Shane Walker: 00:06 What happened is that, with these smaller breweries coming along, they started brewing things that were historical styles, for one. Or they were making use of local ingredients, just trying to come up with things that weren't ... or were the complete opposite to the sorts of things that the big breweries were making. Josh Moran: 00:27 You're listening to the Why&How podcast. Produced by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph. Where we look the answer the big questions in agriculture, food, and the environment, through casual conversation, rooted in research. Hello everyone, I'm Josh Moran, and today we're joined by friend of the show Jordan Terpstra. Jordan Terpstra: 00:50 Hey Josh, good to see you again. Josh Moran: 00:51 Great to see you again. Jordan Terpstra: 00:52 How's it going today? Josh Moran: 00:53 Pretty good, I'm pretty excited about today's topic. Jordan Terpstra: 00:56 Oh yeah? Why don't you tell me who we're talking to today? Josh Moran: 00:58 Well today, we're actually talking to a beer specialist from food science, at the University of Guelph. Very, very excited. Thanks for being on, Shane Walker. Shane Walker: 01:06 Oh, thanks. It's great to be here. Josh Moran: 01:08 Yeah, super excited. So maybe to start, could you tell us a bit about you, and your role at the University of Guelph? Shane Walker: 01:14 Sure thing. So I am a lab manager in the Department of Food Science. So I'm just responsible for looking after a lot of the equipment and the lab spaces, that type of thing. Josh Moran: 01:23 So what sort of got you into that? Where did you start with your undergraduate? Shane Walker: 01:26 So I did an undergraduate many years ago, back in New Zealand, at the University of Otago. And that was food science, back in the '90s. But I did do a degree here at Guelph as well, I have a PHD from the Department of Food Science actually, as a cereal chemist. That kind of led into eventually working in the department, with a background in cereals. That, in one way I guess, kind naturally led into an interest in beer as well, because that's probably one of the more interesting things you can do with cereal grains. Jordan Terpstra: 01:58 The most entertaining things you can do, anyways. Shane Walker: 02:00 I think so. Josh Moran: 02:01 And so, when you say cereal grains, can you just kind of let us a little bit more about what some of these cereal grains are, and what it means to be a cereal chemist? Shane Walker: 02:09 What it means to be a cereal chemist? Oh gosh. I'm probably best talking specifically about my research area, within cereals. That was actually ... It was more to do baking. So all the sorts of things that happen to cereal grains, predominantly wheat, and all the various chemical and physicochemical changes, sensory changes, etc, that happen during the baking process. Josh Moran: 02:36 You do something actually really interesting at the university, which I think is pretty unique, is you get to help sort of run this brew lab, and I find that pretty amazing. I was wondering, kind of what's the purpose of the brew lab at the University of Guelph? What's the overarching goal? Shane Walker: 02:50 The goal of the brew lab ... Well, the brew lab we have run in conjunction with our third-year Industrial Microbiology course, in the Food Science department. And it's a winter course, and a few years ago I was sort of observing what was happening in this particular lab stream, in the classes. And what the students were doing, is that they were making beer of a kind, in the lab. But it was actually in a wet chemistry lab. So they were not making anything that would be safe to consume, to start with, by any means. And what it was, was simply they would have a carboy, they would take a can of malt, they'd empty that to the carboy, they'd dilute that with water, to get it to the appropriate Brix range, they would throw a packet of yeast in it, and fermentation would occur. Josh Moran: 03:45 Just before we keep going, what's a Brix range? Sorry, you said that. Shane Walker: 03:47 Oh that's just the amount of dissolved sugars in a solution. It's pretty standard in beer and wine, when you're making it. So they were making these "beers" and doing all of the sort of testing that you would normally expect would be quality tests of the degree of fermentation, and all this type of stuff. But the thing is, at the end of that process, what they'd have would be this liquid, which you'd pretty much have to put down the drain. And I thought there was a real opportunity to do something a little more interesting with it. Shane Walker: 04:28 You know, we talk about experiential learning at the university, and we're trying to do more of that type of thing in our courses. And it occurred to me, why don't we actually have a food grade space, because we do have food grade spaces in Food Science, it's one of the nice things about the department. And why don't we actually make beer, that at the end of process, maybe the students can package it up, and they can take a bottle home. Plus they also get to learn a lot more about the actual process of brewing, rather than just the mechanics of ... Well, you take a malt solution, you add yeast, and that's really focused on the microbiology side of it. What about what happens before that? Because, I don't know how much you know about the brewing process, but it's a lot more than just the fermentation. That was where it began, at least. Josh Moran: 05:19 Super duper interesting. I'm curious now, what are some of the beers that you've actually had students make? What's kind