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Speaker 2: Oh hey, hi, there, it's your weird step cousin Ali
Speaker 2: Ward rumbling up to the family barbecue in a transam
Speaker 2: and offering you your first room temperature beer. Are you
Speaker 2: ready to get yeasty? Okay, good? So this episode touches
Speaker 2: on something that is all over and inside you, devouring
Speaker 2: your garbage, single celled fungus that covers every surface of
Speaker 2: the planet. Yeast. It's also in beer. And I got
Speaker 2: a hot tip by being alive that people like beer
Speaker 2: and so. On a recent trip to Portland, I was
Speaker 2: very generously chauffeured through the woods and to the shore
Speaker 2: on a road trip by the wonderful Sister Duo and
Speaker 2: my own personal merch queens Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: and they had an inn at Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon.
Speaker 2: I got a tour and I sat down to chat
Speaker 2: with a microbiologist and food scientist about zymology, the study
Speaker 2: and science and practice of fermentation people, which is how
Speaker 2: you take a sack of grain and water and turn
Speaker 2: it into Dad's wash away the work day elixir. Now,
Speaker 2: before I take you on a quick tour, I want
Speaker 2: to confess two things. Number One, I used to pour
Speaker 2: beer on myself as a child in the shower. More
Speaker 2: on not in a minute. Number Two, I read all
Speaker 2: of your reviews on iTunes and I silently thank each
Speaker 2: and every one of you. So this podcast is a
Speaker 2: one hundred percent independently made a lot of people I
Speaker 2: guess didn't know that. So listeners pay to keep it
Speaker 2: going through life sustaining Patreon donations at patreon dot com,
Speaker 2: slash ologies, and also by buying merch at ologiesmirch dot com,
Speaker 2: and also for supporting for free by rating and reviewing
Speaker 2: and subscribing on iTunes, which boosts it in the charts.
Speaker 2: It helps the podcast get seen by other people. So
Speaker 2: we've remained in the top thirty or so science podcast
Speaker 2: totally independently on iTunes since September, and last week Ologies
Speaker 2: broke its own download record. It truly means a world
Speaker 2: to me, and this project is my favorite thing I've
Speaker 2: ever worked on. So I love that you guys love
Speaker 2: the show and are spreading the word. So each week
Speaker 2: I read a snippet of a review that really made
Speaker 2: my day, and at Lease ten twenty one said I
Speaker 2: love this podcast so much. Some episodes I start listening
Speaker 2: to and have no interest in the topic, and by
Speaker 2: the end I'm so fascinated and intrigued. For example, I
Speaker 2: almost skipped Ichthyology because fish who Cares? And that was
Speaker 2: my favorite episode to date. Okay, back to Zimology. So
Speaker 2: the word comes from the Greek naturally for the workings
Speaker 2: of fermentation, it's pretty straightforward Zimo and Louis Pastor was
Speaker 2: the first zymologist. He was the first person to get
Speaker 2: the yeasts were making fermentation happen.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Also, the reason I showered myself in course as a
Speaker 2: child is because beer was supposed to make hair shiny,
Speaker 2: and I had Lama hair, and even my parents were like, sure, man,
Speaker 2: try to do whatever you gotta do. And it didn't work.
Speaker 2: And to be honest, I've never really loved beer, but
Speaker 2: I have mad respect for the craft of it and
Speaker 2: the bubbly, yeasty science of it, and I'm fascinated by
Speaker 2: the history and the role that beer plays in good
Speaker 2: old American culture. So I visited this brewery to find
Speaker 2: out how beer is made in both small and big
Speaker 2: scale batches, and to chat with someone who's truly deeply
Speaker 2: knowledgeable about tiny funguses. So, amid some forklift beeping and
Speaker 2: tasting room holler in the background, we walked through a
Speaker 2: maze of like these twenty foot metal tanks storing and
Speaker 2: fermenting beers. That's a lot of bruskies. Did we learned
Speaker 2: some basics.
Speaker 3: How familiar are with homebrewing?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: None, zero, that's basically all the CO two blowoff so
Speaker 3: is experimenting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's where it burbs and farts.
Speaker 3: 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 blitzed or what? Finally
Speaker 2: we went in for the interview and talked about the
Speaker 2: history of cold ones and how beer goes from a
Speaker 2: 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 3: Well, my first name is John, actually, so I go
Speaker 3: my middle name, So yeah, my phone name is John
Speaker 3: Quentin Sturgeon. It's not a weak name.
Speaker 2: No, it's not tell me what your title is here.
Speaker 3: QAQC, manager or lead, but my actual title is a
Speaker 3: Minister of Truth.
Speaker 2: Did you get to pick that?
Speaker 3: It was? Yeah, but it was kind of given to me.
Speaker 3: 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 3: You know, most people pick them themselves, so it's like a
Speaker 3: self given nickname. And it wasn't. I wasn't given to me.
Speaker 3: Somebody actually mentioned it.
Speaker 2: So every time you're wrong, does that really come back
Speaker 2: to bite you?
Speaker 3: Uh? Oh, I just don't ever be wrong. But no, no,
Speaker 3: of course doesn't mean I'm correct. Means I'm just telling
Speaker 3: the truth as best I know it, your truth, my
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 3: So my bachelor's was in food science at Universe Idaho,
Speaker 3: and then I made the epic eight mile track across
Speaker 3: state border to Washington State and got a master's in
Speaker 3: food science.
Speaker 2: What does that entail? Getting a master's in food science.
