How to go pro
Teri Fahrendorf, head brewer for Steelhead Brewing Company discusses how she made the jump from homebrewer to professional brewer.
Hiring the best brewers
Teri Fahrendorf offers the definitive checklist.
Seven steps to brewpub success
The list begins with your brewpub philosophy and ends with your customers' satisfaction.
Taste panel pitfalls
Smelling and tasting
have become a science, but a science dealing with human
physiology, and humans do not have built-in spectrophotometers
or other measuring devices. Avoiding problems in setting up panels.
Foam evaluation
Much of thevisual attractiveness of a freshly poured glass of beer is due to the creamy-white head of foam which rides atop the surface of the beer. This appeal is not lost as the foam collapses or as the glass is emptied, because a good head of foam will deposit a generous, lacy "cling" on the glass, and a good "cling" has unique visual charm for the person who knows and appreciates good beer.
Determination of cobalt in beer
Thorne and Helm's discovery that the addition of cobaltous salts to beer is beneficial, improving foam properties and inhibiting gushing, brewers need to need more about using cobalt. Here are the essentials.
Phenolic characteristics in brewing - Part I
This paper reports on the initial stages of an investigation of what is apparently a large group of related compounds whose presence in beer in above minimal concentrations causes abnormal flavors.
During the past few years our beer taste panel has occasionally noted the presence of abnormal flavor characteristics which were best described as "medicinal" or "phenol-like." On at least three occasions this offtaste has been of such intensity as to cause customer complaints and withdrawal of beer from the market. Subsequent investigation of these beers disclosed the presence of abnormal amounts of phenolic- and chlorophenolic-type compounds. A method of analysis is described later in this paper.
Part II - The role of water in phenolic characteristics
This paper examines the role which brewing water from various sources may play in the development of medicinal or phenolic tastes in beer.
Quality control in the brewery
One good definition for a quality beer is therefore simply "a beer that consistently meets specification." These words are of course quite a mouthful. The idea of a specification immediately requires that someone, at sometime and someplace, has decided what the beer's defining character(s) should be and how it should be measured. The idea of consistency immediately requires a system of people, plant, and process who are able to repeat exactly what they do time and again.
Comments on beer analysis
From time to time significant variations occur in analytical data pertaining to the chemical and physical composition of beer from a given plant. In this discussion, we shall dwell mainly on the chemical changes that are sometimes encountered, and shall review some of the checks a brewer can make in his plant with the aid of outside assistance, if necessary, that will help identify the source or sources responsible for these real variations in his product.
Tips to make filtration easier
Diatomaceous Earth (DE) filters are a large class of filters that
are used in many industries for a variety of liquid-to-solid separation
tasks. They are used throughout the beverage industry to remove
particulate matter and produce clear product. Many small breweries employ
them to remove yeast and haze from beer before packaging or serving.
Keeping your yeast healthy longer
Most
brewery fermentations are carried out with reused yeast, but the question
of how to store and maintain it frustrates even the most skilled brewers.
It actually is not as difficult as some believe, and there are techniques
that brewers can use to significantly lengthen the life span of their
yeast.
Wild yeast and pasteurization
This study looks at the viability of minimal populations of a wild yeast in beer, and the possible implications for bulk pasteurization.
Brewery water supplies
It can be fairly stated that a relatively large proportion of industrial water users fail to give proper attention to the quality of their water supply.
Quality control for keg cleaning
Of all the refillable beer containers currently in use, the modern beer keg is certainly one of the most difficult to analyze with standard quality control methods. Other refillable beer containers - bottles, growlers, serving tanks and bright beer tanks - are all relatively easy to inspect internally.
