not enough. You gotta do it right.
Speaker 2: What happens if you don't brew it clean? Does it
Speaker 2: start to does the wrong thing? Ferment? Does it smell skunky? Okay?
Speaker 1: So you set yourself up for any and everything to
Speaker 1: have access to all that sugar, all those free amino
Speaker 1: amino acids, and they're gonna go crazy. And so that's
Speaker 1: why you sack mice service started to use because it's
Speaker 1: such an active from enter it'll just attack and it'll
Speaker 1: drive out now compete most other things. So that's why
Speaker 1: it's really really beneficial to use a good healthy yeast.
Speaker 1: But sanitation, yeah, it's kind of key because you don't
Speaker 1: want like a cedar bacter. A seedar bacter makes acetic acid,
Speaker 1: which is vinegar, or like a lactic acid bacteria or
Speaker 1: pediacccus which makes lactic acid, Whi's not as tart, but
Speaker 1: it still will ruin a beer and it's like sour milk.
Speaker 2: Is Laia coccus pediacccus, my shitless.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are you a clean at home? Are you a neat
Speaker 2: freak at home? Or are you like not?
Speaker 1: No, Like the worst is the kitchen sink and my
Speaker 1: wife will rip she does totally rip anyone. It is
Speaker 1: the dirtiest place in your house.
Speaker 2: Oh say it is so? Oh? No? Ugh? Okay, So
Speaker 2: I have often heard and feared this about kitchen sinks,
Speaker 2: and I had to look it up with all and
Speaker 2: according to doctor Charles Gerba, one microbiologist who's been studying
Speaker 2: invisible American domestic filth for decades, your sink and sponge
Speaker 2: are like bonnaroo, a witch's brew of fecal bacteria, protozoans,
Speaker 2: and viruses. So he says that the cleanest looking kitchens
Speaker 2: are often the dirtiest because clean people wipe up so frequently.
Speaker 2: It's like painting a swath of bacteria, like Bob Ross
Speaker 2: laying down the background of a gorgeous landscape. Now. Amusingly,
Speaker 2: some of the cleanest kitchens, doctor Gerba claims are in
Speaker 2: the homes of bachelors who rarely wipe up their countertops.
Speaker 2: He says, in most cases, it's safer to make a
Speaker 2: salad on a toilet seat than it is to make
Speaker 2: one on a cutting board. So what are we supposed
Speaker 2: to do? Uh? Well, you can either microwave or sponge
Speaker 2: for a few minutes and kill all that stuff, or
Speaker 2: you can survive off beer and snickers. I'm going to
Speaker 2: leave it up to you.
Speaker 1: But in your lab, oh, in the lab, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a completely different story. So I get all my neat
Speaker 1: freak out of my system here and then go home.
Speaker 1: It's just like a slob.
Speaker 2: Oh God, that would drive me crazy, that would because
Speaker 2: it's be like, I know you have a master's in science, Like,
Speaker 2: I know you know how to wash these dishes. Megan
Speaker 2: Gerard wants to know. I heard that we have found
Speaker 2: ancient civilizations had beer recipes. Do we know if that
Speaker 2: was because they couldn't prevent it, like there was no refrigeration,
Speaker 2: or do they do it on purpose? Are they any
Speaker 2: good ancient beer? I understand was because the water was
Speaker 2: so disgusting that they're like, we got to have this
Speaker 2: stuff that has alcohol in it so you can kill
Speaker 2: the bacteria. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I actually do really you help yourself
Speaker 1: out from you killing like things like interobackter e coal.
Speaker 2: I side note them bacteria's pooh that.
Speaker 1: Kind of stuff, because it can't survive in that low
Speaker 1: pH You can't survive with a little bit of alcohol
Speaker 1: on there. Hops were added way after the fact. I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking beer. It's four thousand years old. At least,
Speaker 1: we haven't known what the hell we were doing, except
Speaker 1: until past year came by kind of like, oh wait, no,
Speaker 1: this is not just God blessing you with this alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's no, it's yeast. It's yeast pissing farts. That's what
Speaker 1: you get, little tiny, single cell But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have heard of some people trying to recreate really
Speaker 1: ancient beers and then kind of being so so yeah,
Speaker 1: but you also kind of like, I don't really know
Speaker 1: how they did it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So a little beer history. It could have been
Speaker 2: invented up to ten thousand years ago when agriculture was
Speaker 2: first starting out around Mesopotamia and bread yeasts were fermented
Speaker 2: into this drinkable potable I guess I used that loosely concoction.