Speaker 3: A laborious project that includes everything from sensory to microbiology.
Speaker 3: A lot of biochemistry at a resurrect and old HPOC.
Speaker 3: What's an HPC, 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 eighteen hundreds after Louis Pastor that we even knew
Speaker 2: that a living organism, a fungus, was instrumental in brewing
Speaker 2: and baking bread. And we put some shit under microscopes,
Speaker 2: we were like, whoa huh, well, why do you look
Speaker 2: at that? Now? A common bruise yeast to make ales
Speaker 2: in particular is a single round, smooth, flat cell and
Speaker 2: it's kind of a cream color. It's called sachromiaces servasia
Speaker 2: something like that, which translates to sugar fungus of beer.
Speaker 2: So not unlike Minister of Truth. It's a good title.
Speaker 2: So what is happening? Can you walk me through what
Speaker 2: fermentation is like? Just for ten I'm an alien that
Speaker 2: just landed on a spaceship and my first question is like,
Speaker 2: how y'all make booze?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, and basically you can choose something up and
Speaker 3: spit into a bucket or really it's the conversion of
Speaker 3: sugar and starch. Well, starch goes to sugar into ethanol
Speaker 3: and carbon dioxide, and that.
Speaker 2: Is done by intro. You seeing a little tiny single
Speaker 2: cell critter.
Speaker 3: Yep one sold little fun guy Sacrimices, and we'd like
Speaker 3: to use sacramice the service because it's more consistent and
Speaker 3: not nearly as temperamental and pissy as all the other eastrains.
Speaker 3: So that's why you see that Sacrimices servicea as the
Speaker 3: go to yeast.
Speaker 2: Is that for wine and for beer.
Speaker 3: Wine and beer, but they are different strains.
Speaker 2: So how do you choose which strain?
Speaker 3: To use. So that's actually that was what I did
Speaker 3: after grad school. That was ninety percent of my job
Speaker 3: was because all there's all sorts of east vendors out there.
Speaker 3: All these vendors have all this yeast. You don't know
Speaker 3: what is 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 3: Basically the best way to do it if you're going
Speaker 3: to be doing like I think I did one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty something strains when I was there in just
Speaker 3: over a year in triplicate with little bioreactors that are
Speaker 3: temperature controlled. You takes ger old juice and you dump
Speaker 3: in the exact amount of yeast three times, and then
Speaker 3: you ferment it and you track everything you can chemically
Speaker 3: before and after enduring, and then you try it at
Speaker 3: the end. And basically that's it. Because you worked off
Speaker 3: the same juice for all those U strains, You've got
Speaker 3: the same baseline. And all right, this one was farty.
Speaker 3: That one's awesome party is a term?
Speaker 2: Is it really?
Speaker 3: Yeah? H twos? Yeah, it is a nasty It smells
Speaker 3: like fart?
Speaker 2: Wait, do you use that term professionally like this one.
Speaker 3: I have already? It depends on how lax the panel
Speaker 3: would be. Okay, but yeah, I mean everything from rotten
Speaker 3: cabbage sewerdrade and oh yeah, since your terms get fun? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and how do you how do baby vomit?
Speaker 2: Is one that baby vomit? When you're fermenting something and
Speaker 2: it smells like baby vomit or cabbage farts or whatever,
Speaker 2: are you making notes on smell and compounds? Are you
Speaker 2: analyzing them through your own senses or a combination of
Speaker 2: like chemical determinants and your sense in both?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, the human knows eve. Unless you can
Speaker 3: relate it in sensory terms, it's useless. Right, you tell somebody,
Speaker 3: all right, cool, you have x and x milligrams per
Speaker 3: leader of vanilla. Well, vanilla's one vanilla. That's pretty simple.
Speaker 3: Then you say, isopleuric acid? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, where the hell's that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly? So I mean that's just it alor like yeah,
Speaker 3: some of these terms, and when they get just down
Speaker 3: to chemicals, I don't know what the hell does that
Speaker 3: mean or where did that come from? How do I control?
Speaker 3: Is it a good or a bad thing? It gets
Speaker 3: way too complex when you just do on the chemistry,
Speaker 3: so you focus it down into flavor buckets and just
Speaker 3: make it easy. But sensory, I don't know. Your nose
Speaker 3: is still amazing. And if you can train yourself to
Speaker 3: be as good of a machine as possible, setting yourself
Speaker 3: 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 look up and smell
Speaker 2: is linked intimately to parts of the brain that deal
Speaker 2: with emotion. So you have an old factory bulb that's
Speaker 2: part of the limbic system that includes the amygdala and
Speaker 2: the hippocampus of the brain. Those also deal with memory,
Speaker 2: learning and your emotions. So in order to identify a smell,
Speaker 2: you may find that first you have to figure out
Speaker 2: what does this remind me of before you can figure
Speaker 2: out what the smell is. So humans have about six
Speaker 2: million ol factory receptors, and scientists recently learned that we
Speaker 2: can smell up to a trillion smells. But your dog,
Speaker 2: see your dog over there, Your dog has not six million,
Speaker 2: three hundred million compared to our six million, So every
Speaker 2: butt sniff is like Shakespeare to them. I would now
Speaker 2: like you to imagine a dog in a lab coat, because,
Speaker 2: as a food scientist sniffing stuff in this case yeast,
Speaker 2: super important, dogs would be excellent. And so when you
Speaker 2: applied for this particular job, did you come in saying
Speaker 2: I have a lot of experience testing the yeast and
Speaker 2: they were like, we need you on our team.