of stood out to you, so far? Shane Walker: 05:27 Okay, so in the class, we have them make effectively one beer. What we do is we have a brew day, and we have a ... It's bench top size brewing that we have, we have a 5 gallon, and a 10 gallon kettle. And what we do, in each lab stream, we'll make a 10 gallon batch of wort, and then we will divide that up, we'll have six lab groups in each lab stream, and we'll give them different yeasts, we'll have them calculate different yeast pitching rates, and we'll get them to also ferment their products at different temperatures. So what we have is something that you would imagine ... Well at the beginning, what they get is something that's exactly the same. But when you split it up, and you subject it to those different treatments during the fermentation, you can end up with some very, very different products. Josh Moran: 06:23 And you said wort, is that basically what, your barley water almost, by comparison? What would that be? Shane Walker: 06:27 Yup, wort is what we get after we combine the malt with the hot water, and we steep it. The enzymes do their thing, they break all the starches down, or the sugars. We then go on and do a boil with our hops, and what we have after we've cooled that down, is our sweet wort. Josh Moran: 06:48 Okay, is that just sugar from your grains? Is it sugary water? Shane Walker: 06:52 It's the sugar from the grains, and an awful lot of other flavor compounds, obviously. Both from the malts, and from the hops. There's an old saying "Brewers make wort, and yeast makes beer." So our part is in making the wort, and then we hand it over to the students, and in conjunction with the yeast, they turn that into beer. Hopefully. Josh Moran: 07:18 Hopefully, yeah. Shane Walker: 07:18 We've had some interesting results from the same batches. Josh Moran: 07:22 Where things just don't go quite right. I'd imaging it's a very meticulous process, getting everything. Shane Walker: 07:28 Yeah, it has its moments. And cleanliness is key, for sure. We did have a couple of less than sanitary issues, where things didn't taste quite so great. But even having said that, I still think it was leaps and bounds ahead of the sort of things that they had been producing prior to that. So in the actual lab course, that's typically like an English ale. And we make an English ale because it's a fast fermenting ... Like it's an easy thing to make. Josh Moran: 08:05 Now you could almost say that beer, well craft beer especially, has definitely taken off in a lot of ways, recently. Going from, what is it, 10 breweries in Canada in 1985, to over 700 now. What do you think has caused that sort of draw towards craft beer in the beer industry? Shane Walker: 08:24 There's a lot of factors that've ended up contributing to that. I think one of the biggest things is if the consumer demand wasn't there, then we wouldn't have the explosion, and number of breweries. But this whole thing started way back, even in the late '70s. This is where sort of the groundwork for this sort of stuff was laid. But if you want to go even further back, even as far as Prohibition. Prior to Prohibition in North America, there were hundreds of small breweries. Following Prohibition, most of them closed down, obviously. And then there was a certain amount of consolidation that happened, over the remaining 50 odd years. And it got to the point where there were really only two very large brewing conglomerates, and just a handful of other, small operations throughout North America. Shane Walker: 09:18 In 1978 ... And a lot of this relates to the US actually. So in 1978, Congress passed a bill that allowed home brewing to be done by people at home in the States. And that was the catalyst for a lot of the people who went on to become brewers, and start up their own brewing operations. So you had companies that came out of that initial level of interest in brewing, they were one's like Sierra Nevada, the Boston Beer company, who brew the Samuel-Addams beers, that type of operation. And it's grown a lot from there. That led to increasing demand for the sorts of beers that were being made, because up until this point, what we ended up settling on from the larger companies was basically ... more than 90% of the beer produced was very light lager. Okay, so you're talking about your Budweisers, your Coors, all that kind of stuff. Big industrial scale. Josh Moran: 10:21 The college staples. Shane Walker: 10:23 Yeah, yeah. And you know what, there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of that stuff, by any means. In fact, it's an amazing technical achievement that they can brew those beers in different places, all over the country, all over the world, day in, day out, and it's always the same. Jordan Terpstra: 10:42 Its consistent right? Because consistency's difficult. Shane Walker: 10:44 Yeah, absolutely it's difficult. And especially with something like a light lager. There is nowhere to hide. If you have any flaws, any issues in production, any issues with packaging, whatever. It's going to stand out. Like it really will, so that's quite an achievement. But what happened is that with the smaller breweries coming along, they started brewing things that were historical styles, for one. Or they were making use of local ingredients, just trying to come up with things that weren't ... Or that were the complete opposite to the sorts of things that the big breweries were making. So probably the best example of that would be the explosion in IPA that happened. I mean, everyone knows about IPA, there's IPAs all over the place. And