Speaker 2: So early beers were often really thick, like more of
Speaker 2: a gruel like a soupy oatmeal, and drinking straws were
Speaker 2: used so that you wouldn't get the chunky bits. How
Speaker 2: gross is that? According to Wikipedia, though in ancient Mesopotamia
Speaker 2: the majority of brewers were probably ladies, Brewing was a
Speaker 2: fairly well respected occupation during the time. And then at
Speaker 2: some point it became less chunky and I guess more manly.
Speaker 2: From a societal standpoint, Brian Edge wants to know, is
Speaker 2: it true that there's a hops shortage or an impending one,
Speaker 2: and if so, what effect does that have on the
Speaker 2: brewing industry?
Speaker 1: There certainly was I think was it Yakama six ten
Speaker 1: years ago, somewhere in that range. One warehouse had I
Speaker 1: think one third of the entire United States hop harvest
Speaker 1: in just the one building and it burnt down. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, overnight. Everyone's scrambling and host umm. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that immediately bumped beer prices up and they just have
Speaker 1: never really gone down.
Speaker 2: How insane is that? Okay, Well, evidently it happened again
Speaker 2: just this past December in another hops warehouse in Yakama. Now,
Speaker 2: before you open up your own arson investigation detective agency,
Speaker 2: apparently these things just happen acids in the hops break
Speaker 2: down and the hops heat up to the point where
Speaker 2: they just burst into flames. So things like this are
Speaker 2: why beer can cost you some money. Is it cheaper
Speaker 2: to bring your own beer?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally depends on what you throw into it. If
Speaker 1: he's throwing in like rice syrup, solids as your base
Speaker 1: fermentable as it's fairly cheap. Okay, well you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of flavor out of that, and so
Speaker 1: you get what you pay for and you get what
Speaker 1: you pay to put into it too.
Speaker 2: PJ. Anderer wants to know what's happening to a beer.
Speaker 2: When I bury it in my yard and wait to
Speaker 2: drink it for several.
Speaker 1: Years, it's probably not gonna taste all that good. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's just because the aging cycle is not good. Time
Speaker 1: is not good to beer.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of places that on the label is
Speaker 1: best yesterday. You know it was just totally true. I mean,
Speaker 1: the best way to have the best beer is keep
Speaker 1: it cold and drink it fast. I mean, some beers
Speaker 1: are men to age, like a barley wine.
Speaker 2: Side note, I did not know what barle wine was.
Speaker 2: I pretended to during the interview, but I just looked
Speaker 2: it up and it's technically a beer. It just has
Speaker 2: such a high alcohol concentration, like eight to twelve percent,
Speaker 2: that is called a wine. So barley wine barely wine.
Speaker 1: We did a flight of barley wine or Old Krusty.
Speaker 1: I think the oldest bottle we opened was twenty years old. Oh,
Speaker 1: we jumped every four years. So good. Okay, they're so good.
Speaker 2: But that's on porpoise.
Speaker 1: That was totally on purpose. Yeah. Yeah, if you bury
Speaker 1: it in your yard, you're gonna have incredible temperature fluctuations.
Speaker 1: Hell if it freezes. If I just shattered that bottle.
Speaker 2: That's good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that would be my concern on that one.
Speaker 2: All right, So no buried treasure. Jude Kenny wants Jude
Speaker 2: Kenny wants to know is there a particular region in
Speaker 2: the US that's favorable for open fermentation, Like, are there
Speaker 2: better airborne yeast in certain regions?
Speaker 1: No, Well, it depends on what is around you. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're buy orchards and a lot of agriculture, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot more stuff on those leaves, especially yeast. Now,
Speaker 1: so I mean, if you're near a vineyard, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of yeast that lives outside of grapes on the
Speaker 1: surface of them. That stuff's going to get flown off
Speaker 1: in the wind. I see, you got a better chance
Speaker 1: at least getting a yeast, but capturing good ones yeah,
Speaker 1: well also bad ones. So that's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's risky.