Speaker 3: Uh, I have enough jack of all trades background to
Speaker 3: be able to do something like this, but yeah, a
Speaker 3: ton of lab and micro experience. So it was like, cool,
Speaker 3: we can shove this guy in there and leave him alone.
Speaker 2: What's your day to day job?
Speaker 3: Like, oh god, it is literally one third microbiology, one
Speaker 3: third chemistry, and one third sensory and then trying to
Speaker 3: make sure we don't kill anybody by making beer or
Speaker 3: exploading bottles and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So if you have the chemistry wrong, your bottles will explode.
Speaker 3: Not so much the chemistry, the microbiology, because then you've
Speaker 3: got potential for secondary fermentation, So when you pop that top,
Speaker 3: you might shoot a cap into the ceiling, or it
Speaker 3: will just build up so much pressure that the glass
Speaker 3: itself will shatter. And then, yeah, I mean that's the worse, worst,
Speaker 3: worst case scenario. I don't know if that happening here.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: Can you walk me through the basics of like, in
Speaker 2: an absolute nutshell, how is beer made?
Speaker 3: So malt is the sugar source. Our starch converts starch
Speaker 3: into sugars, which the yeast, which we'd then later add,
Speaker 3: chomps up and converts through its own metabolism from glucose
Speaker 3: and sucrosa maltose into ethanol and carbon dioxide. So then
Speaker 3: you get basically, beer is yeast farts and piss and
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 2: about you can just tell them this, okay.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: So, grain like barley or wheat is malted, and malted
Speaker 2: means it's germinated just a wee bit and then it's
Speaker 2: kilmed or heated, and that stops the germination. So doing
Speaker 2: that germinating it and heating it breaks down some starch
Speaker 2: into sugar. And next it's milled or crushed so that
Speaker 2: the starches are more accessible and they're easily broken down.
Speaker 2: Water is then added, and when it's added, it's called
Speaker 2: a mash mashing. It's added to this big tank called
Speaker 2: a mash ton, and it's mixed with hot water and
Speaker 2: that activates the enzymes in the grain that helps turn
Speaker 2: them from starch into sugar, and it makes this syrupy
Speaker 2: sweet liquid called wart. And the wart is separated from
Speaker 2: all the solids left over in the grain in a
Speaker 2: process called watering, so many terms. So the wart is
Speaker 2: then boiled for a few hours which sterilizes it, and
Speaker 2: hops are added, giving it some bitterness, some essential oil,
Speaker 2: some flavor, and this mix is whirlpooled to collect any
Speaker 2: solids and then it's cooled down and finally, after malting, milling,
Speaker 2: warting mashing. After all of that, it's ready for fungus.
Speaker 2: It's fungus o' clock. This is called pitching. Now the
Speaker 2: cool downward. It's put in this big fermentor tank and
Speaker 2: yeast is added and it ferments anywhere from a few
Speaker 2: days to a month, depending on the beer, and the
Speaker 2: type of yeast will also determine if it's an ale
Speaker 2: or a lagger.
Speaker 3: I did not know that fermentation really in the bulk
Speaker 3: of it actually happens in the first seventy two hours,
Speaker 3: but generally we have tank times that range anywhere from
Speaker 3: eight days to twenty plus.
Speaker 2: Days, okay, And there are hoses that run out the
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide and it sounds kind of like a rhino
Speaker 2: farting in a bathtub. Fuck. That gurgle is very soothing.
Speaker 2: And now you has beers almost.
Speaker 3: And then basically you remove the yeast if you want,
Speaker 3: and so you get a clear product, a more stable
Speaker 3: product because of all sorts of biochemistry. But it is
Speaker 3: much more stable than it was before the east took effect.
Speaker 3: And so carbonated up for some good mouth feel and
Speaker 3: fizz and there you go. That's beer. It is simple.
Speaker 2: So you carbonated after the fact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So a good portion of the carbonation will
Speaker 3: come from natural fermentation, but not enough. It's not that
Speaker 3: lively bubble pain bubble break that you experienced with beer,
Speaker 3: where soda has so much more carbonation. Yeah, because you
Speaker 3: do that, that's a term, is bubble pain, and it's
Speaker 3: we feel those like pop rocks right exploding on your tongue. Yeah,
Speaker 3: 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 soon super common
Speaker 2: to Quentin in the way that as a Northern California native.
Speaker 2: I thought everyone said hella all the time. And so
Speaker 2: you have to strain off the yeast when you're done
Speaker 2: fermenting it to where you want it. You've used a
Speaker 2: centrifuge for that.
Speaker 3: We use our centerfuge, yeah, to just get rid of
Speaker 3: it and clarifies the crap out of that beer. More
Speaker 3: typical you'll see a filter beforehand or after to really
Speaker 3: clarify it. And we do pretty well with our centerfuge,
Speaker 3: and we just run with that.
Speaker 2: What happens to the yeast once you're like a later
Speaker 2: day is thanks.
Speaker 3: It goes into a tote and then into a dump vessel.
Speaker 3: But that's not to say that we haven't pulled off
Speaker 3: east before that. And we will reuse that YaST over
Speaker 3: and over and so once we start with a little bit,
Speaker 3: it will grow and grow and grow many many babies,
Speaker 3: and we harvest it off and use 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 3: That's I mean, so you're holding.