in fact, IPA as a style has recently splintered to the point where what even is an IPA? Josh Moran: 11:43 It doesn't quite hold to its original roots, does it not? Shane Walker: 11:46 Not even close. No no no, if you look at, say english style IPAs, the original IPAs that were the pale ales that were heavily hopped, and shipped to India, and you know, the idea was that the extra hopping would suppress lactic acid bacteria, and they'd preserve longer. And apparently, when these people came back from spending the time in India, they wanted that same type of beer. But if you took that style, and what the brewers in North America did, was they translated that, particularly on the west coast, the Yukima Valley, that area, where there's a lot of hops being grown. And they started aggressively hopping their IPAs. Like far, far more than these would ever have been made in the UK. And that become something that people really, really got into. So that's kind of like almost the old-school North American west coast style IPA. Shane Walker: 12:45 That has devolved into so many different types of beers at this point, that you can have any IPA that you can imagine. Milkshake IPAs, with lactose in them. Fruit IPAs, which is kind of like a champagne-style beer, which has got all the carbohydrates taken out of it basically. Very light, very champagne-like. The obvious recent one that's sort of everywhere, certainly this year, is New England IPAs. And they've been around the last couple of years. And they're just like ... They've still got the same amount of hops, but the hops are added far later in the brewing process. Josh Moran: 13:25 Like dry hopping? Or what- Shane Walker: 13:27 It's predominately drop hopping. Josh Moran: 13:29 But that like when you're adding hops as well during the fermentation period, correct? Shane Walker: 13:32 Yeah it is, it is. So instead of front-loading with all your bittering hops during the boil, and getting a huge amount of bitterness being generated, what they're doing is they're pulling their punches a wee bit. They're putting a little bit of bittering hops in, because you need the bitterness with balance. But then all the hopping is happening after the boil, in the fermentation stage. Particularly right at the end of fermentation, so instead of all the alpha acids being converted to bitterness in the brew, you're ending up with a whole lot of floral, fruity, all these sorts of characteristics. Josh Moran: 14:09 Does it make it more citrusy, in terms of that? Shane Walker: 14:11 Citrus is definitely one of the things that stands out. And you know, depending on the hops that are used, you kind of get types of citrus, you're going to get other fruits like mango being very predominant. Like one hop in particular is very popular for using in New England IPAs, is the mosaic hop. And the characteristics of that are all of those things, manga citrus, like just this very fruity ... And you see them referred to juicy IPAs, often hazy IPAs. The haze isn't necessarily something that is ... They're not actually aiming to do that, that's just more of a consequence of how the beer is being brewed. But yeah, that's just one of them, and there's just so many types of IPAs. Sour IPAs, you name it, someones thought of it. Josh Moran: 14:53 Here at the University of Guelph, we have some cool heritage malting barley's that have actually been used in brewing. And we talk about the OAC 21 right? And that relates back to Charles Zavitz, I believe? Shane Walker: 15:06 Charles Zavitz, yes absolutely. Josh Moran: 15:07 Zavitz, sorry yes. Who interestingly enough, was a Quaker, and actually then for refrained from drinking. Which interestingly enough, that ended up being such a predominant variety of barley used up until the late '50s, correct? Shane Walker: 15:18 Yeah, he was not a man that liked drinking, or for anyone else to drink, in fact. But he bred, rather he didn't make. He bred this fantastic barley somewhere around 1910. Right here, at the University, and it was called OAC 21. Josh Moran: 15:38 So you guys have actually used this to brew quite a bit as well, haven't you? Shane Walker: 15:43 We've used it to brew some, yeah. I wouldn't say extensively, but we have made beer with it so far. Six-row barley is the type of malt, because it is a historical style, when I thought about using it, I thought "What are we going to do with it?" And the obvious thing, to me at least, was why not make a pilsner, which would have been the predominant style of beer around at the same time that this would have been first introduced. Jordan Terpstra: 16:13 Fits its heritage. Shane Walker: 16:14 Yeah, its heritage. So I took a look into ... Actually, it was American Home Brewing Associations beer judge certification program style guidelines, which was kind of like this guidebook for beer styles. And the one that jumped out was call pre-Prohibition pilsner. So it's a type of pilsner, obviously. But it's a little different from European pilsner, they're using a six-row barley. And a certain number of adjuncts. And adjuncts, in industrial scale brewing, tend to be things like corn, rice, that kind of thing. So we brewed a pre-Prohibition pilsner, used some corn, used some rice. Used a little bit of Canadian two-row as well, just for a little more fullness of flavor. And we ended up with quite an acceptable product, in the end. It was super interesting to actually get to use something that had been around, like way back when. Josh Moran: 17:06 And it's super cool too, because it ties back to the university, even though it may not have been what was