Speaker 1: It is super risky. I mean, open fermentations are very
Speaker 1: They're just a risky because you don't know what you
Speaker 1: ain't yet and you're also going to get a lot
Speaker 1: of bacteria.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick aside. In twenty thirteen, Rogue Brewery was looking
Speaker 2: to make a beer with a wild yeast and they
Speaker 2: tried some open fermentations and some nearby orchards but didn't
Speaker 2: come up with much. They were like, so it's a
Speaker 2: semi joke. They tried to culture some yeast using twelve
Speaker 2: beard hairs of their brew master. This wild yeast, the
Speaker 2: wildest of yeasts, really ended up being a pretty good
Speaker 2: fit to culture and genetically. They found out it was
Speaker 2: a hybrid between the breweries pac Man yeast and some
Speaker 2: new strain, so they made a beer out of it.
Speaker 2: They put the beer on the mark it and people
Speaker 2: liked it, saying it had a sweet, ready, pineappoly and
Speaker 2: oddly olive like notes. So the idiom to get a
Speaker 2: wild hair will never be the same to me. But
Speaker 2: you can open ferment or try wild strains, it just
Speaker 2: might not be for beginners. Is it better to get
Speaker 2: a kit and try to culture something and see what happens?
Speaker 1: It is definitely if you're just getting started to buy
Speaker 1: something that's already cultured, and that way you can't really
Speaker 1: screw it up. You can start slow, but yeah, get
Speaker 1: into it. And then to culture your own east, that's
Speaker 1: like just jumping in. That's a couple of steps.
Speaker 2: But in general near an orchard would be a good
Speaker 2: place for excermation. Okay, Carrie Stewart wants to know to
Speaker 2: craft brewers maintain their own hops and yete strains like
Speaker 2: proprietary blends or are they like sour dough starters that
Speaker 2: get passed around and shared among other brewers.
Speaker 1: So you can buy a pack man yea, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can actually by the use that we use from the
Speaker 1: majority of our beers and use it in homebrew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is like something that we definitely use others.
Speaker 1: I think Beard was the only one that was proprietary.
Speaker 1: We don't do that here, but a lot of brewers will,
Speaker 1: and they will make their own yeast and keep it
Speaker 1: completely in house. They'll go from frozen culture all the
Speaker 1: way to pitch and use that and never have to
Speaker 1: buy yeast from anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So remember to pitch just means to add yeast. So
Speaker 2: many terms. But now you can throw them around like
Speaker 2: you know what they mean. Old word over here will
Speaker 2: not blow your cover. Sarah Michelle Welch wants to know
Speaker 2: why do beers have different percentages of alcoholics them different styles.
Speaker 1: It's appropriate and they will match better with the flavor
Speaker 1: profile the balance of it. So some will have a
Speaker 1: little bit more malt and that can handle a little
Speaker 1: more alcohol, or a little more sugar that can handle
Speaker 1: more alcohol. It does change up the mouthfeel as well.
Speaker 2: And then so mouthfeel is the viscosity and bubble pain
Speaker 2: is the carbonation. Yeah, these are good terms. Any other
Speaker 2: weird terms I should know about?
Speaker 1: Oh see, uh drinkability?
Speaker 2: What the hell does that mean?
Speaker 1: Exactly? So that's why I had to take it off
Speaker 1: the century for him, because everyone kept like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could pound six of these. That's not what that means.
Speaker 2: So drinkability does not mean pound ability, but rather what
Speaker 2: is the arc of the beer when you first first
Speaker 2: take a sip and then when it warms up a
Speaker 2: little on your tongue, and then the lingering aftertaste and
Speaker 2: is it all good? Great? That's drinkability. Also, while editing this,
Speaker 2: I started to imagine that Quentin was a muppet. I
Speaker 2: think his voice lends itself well to muppetness. Just picture it.
Speaker 2: He has a high degree of listenability. When you're having
Speaker 2: to test beers for your job, are you spitting them?
Speaker 2: Or are you getting hammered at two in the afternoon
Speaker 2: for well.