Speaker 2: Up a bottle of beer, so it's kind of the
Speaker 2: it's kind of that murky precipitate in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it just looks muddy, murky and hazy, just
Speaker 3: 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 3: So yeah, we use anywhere from five to upwards of
Speaker 3: whatever test patches we're doing of random idea of beer
Speaker 3: strains here at Rogue. Pac Man is the one we
Speaker 3: use by far and away. It is a workhorse of
Speaker 3: a yeast. It can just power through a huge amount
Speaker 3: of sugar. But yeah, we definitely use them because they
Speaker 3: do different things. You know. Some are more phenolics, more
Speaker 3: band aid, and more spice notes. Some are more fruity.
Speaker 3: Others are just clean and neutral, and sometimes you want that.
Speaker 3: It really depends on the style and what you're trying
Speaker 3: 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 beer 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 3: I haven't lately. I have, Yeah, I mean, I've got
Speaker 3: a stuffy yeast on my desk. Really, yeah, yeah, yeasty.
Speaker 3: He's a stuffed one million size times size of a
Speaker 3: sacha my servisier, and he's got dreepy little eyes and
Speaker 3: he's got butting scars on the head. Well, I guess
Speaker 3: she called mother cells and daughter cells, but yeah, yeasty.
Speaker 3: When I was separated, when not separated, but my wife
Speaker 3: was cross country. I was interning in California, she was
Speaker 3: working in New York. I sent that to her as
Speaker 3: a care package and she kept it and held it
Speaker 3: like which, you know, it seems really really weird. I
Speaker 3: guess I'm just that level of a nerd. But I
Speaker 3: did propose to her after we saw each other that summer.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It's part of your wooing. You're like, here's a stuffed
Speaker 2: east think about me.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Uh No, I definitely I had a microscope, But I
Speaker 3: was kind of like, well, these are like really funny
Speaker 3: names and hard to remember. I wasn't all that interested,
Speaker 3: is to be honest, I don't know. I didn't know
Speaker 3: what the hell I wanted to do going in Well,
Speaker 3: in high school, I don't know. I mowed lawns. I
Speaker 3: mean I paid for my undergrad by mowing lawns.
Speaker 2: Did you really?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I was like eleven years old. My dad's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're going to pay for college, so right there, So
Speaker 3: that's two things aside. Number one, I'm going to college,
Speaker 3: that's not an option to not and I was gonna
Speaker 3: pay for so all right, cool eleven year old wax
Speaker 3: across the street starts a moment long, where did.
Speaker 2: You put all the money into a banking account?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, just straight savings and yeah, it's kind
Speaker 3: of crazy.
Speaker 2: Are your parents proud of what you do.
Speaker 3: 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 3: I don't know, I haven't heard, like, we're proud of you, son.
Speaker 3: You get everyone drunk, make the world a better place.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't think they have anything to
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, pregnancy was rough, that's that wasn't fun. She hanon
Speaker 3: deliberately like a champ. But yeah, oh yeah, like poster child.
Speaker 3: 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 a
Speaker 2: not a big drinker.
Speaker 3: When she does, it's some more of the sour tart stuff,
Speaker 3: which I mean, she can peel and eat a lemon,
Speaker 3: but I know that's the face silet make when she
Speaker 3: does it. It's like it's unbelievable. Good God, I just
Speaker 3: hear your enamel screaming, but no, I mean we started
Speaker 3: making a Paradise Pucker, which is a sour base and
Speaker 3: she loves that beer. But she's just not a huge drinker.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's that you I know.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm going to ask you some questions from listeners.
Speaker 2: Is that tull?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Because there's approximately one million of them. But before we
Speaker 2: take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to
Speaker 2: take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors.
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Speaker 2: Your questions. This is a rapid fire around. Greg wants
Speaker 2: to know any secret ease that might make for better
Speaker 2: fermenting peers.
Speaker 3: Try everything you can from where you can get it.
Speaker 3: There's a lot at places at homebrew stores that Or
Speaker 3: try culturing your own and see what's growing out in it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I see what happens. What's the worst. You just make
Speaker 3: a terrible batch of beer and then you tump it,
Speaker 3: clean everything and start over.
Speaker 2: Well, how do you know that you even have use?
Speaker 2: You put the wart out and see what happens.
Speaker 3: Well there, I mean a couple of steps so you
Speaker 3: can easily get stuff to get your own Peter dish
Speaker 3: set up, and just to start culturing. I mean you
Speaker 3: can be into it for less than fifty bucks. Whoa, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you just need a couple of glass where
Speaker 3: and you just make a small little batch of warp,
Speaker 3: set it out in an orchard or something like that,
Speaker 3: and throw it on some dishes. And there's home technique
Speaker 3: to it. But it's not impossible.
Speaker 2: Wow, diy yeast.
Speaker 3: It's a thing.
Speaker 2: Bob Ogden wants to know when and where did hops
Speaker 2: come from and 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 3: Good question. Well, I guess they're kind of an offshoot
Speaker 3: of hemp, and so I believe they were at one
Speaker 3: point used for rope those lines. They're also like a
Speaker 3: subset of like pot. I think they're somehow related to marijuana,
Speaker 3: but I don't. You're gonna have to fact check me
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 2: One side note, So hops aka humulus LULUs 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 spoilage. 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. Maybe once I finished a beer. I've
Speaker 2: started a lot of beers, but I really appreciate the craftsmanship.
Speaker 2: Adrian mcnabeles wants to know is it true that stouts
Speaker 2: and porter are good sources of dietary item? I e.
Speaker 2: Is my beer health food?