originally intended for, it's still a super, super cool part of our heritage. And interestingly enough, with the flavor profile, and I find it's almost got like a smokey- Shane Walker: 17:21 Yeah it does. There's ... I think there's a certain amount of phenolics that come through in the flavor. And they can manifest themselves as a little bit of a smokey-ness on the palette. Which it's kind of interesting, it's a little different than what you'd normally expect from a really sort of clean, industrial lager that you might get elsewhere. So yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 17:42 And so, from what I understand about OAC 21, is that it was very popular when it first came out, I know its coined as the grandfather of malting barleys. And so, how come it's come back, like why is there a resurgence in this? Shane Walker: 18:01 I think it's mainly down to our friend Dwaine [Folk 00:18:03], who was instrumental in bringing it back. He just had an interest in it, he has a farm. And yeah, I guess I have to say I'm not 100% sure of what the motivation for it would be, but apart from its just a really interesting, cool sort of thing to do. Like this malt ... as you said, it was the grandfather of a lot of the variates that superseded it. So there's a lot of genetic material from that, that came into developing the variates that we do use to this day. Shane Walker: 18:37 But it was used right up until well into the '60s at least. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to be able to bring back something that has got that much history. It's a hyper local sort of a product. And it has an interesting flavor profile, I mean the great thing about is you make beer with this thing, and it's got such a great local story to it, that you absolutely want to use it in everything that you make, if at all possible. Obviously we need to grow some more, that would be good, and make it available. Jordan Terpstra: 19:11 So in your experience, you find that having that heritage, having that story, do you find consumers really enjoy that piece, when they're choosing a beer, and drinking beer? Shane Walker: 19:21 I think generally speaking, if you're talking about craft beer, I think the sort of people that are interested in drinking craft beer really do want to know more about what it is ... some aspect of the product. They want to have a story about it, they want to know that it has some sort of interesting or special ingredients. It has some sort of sense of place, that type of thing. Just beyond this is a beer I have in my hand, and it has a certain appearance, odor, flavor, all that sort of stuff. But you want more, you want to understand a story about it. But yeah, I think that supporting local products, and wanting to have something a little exclusive, I think that's a lot of the part of the appeal of craft beer, for one. Shane Walker: 20:08 Because if you look at beer consumption in North America, generally ... Probably world-wide even, but I know for sure in Canada. Actual beer consumption in the last 10 years has decreased by a not insignificant amount. I do have some figures. We don't need to know the figures, but it's definitely decreased. But if you look at also the proportions of, or the numbers at least, of different beer categories, mainstream beers, the big breweries. The proportion of those beers has decreased more, and if we look at say 10 years ago, there might have been 3% of the market would have been craft beer. Nowadays its closer to 10%, 10 or 11%, I saw some recent figures. So people are paying more for beer, that they're drinking less of. And who would have thought that that would ever happen? Jordan Terpstra: 21:07 It's interesting, isn't it? Shane Walker: 21:09 Because you think people want cheap beer, and of course, the thing that springs to mind is the buck-a-beer thing, which you only see on holiday week-ends. And it's its own niche thing, I guess. But that is definitely running counter to what most of the industry is heading towards. Josh Moran: 21:33 I'm just kind of curious now, just to get into like more so a discreet sort of difference, what differentiates like I said, a conventional brewery, in comparison to a craft beer brewery? What makes those two very different? Shane Walker: 21:48 In a lot of ways, they're not different. And in some ways, of course, they are. And I think there isn't an official definition of craft brewing, micro-brewing, versus larger scale. And it's simply- Josh Moran: 22:01 [crosstalk 00:22:01] liter production? Shane Walker: 22:02 Yeah, it's simply based upon the number of barrels of beer that they produce. Which is a very technical, dry sort of a thing, it doesn't tell you anything about how the beer's made. All it says is once you reach above a certain number of barrels, you can no longer consider yourself a micro-brewery. Of course, a lot of the larger breweries are making "craft beer". And so, what is it they're doing differently? Well typically it's not lager that they're making. They're making ales, they're using more interesting ingredients, they're choosing different styles to make. It's that type of approach, it's more of a ... I don't want to say hands-on approach, but ... Josh Moran: 22:42 It definitely provides a greater variety of more unique flavors across the board, you could argue, right? You kind of veer away from what's conventional, and that might be quite the draw? Shane Walker: 22:52 Absolutely, and I think it's probably the degree of experimentation that you can expect, from the small producers. Because they can be making Berliner Weisse one day, and