Speaker 1: Good call on the time. That's actually when we do it. No,
Speaker 1: we only give two ounces and six samples. That eight
Speaker 1: samples at max. So okay, at most you've got ten
Speaker 1: ounces and you're not getting hammered. Okay, No, he walks
Speaker 1: around here annihilated afterwards. And there's always pitcups. You always
Speaker 1: have to give spitcups, just in case, just in.
Speaker 2: Case someone wants to, just in case it seems insulting.
Speaker 2: Stephan Titus wants to know how do you keep your
Speaker 2: records organized? And are you a naturally organized person? We
Speaker 2: did talk about your cleanliness, but how do you do
Speaker 2: you have log books happening? So how do you keep
Speaker 2: track a millions of yeast pets or I guess livestock
Speaker 2: if you want to look at them that way?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, So it's it depends on every company, does
Speaker 1: it a little different. We're still on the Excel paper, okay,
Speaker 1: and we definitely want to get away from that as
Speaker 1: soon as possible, because it is the kind of a
Speaker 1: nightmare of this Sixcel file labeled this and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Excel is great for what it does. It's
Speaker 1: not a good database. Yeah, it can't handle a lot
Speaker 1: of data.
Speaker 2: But database is on your Christmas list.
Speaker 1: Lab Information management system is on my wish list.
Speaker 2: Caitlin Plate wants to know our food scientists common to
Speaker 2: fine working in breweries or is it still overrun by
Speaker 2: a lot of engineers. She's a future food scientist who
Speaker 2: would love a job at a brewery fishing smiley face.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Actually there's more and more universities actually coming out with
Speaker 1: specific brewing programs. Oh yeah. When I was going to undergrad,
Speaker 1: I really wasn't thinking of brewing right off the gate.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of med school. And then I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't like people that much. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, what am I going to do with a
Speaker 1: microbiology degree? And so he hopped into food science because
Speaker 1: I just you could be an ice cream scientist. Come on,
Speaker 1: you can do that. Hell's yeah, somebody's got to do that. Actually,
Speaker 1: ice cream is really complex as a food base. It
Speaker 1: is a good jack of all trades degree is to
Speaker 1: do food science. You've got physics, microbiology, chemistry, and just
Speaker 1: and a lot of sensory so you can kind of
Speaker 1: walk in anywhere.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a good question about selecting a beer.
Speaker 2: Becca wants to know. With a vast number of beers
Speaker 2: these days, how do I navigate them all? My BF
Speaker 2: either best friend or boyfriend and I were talking last
Speaker 2: night and he said there are too many beers, so
Speaker 2: much is good that nothing is standing out anymore. So
Speaker 2: how does one make choices in this oversaturated market of
Speaker 2: local breweries and limited editions, too much of a good things?
Speaker 2: What's to be done?
Speaker 1: Pick a brewery? Just stick there? Yeah, road has everything
Speaker 1: you need.
Speaker 2: Kidding aside, both Jake and Quenton essentially say try to
Speaker 2: fund the local guys. That's one angle. Two more questions,
Speaker 2: what do you hate about your job or your life
Speaker 2: or brewing or yeast? Or is there a certain moment
Speaker 2: or is there a thing your fuck this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's one moment every damn morning when I show
Speaker 1: up and I have to open the incubator and look
Speaker 1: at those peta dishes? We got anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I hope not. I mean it really Basically the
Speaker 1: way I set up the quality program, it's if something grows,
Speaker 1: it probably shouldn't have been there unless it was the
Speaker 1: yeast we were looking for. And that's when we were
Speaker 1: making the beard yeast or a beard beer. That bastard
Speaker 1: it was technically a wild yeast, and so it was
Speaker 1: resistant to all the plates I would put it on.
Speaker 1: If I didn't know exactly what it looked like, that
Speaker 1: crusty little bastard. Huh, I would have a freak out
Speaker 1: and like a condition fit, Like we've got a wild
Speaker 1: east and it's gone through the package line, and oh
Speaker 1: my god, every gas getting the building's gonna have to
Speaker 1: be completely replaced, and we're gonna be shut down for weeks.
Speaker 1: And I'd have that little moment. By the time something
Speaker 1: can grow on a Petter dish, it could be in
Speaker 1: North Carolina.
Speaker 2: So for quality control, which is a huge part of
Speaker 2: Quentin's job, he has to keep reference samples of every
Speaker 2: batch that goes into a bottle or can so he
Speaker 2: can verify in case they do have an issue with one.