Speaker 3: There was a guy who lived off nothing but guinness
Speaker 3: for a month and it's totally doable. Yeah, especially unfiltered
Speaker 3: because you have the pro and prebaticts of yeast. Okay,
Speaker 3: so yeah, I mean you people have done it. It's
Speaker 3: got a ton of nutrients in there. It's golly be
Speaker 3: 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 3: I don't know, Like, and you're on a juice diet.
Speaker 3: You're not getting a lot of fiber that way. It
Speaker 3: was all pure liquid.
Speaker 2: So who was this guy? Was this someone you knew?
Speaker 3: Or was this This is not Larry from my freshman year.
Speaker 3: I had heard this and this is like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's 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 gloric needs met.
Speaker 2: This was calculated by a one hundred and seventy pound
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 have 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, but 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 3: Well, that's the whole idea between it light and beer, right,
Speaker 3: you're trying to get those carves out. It's just a
Speaker 3: matter of what you use or your sugar sores and
Speaker 3: what's going to be left over. The yeast is not
Speaker 3: going to consume, and so it's one of those factors.
Speaker 3: If you want to have less carbs in your beer,
Speaker 3: you've got to use the yastrain and set it up
Speaker 3: that it's going to ferment out pretty dry. But at
Speaker 3: the same time carbs are a complete balance with all
Speaker 3: the other flavors. So without carbs, you're just going to
Speaker 3: have a boozy, watered down, unbalanced hop mess. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: that is totally They're necessary. I mean, it's the sugar.
Speaker 3: It's all the sweet and a lot of the multi
Speaker 3: biscuit flavor. It's all from the mall and the cars.
Speaker 2: Do light beers have they been fermenting longer or do
Speaker 2: they just add water to a regular beer.
Speaker 3: It's a different sugar source, so fermends out cleaner, and
Speaker 3: so you end up having just more ethanol and more
Speaker 3: CO two so it's more efficiently converted. Okay, I mean
Speaker 3: there's a lot of other technology into it, but I mean,
Speaker 3: so that's why it was a big thing when it
Speaker 3: hit the market. I think Miller Lte was 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 3: Pretty revolutionary to actually be able to have a beer
Speaker 3: around one hundred galleries.
Speaker 2: Right, I love it, Like make a lob ultras Like
Speaker 2: if you like CrossFit and beer're like okay, it's like no.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry those you don't exist.
Speaker 2: Brittany Chrissa 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 3: Yeah, so that explosive early fermentation we have it. I
Speaker 3: mean we'll blow over our tubs and we use fifty
Speaker 3: five gallon drums as are blowoff. But it depends largely
Speaker 3: on how much protein was in the initial fermentation and
Speaker 3: then how much yeast they added. If they added just
Speaker 3: too much, your fermentation just went crazy and that yeast
Speaker 3: is just really, really, really active. So there's a couple
Speaker 3: of ways to get around that. Is, get a bigger
Speaker 3: vessel so all that foam breaks off or just stays
Speaker 3: in the vessel, or had as much yeast, or keep
Speaker 3: it in a bathtub with some ice chill it down,
Speaker 3: because I mean during the fermentation there's a lot of
Speaker 3: heat generated as well, so you have to chill that
Speaker 3: down otherwise it will 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 3: If you've got an inkling to do it at all,
Speaker 3: just do it. But I mean, as first, going back
Speaker 3: to the tips for Homer, sanitation gotta be clean. And
Speaker 3: if you think you're clean, do it again. I've had
Speaker 3: so much bad homebrew because they didn't clean something properly,
Speaker 3: or they oh no, I just ran bleached through it. No, well,
Speaker 3: it's just not enough, and 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?
Speaker 3: Okay, So you set yourself up for any and everything
Speaker 3: to have access to all that sugar, all those free
Speaker 3: amino and amino acids, and they're going to go crazy.
Speaker 3: And so that's why sack mice ser basically started to use.
Speaker 3: Because it's such an active fermenter. It'll just attack and
Speaker 3: it'll drive out now compete most other things. So that's
Speaker 3: why it's really really beneficial to use a good healthy yeast.
Speaker 3: But sanitation, yeah, it's kind of key because you don't want,
Speaker 3: like ancetobacter aceta bactery makes acetic acid, which is vinegar,
Speaker 3: or like lactic acid bacteria or Pediacoccus which makes lactic acid.
Speaker 3: It's not as tart, but it's still a will ruin
Speaker 3: a beer and it's like sour milk is.
Speaker 2: Pedia Coccus, pediacoccus, my shitless. Yeah, are you clean at home?
Speaker 2: Are you a neat freak at home? Are you like not?
Speaker 3: No? Like, the worst is the kitchen sink, and my
Speaker 3: wife will rip, she does totally rip me. Anyone is
Speaker 3: the dirtiest place in your house?
Speaker 2: Oh? Say it isn't so no, okay, So I have
Speaker 2: often heard and feared this about kitchen sinks, and I
Speaker 2: had to look it up. Well. And according to doctor
Speaker 2: Charles Gerba, one microbiologist who's been studying invisible American domestic
Speaker 2: filth for decades, your sink and sponge are like bonnaroo,
Speaker 2: a witch's brew of fecal bacteria, protozoans, and viruses. So
Speaker 2: he says that that the cleanest looking kitchens are often
Speaker 2: the dirtiest because clean people wipe up so frequently. It's
Speaker 2: like painting a swath of bacteria like Bob Ross laying
Speaker 2: down the background of a gorgeous landscape.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Amusingly, some of the cleanest kitchens, doctor Gerba claims are
Speaker 2: in 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 3: But in your lab, oh in the lab, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a completely different story. So I get all my neat
Speaker 3: freak out of my system here and then go home
Speaker 3: and she's 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,
Speaker 2: Like I know you know how to wash these dishes?
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Megan Gerard wants to know. I heard that we have
Speaker 2: found ancient civilizations had beer recipes. Do we know if
Speaker 2: that was because they couldn't prevent it, like there was
Speaker 2: no refrigeration, or do they do it on purpose? Are
Speaker 2: they any good ancient beer, I understand was because the
Speaker 2: water was so disgusting that they're like, we got to
Speaker 2: have this stuff that has alcohol in it so you
Speaker 2: can kill the bacteria. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I actually do. Really you help yourself
Speaker 3: out from you killing like things like Interobacter.
Speaker 2: Equal I side note them. Bacteria's pooh, that.
Speaker 3: Kind of stuff, because it can't survive in that low
Speaker 3: pH You can't survive with a little bit of alcohol
Speaker 3: on there. Hops were added way after the fact. I
Speaker 3: mean we're talking beer. It's four thousand years old at least.
Speaker 3: We haven't known what the hell we were doing, except
Speaker 3: until past year came by kind of like, oh wait, no,
Speaker 3: this is not just God blessing you with this alcohol.
Speaker 3: It's no, it's yeast. It's yeast pissing farts.
Speaker 2: That's what you get a little tiny, single self.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. I have heard some people trying
Speaker 3: to recreate really ancient beers and then kind of being
Speaker 3: so so yeah, but you also kind of like I
Speaker 3: don't really know 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
Speaker 2: manly from a societal standpoint. Brian Edge wants to know,
Speaker 2: is it true that there's a hops shortage or an
Speaker 2: impending one, and if so, what effect does that I
Speaker 2: have on the brewing industry?
Speaker 3: There certainly was I think was it Yakamaara six ten
Speaker 3: years ago, somewhere in that range. One warehouse had I
Speaker 3: think one third of the entire United States hop harvest
Speaker 3: in just the one building, and it burnt down. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, or night everyone's scrambling and host umm. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that immediately bumps beer prices up and they just
Speaker 3: have 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 Yakima. 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 3: Yeah, totally depends on what you throw into it. If
Speaker 3: you're throwing in like rice rup solids as your base
Speaker 3: fermentable as, it's fairly cheap. Okay, Well you're not gonna
Speaker 3: get a lot of flavor out of that, And so
Speaker 3: you get what you pay for and you get what
Speaker 3: 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 years.
Speaker 3: It's probably not going to taste all that good. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's just because the aging cycle is not good. Time
Speaker 3: is not good to beer.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of places that on the labels best yesterday,
Speaker 3: you know, it was just totally true. I mean, the
Speaker 3: best way to have the best beer is keep it
Speaker 3: cold and drink it fast. I mean, some beers are
Speaker 3: men to age, like a barley wine.
Speaker 2: Side note, I did not know what barley 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, barreley wine.
Speaker 3: We did a flight of barley wine or old Krusty.
Speaker 3: I think the oldest bottle we opened was twenty years
Speaker 3: old and we jumped every four years. So good, okay,
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 2: But that's on porpoise.
Speaker 3: That was totally on purpose. Yeah. Yeah, if you bury
Speaker 3: it in your yard, you're gonna have incredible temperature fluctuations.
Speaker 3: Hell if it freezes if I just shatter that bottle. Yeah,
Speaker 3: 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 3: No? Well, yeah, it depends on what is around you.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're buy orchards and a lot of agriculture.
Speaker 3: There's just a lot more stuff on those leaves, especially yeast.
Speaker 3: So I mean, if you're near a vineyard, there's a
Speaker 3: ton of yeast that lives outside of grapes, on the
Speaker 3: surface of them. That stuff's going to get flown off
Speaker 3: in the wind. So you got a better chance at.
Speaker 2: Least getting a yeast, but capturing good ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well also bad ones. So that's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's risky.
Speaker 3: It is super risky. I mean, open fermentations are very
Speaker 3: They're just risky because you don't know what you ain't get,
Speaker 3: and you're also going to get a lot of backteria.
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 market and people liked it,
Speaker 2: saying it had a sweet, bready, pineappoly and oddly olive
Speaker 2: like notes. So the idiom to get a wild hair
Speaker 2: will never be the same to me. But you can
Speaker 2: open ferment or try wild strains. It just might not
Speaker 2: be for beginners. Is it better to get a kit
Speaker 2: and try to culture something and see what happens?
Speaker 3: It is definitely if you're just getting started, to buy
Speaker 3: something that's already culture and that way you can't really
Speaker 3: screw it up. Okay, you can stress slow, but yeah,
Speaker 3: get into it and then to culture your own east
Speaker 3: that's 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 formation.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Carrie Steward wants to know to craft brewers maintain their
Speaker 2: own hops and yeast strains like proprietary blends or are
Speaker 2: they like sourdough starters that get passed around and shared
Speaker 2: among other brewers.
Speaker 3: So you can buy a pack man, Yeah, you can
Speaker 3: actually go buy the use that we use from the
Speaker 3: majority of our beers and use it in homebrew. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it is like something that we definitely use others.
Speaker 3: I think Beard was the only one that was proprietary.