Speaker 2: So they have an area of the brewery that's like
Speaker 2: a library of beers, and they have samples of a
Speaker 2: bunch of recent bruise in the lab. So when you
Speaker 2: open up that thing, you're just hoping it's just like anxiety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to smell anything funky, that's for
Speaker 1: damn sure.
Speaker 2: One of the things that might be funky is something
Speaker 2: called for ethyl phenol, which is created by a spoilage yeast.
Speaker 1: Was that not like poop?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like straight poop.
Speaker 2: There's so many reasons why you don't want to smell that.
Speaker 1: In the more baby Vomit or partannamizes it is a
Speaker 1: really really one because it's just a bugger to get
Speaker 1: rid of it. If we ever at it. It's horse
Speaker 1: blanket and band aid and barnyard. Oh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of bad and it has shut down wineries. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a hit list of crap I don't
Speaker 1: want to ever see in this That's one of them
Speaker 1: that's on my shit list.
Speaker 2: What's the best part of your.
Speaker 1: Job the complete randomness of the day. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got it structured, so when it is danned out
Speaker 1: like that's really really awesome. But I never know what
Speaker 1: new project can throw at me. So I got pulled
Speaker 1: in all sorts of different directions, and I kind of
Speaker 1: have to be the master of all.
Speaker 2: Ground here, so I think what I'm trying to say
Speaker 2: that he likes the variety, even though it's part I
Speaker 2: asked the Level ten Spirits wizard Jake Coleshue, and he
Speaker 2: said that the coolest thing about being a distiller is
Speaker 2: when he hosts a cocktail event or a whiskey release
Speaker 2: and he gets to see a whole room of people
Speaker 2: enjoying themselves as part of the fruit of his labor.
Speaker 2: I guess the spoiled fruits of his labor put in
Speaker 2: a good way. He says, that's more rewarding for me
Speaker 2: than drinking himself. Although Jake also referenced that meme this
Speaker 2: is what my friends think I do, this is what
Speaker 2: my parents think I do. This is what I actually do,
Speaker 2: and he says what he actually does is clean. Says,
Speaker 2: whenever you look at brewing or distilling, controlling yeast and
Speaker 2: bacterial growth is so important that brewers are almost just
Speaker 2: glorified dishwashers. I'm going to quote him directly. He said,
Speaker 2: I mean, we just clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, sanitize, clean,
Speaker 2: and then we clean, then we sanitize and clean, and
Speaker 2: then we sanitize. Quentin of course echoed this fact of zymology.
Speaker 1: So like, I don't know if you're ware of this,
Speaker 1: but ninety percent of a brewer's job is cleaning stuff.
Speaker 1: I just heard that is totally true. Uh, Industry wide
Speaker 1: turnover is pretty high because everyone's like, I'm gonna work
Speaker 1: at a brewery and I'm gonna make beer. So I mean,
Speaker 1: somebody's got clean those kegs, somebody's gonna make the cardboard box,
Speaker 1: and otherwise the whole thing collapses. And so you can
Speaker 1: never complain about working too hard because somebody else is
Speaker 1: doing another really hard job, especially around here, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you are cleaning stuff, you're removing stuff, you're lifting kegs.
Speaker 2: You're not just kicking back on a porch drinking beer
Speaker 2: all day. If you had any advice for someone who
Speaker 2: wants to be a professional brewer or professional food scientist
Speaker 2: in general, what's the most important piece, and then I'll
Speaker 2: let you go, since I've been asking you a one million.
Speaker 1: Questions last week, I was here fifteen hours on Friday.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it is get into a lab or
Speaker 1: get into whatever you think you're going to do as
Speaker 1: soon as possible. Find out what your passionate is get
Speaker 1: involved as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: Will you ever call yourself a zymologist? I think you
Speaker 2: should start.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I love that you can call yourself the minister of
Speaker 2: truth or a wizard, but a zimologist is a stretch.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, you're the most knowledgeable zimologist I've ever met. So
Speaker 2: cheered to that. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: For being no, no, no, I'm glad we can turn
Speaker 1: out cheers to yees yeah, absolutely and everything else in there,
Speaker 1: don't say that.