Speaker 3: We don't do that here, but a lot of breweris
Speaker 3: will and they will make their own yeast and keep
Speaker 3: it completely in house. They'll go from frozen culture all
Speaker 3: the way to pitch and use that and never have
Speaker 3: to buy yeast from anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So remember to pitch just means to add yeast. Just
Speaker 2: so many terms, but now you can throw them around
Speaker 2: like you know what they mean. Old word over here
Speaker 2: will not blow your cover. Sarah Michelle Welch wants to
Speaker 2: know why do beers have different percentages of alcoholics them
Speaker 2: different styles.
Speaker 3: It's appropriate and they will match better with the flavor,
Speaker 3: will profile the balance of it. So some will have
Speaker 3: a little bit more molt and that can handle a
Speaker 3: little more alcohol, or a little more sugar that can
Speaker 3: handle 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 3: Oh see drinkability, What the hell does that mean? Exactly? See,
Speaker 3: that's why I had to take it off the century
Speaker 3: for them because everyone kept like, well, yeah, I could
Speaker 3: 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 after taste
Speaker 2: and is it all good? Great? That's drink ability. Also,
Speaker 2: while editing this, I started to imagine that Quentin was
Speaker 2: a muppet. I think his voice learns itself well to muppetness.
Speaker 2: Just picture it. He has a high degree of listenability.
Speaker 2: When you're having to test beers for your job, are
Speaker 2: you spitting them? Or are you getting hammered at two
Speaker 2: in the afternoon for well.
Speaker 3: Good call on the time. That's actually when we do it. No,
Speaker 3: we only give two ounces and six samples among eight
Speaker 3: samples at max. So okay, at most you've got ten
Speaker 3: ounces and you're not getting hammered. Okay, No, I mean
Speaker 3: nobody walks around here annihilated afterwards. I And there's always pitcups.
Speaker 3: We always 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? It's happening, So how do you
Speaker 2: keep track of millions of yeast pets or guess livestock
Speaker 2: if you want to look at them that way?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, so it depends on every company, does it
Speaker 3: a little different. We're still on the Excel paper, okay,
Speaker 3: and we definitely want to get away from that as
Speaker 3: soon as possible because it is kind of a nightmare
Speaker 3: of this Sixcel file labeled this and YadA yah. I
Speaker 3: mean Excel is great for what it does. It's not
Speaker 3: a good database. Yeah, it can't handle a lot of data.
Speaker 2: But database is on your Christmas list.
Speaker 3: Lab Information Management system is on my wish list.
Speaker 2: Caitlin Plate wants to know our food scientists common to
Speaker 2: find 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 3: You know. Actually there's more and more. University is actually
Speaker 3: coming out with specific brewing programs. Oh Yeah. When I
Speaker 3: was going to undergrad, I really wasn't thinking of brewing
Speaker 3: right off the gate. I was thinking of med school.
Speaker 3: And then I realized I didn't like people that much.
Speaker 3: And then I was like, all right, what am I
Speaker 3: going to do with a microbiology degree? And so I
Speaker 3: hopped into food science because I just you could be
Speaker 3: an ice cream scientist. Come on, you can do that.
Speaker 3: Hell's yeah, somebody's got to do that. Actually, ice cream
Speaker 3: is really complex as a food base. It is a
Speaker 3: good jack of all trades. Degree is to do food science.
Speaker 3: You've got physics, microbiology, chemistry, and just and a lot
Speaker 3: of sensory so you can kind of 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, microbreweries and limited editions? Too much of a
Speaker 2: good thing? What's to be done?
Speaker 3: Pick a brewery? Just stick there? Yeah, rogue has everything
Speaker 3: you need.
Speaker 2: Kidding aside, both Jake and Quentin 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 3: Yeah, there's one moment every damn morning when I show
Speaker 3: up and I have to open the incubator and look
Speaker 3: at those peacher dishes. We got anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope not. I mean it really basically, the
Speaker 3: way I set up the quality program, it's if something grows,
Speaker 3: it probably shouldn't have been there unless it was the
Speaker 3: yeast we were looking for. And that's when we were
Speaker 3: making the beard yeast or beard beer. That bastard it
Speaker 3: was technically a wild East, and so it was resistant
Speaker 3: to all the plates I would put it on. If
Speaker 3: I didn't know exactly what it looked like, that crusty
Speaker 3: little bastard, huh uh, I would have a freak out
Speaker 3: and like a condition fit, Like we've got a wild
Speaker 3: East and it's gone through the package line, and oh
Speaker 3: my god, every gas get in the building is gonna
Speaker 3: have to be completely replaced, and we're gonna be shut
Speaker 3: down for weeks, and I'd have that little moment. By
Speaker 3: the time I something grow on a Peter dish, it
Speaker 3: could be in 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 you
Speaker 2: with one. So they have an area of the brewery
Speaker 2: that's like a library of beers, and they have samples
Speaker 2: of a bunch of recent bruise in the lab. So
Speaker 2: when you open up that thing, you're just hoping. It's
Speaker 2: like anxiety.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want to smell anything funky, that's for
Speaker 3: 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 3: Was that not like poop?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like straight poop.
Speaker 2: There's so many reasons why you don't want to smell that.
Speaker 3: In the more baby vomit or britannamices, it is a really,
Speaker 3: really bad one because it's just a bugger to get
Speaker 3: rid of it. If we ever had it. It's horse
Speaker 3: blanket and band aid and Barnyard. Oh yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of bad and it has shut down wineries.