Speaker 2: To see photos of me and Quentin's Sturgeon, you can
Speaker 2: head to my Instagram at ologies. The podcast is also
Speaker 2: on Twitter at ologies and I'm on both as Ali
Speaker 2: Ward with one L. Thank you so much to Shannon
Speaker 2: Feltis and Bonnie Dutch again for hooking this interview up
Speaker 2: and driving me to Newport and hanging out and getting
Speaker 2: Dutch Brothers coffee and burgers. And to Jakolshu and Quentin
Speaker 2: Sturgeon for the fungus chats and the really memorable We'll
Speaker 2: Never Forget tour. Thank you also to everyone for supporting
Speaker 2: on Patreon again. It's an independent podcast and you can
Speaker 2: become a patron for as little as twenty five cents
Speaker 2: an episode, and you can have your questions asked to theologists.
Speaker 2: You can also support the podcast by getting yourself some
Speaker 2: ologies merch, like some awesome shirts and hats and toats
Speaker 2: and pins. That's at ologiesmerch dot com. You can join
Speaker 2: up with other ologites in the Facebook group. Thank you
Speaker 2: to Ernie for admitting, and thank you as always to
Speaker 2: Stephen Ray Morris for doing a bang up job editing.
Speaker 2: As I record these asides several days later than usual
Speaker 2: because I was traveling for a family emergency. My folks
Speaker 2: were stuck in a bit of a blizzard up north
Speaker 2: and I got hella behind. Thank you again so much
Speaker 2: for listening. If you like the podcast, you can always
Speaker 2: support for free by rating and reviewing on iTunes. That
Speaker 2: helps so much. And as a thank you for sticking
Speaker 2: it through to the credits, I usually reward you with
Speaker 2: one heinous secret for my life, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you too. Number one, I love eating smoked oysters
Speaker 2: from a can. I think they're good. I love them
Speaker 2: in two the last few houses and apartments I've lived in,
Speaker 2: I've written notes, and I've tucked them into hidden places,
Speaker 2: and I always wonder when someone will find them, And
Speaker 2: I hope at least like a decade goes by, because
Speaker 2: if you find like a two month old, wistful farewell note,
Speaker 2: it's this kind of embarrassing, like if you're pulling away
Speaker 2: the moving truck and like the new tenant. Fine, it's
Speaker 2: this like it's the year twenty eighteen and I used
Speaker 2: to live here. Note like with still wet ink tucked
Speaker 2: behind a cupboard. That's just embarrassing. But I do wonder
Speaker 2: if anyone's found any of the notes I've hidden in
Speaker 2: any of the apartments or houses I lived in. And
Speaker 2: I also wonder if there are any notes lurking behind
Speaker 2: any weird floorboards around me right now? Isn't that weird?
Speaker 2: Have you ever done that? Anyway? And this is now
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two to me, I'm just popping back in
Speaker 2: to say thank you for listening to these encores as
Speaker 2: I grieve and get through a funeral planning for my dad,
Speaker 2: who once building us a house when we lived in Tahoe,
Speaker 2: wrote a note that he hid on a board in
Speaker 2: a wall. And in twenty nineteen, my sister Janelle happened
Speaker 2: to take a day trip. Happened to see that they
Speaker 2: were remodeling that house, and happened to talk to the
Speaker 2: owner outside who had found the board like a week
Speaker 2: or so before and saved it. So he gave her
Speaker 2: the board, and for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, my sister gifted them that like a time
Speaker 2: capsule from their past, and we all freaked out and
Speaker 2: we cried a lot. And my parents were actually building
Speaker 2: a small cottage in my sister's yard to live out
Speaker 2: their their final days this past few months, and it's
Speaker 2: due to be finished in a few weeks. And my
Speaker 2: dad's goal was to sit on the deck and drink
Speaker 2: a glass of wine before he passed away, and he
Speaker 2: almost made it. But we're going to be hanging that
Speaker 2: board that my sister found somewhere in the cottage. So
Speaker 2: I guess I got a thing for hanging notes or
Speaker 2: hiding notes in places. Thank you all so much for
Speaker 2: their critter picks for Grandpad's and I hope you're out
Speaker 2: there having a tiny ice cream and enjoying the day. Okay,
Speaker 2: bye bye, okay bye bye.
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