Speaker 3: So I mean, there's a hit list of crap I
Speaker 3: don't want to ever see in this brewery. That's one
Speaker 3: of them that's on my shit list.
Speaker 2: What's the best part of your job.
Speaker 3: The complete randomness of the day. Well, I mean, I've
Speaker 3: got it structured so when it is daned out like
Speaker 3: that's really really awesome. But I never know what new
Speaker 3: project can throw at me. So I got pulled in
Speaker 3: all sorts of different directions, and I kind of have
Speaker 3: to be the master of all ground here.
Speaker 2: So I think what I'm trying to say that he
Speaker 2: likes the variety, even though it's part I asked the
Speaker 2: Level ten Spirits wizard Jake Holshu, and he said that
Speaker 2: the coolest thing about being a distiller is when he
Speaker 2: hosts a cocktail event or a whiskey release and he
Speaker 2: gets to see a whole room of people enjoying themselves
Speaker 2: as part of the fruits of his labor, or I
Speaker 2: guess the spoiled fruits of his labor put in a
Speaker 2: good way. He says, that's more rewarding for me than
Speaker 2: drinking himself, although Jake also referenced that meme that 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 3: So like, I don't know if you're aware of, but
Speaker 3: ninety percent of a brewer's job is cleaning stuff.
Speaker 2: I just heard.
Speaker 3: That is totally true. Uh, industry wide turnovers pretty high
Speaker 3: because everyone's like, I'm gonna work at a brewery and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make beer, So I mean, somebody's got to
Speaker 3: clean those kegs, somebody's gonna make the cardboard box, and
Speaker 3: otherwise the whole thing collapses. And so you can never
Speaker 3: complain about working too hard because somebody else is doing
Speaker 3: another really hard job, especially around here, because yeah, you
Speaker 3: are cleaning stuff, you're moving 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 rational food scientist
Speaker 2: in general, what's the most important piece?
Speaker 3: And then I'll let you go.
Speaker 2: Since seven as you a one million.
Speaker 3: Questions last week, I was here fifteen hours on Friday.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about it is Get into a lab or
Speaker 3: get into whatever you think you're going to do as
Speaker 3: soon as possible. Find out what your passion is, get
Speaker 3: involved as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: Will you ever call yourself a zymologist? I think you
Speaker 2: should start.
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 for being on. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: I'm glad we can turn out cheers to yeast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely and everything else in there.
Speaker 2: Don't say that. To see photos of me and Quentin Sturgeon,
Speaker 2: you can head to my Instagram at ologies. The podcast
Speaker 2: is also on Twitter at Ologies and I'm on both
Speaker 2: as Ali ward with one L. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch again for hooking this
Speaker 2: interview up and driving me to Newport and hanging out
Speaker 2: and getting Dutch Brothers coffee, and and to Jakoleshue and
Speaker 2: Quentin Sturgeon for the fungus chats and the really memorable
Speaker 2: We'll Never Forget tour. Thank you also to everyone for
Speaker 2: supporting on Patreon again. It's an independent podcast and you
Speaker 2: can become a patron for as little as twenty five
Speaker 2: cents an episode, and you can have your questions asked
Speaker 2: to theologists. Plus you can see more photos from the
Speaker 2: rogue tour, and I put up videos every once in
Speaker 2: a while to say hi. You can also support the
Speaker 2: podcast by getting yourself some Ologies merch, like some awesome
Speaker 2: shirts and hats and toads and pins. That's at ologiesmerch
Speaker 2: dot com. You can join up with other ologites in
Speaker 2: the Facebook group. Thank you to Ernie and Hannah for admitting,
Speaker 2: and thank you as always to Stephen Ray Morris for
Speaker 2: doing a bang up job editing. As I record these
Speaker 2: asides several days later than usual because I was traveling
Speaker 2: for a family emergency. My folks were stuck in a
Speaker 2: bit of a blizzard up north and I got hella behind.
Speaker 2: Thank you again so much for listening if you like
Speaker 2: the podcast, and always support for free by rating and
Speaker 2: reviewing on iTunes. That helps so much. And please do
Speaker 2: remember just ask smart people downb questions, you guys, because
Speaker 2: if you're curious, it's never a dumb question, and someone
Speaker 2: else is probably wondering the exact same thing, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you asked uh. And as a thank
Speaker 2: you for sticking it through to the credits, I usually
Speaker 2: reward you with one heinous secret for my life, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you too. Number One, I love
Speaker 2: eating smoked oysters from a can. I think they're good.
Speaker 2: I love them. And two the last few houses and
Speaker 2: apartments I've lived in, I've written notes, and I've tucked
Speaker 2: them into hidden places, and I always wonder when someone
Speaker 2: will find them. And I hope at least like a
Speaker 2: decade goes by, because if you find like a two
Speaker 2: month old, wistful farewell note, it's this kind of embarrassing,
Speaker 2: like if you're pulling away the moving truck and like
Speaker 2: the new tenant finds this like it's the year twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen and I used to live here. Note like with
Speaker 2: still wet ink tucked behind a cupboard. That's just embarrassing.
Speaker 2: But I do wonder if anyone's found any of the
Speaker 2: notes I've hidden in any of the apartments or houses
Speaker 2: I've lived in. And I also wonder if there are
Speaker 2: any notes lurking behind any weird floorboards around me right now,
Speaker 2: within that weird Have you ever done that anyway? Okay,
Speaker 2: bye bye pacadermatology, hombiology, cryptozoology, lithologynology, meteorology and pology, ethology, zeriology, elithology,