then can be making something that has a bunch of fruit in it the next. And they're only committed to making that one batch. They can put it up for sale, it's done, if it goes well they can make it again, they can tweak it a wee bit, you know, they can change it. They can do what they want. If you're in a large industrial-scale setting, you're not going to be doing that. I mean, you might do it in your lab. But you can't do that. Jordan Terpstra: 23:31 So when you mentioned experimentation, obviously a lot of micro-breweries are trying these different flavor profiles, and different ingredients. Do you find that so ... are many people researching these types of things, in an academic setting? Or is that not really what people would research? Shane Walker: 23:51 That's a good question. I am not aware of people who, in the academic arena, who are necessarily researching that type of thing. I do read academic papers about brewing. The American Society Of Brewing Chemists publishes a lot of research on brewing, but it's typically you know, these hops have these characteristics, here's something different that happens with fermentations, that can be modified. They're not sort of pushing the boundaries, as far as different flavors, and different types of fermentables, necessarily. I think a lot of that type of experimentation comes from the people who came through as home brewers, and end up starting their own places, or working in micro-breweries. They have the freedom to try something out, because they can. They're working on a smaller scale, that they can get away with that. If they can't move something, well you know, that wasn't such a bad thing, we can move on and do the next. Josh Moran: 25:02 Very trial and error-esque. Shane Walker: 25:04 To a certain extent, yeah, yeah. I mean, they have a pretty good idea of what's going to work. Josh Moran: 25:07 Very interesting. Are there some beers that you're currently working on, or something that's a personal project of yours right now? Shane Walker: 25:14 There's always something that we're working on. Always want to try something new, something different. In the lab ... So just to background this, we set the lab up, in conjunction with the Industrial Microbiology course, and we do this thing in the winter semester with the students. And then for the rest of the year, well it's not like we just sort of stand idle. We do have other courses that will want to make use of the space. There is a course, and I'm going to blank on it here a bit, but there is a food year course for non-Food Science students. Josh Moran: 25:54 I'm taking that, actually. Shane Walker: 25:54 You're taking that course? Josh Moran: 25:56 Yes. Its all agriculture science students are required to take it. Shane Walker: 25:59 So you're taking the course. This is fantastic. So what has happened, once students in that course were made aware that we had the ability to make beer in our department, I think one of the main aspects of that course, is that you actually ... It's a product development-esque sort of a proposition. They've got to make something. And last year, and the year before, there were groups of students that were like "Oh, why don't we make beer? Because we've heard you can make beer, and can you help us make beer?" And I'm like "Absolutely, what have you got? What's your interest?" Like what do you want to do? And the first year, the group of students came up with the idea of trying to make a really historical ... like something that would have been brewed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, like thousands of years ago, when beer first began. Shane Walker: 26:49 So we ended up making something that was fermented using ... well, mostly malt, but also a certain amount of ... like a date syrup, to supply a lot of the fermentable sugars for it. And put a bunch of spices in it, which would have been the sorts of things that would have been around at the time to, honestly, mask the flavors of what wouldn't necessarily have been a particularly clean fermentation. And I thought that was really successful. Josh Moran: 27:17 That's interesting. Shane Walker: 27:18 Yeah, it was. It was pretty cool. Last year, a group of students ended up making a smoked bacon, maple porter. Josh Moran: 27:28 My friends actually were involved. Matt Terpstra. Another Terpstra was actually involved in that. Shane Walker: 27:33 They had some interesting issues in trying to get bacon into their beer, as you can imagine. Not a natural pairing. I mean, there are certain times of the year, you see novelty beers come out, and they do have things like that in them. What we ended up doing, was making a tincture with bacon. So they had to cook the bacon, they had to try and get as much of the fat out of it as possible, I won't go into the details of that. But they did that, and then soaked the de-fatted, cooked bacon in clear spirit, which in this case I think it was vodka, to extract as much of the flavor out. And then that was added at kegging time. So the smoked parts easy, because you get smoked malt. That just goes straight in. Maple, well that's easy too, because that can also just go in with the fermentation. And then you just put the bacon part in at the end, combine it all, smoked bacon maple porter. Josh Moran: 28:29 Super interesting. Jordan Terpstra: 28:30 Was it any good? Shane Walker: 28:31 It was decent. I still have a couple bottles in my basement, which yeah, I think they'll be good now. It was good then, this is the nice thing about slightly higher alcohol, and darker beers. They will cellar quite well. So yeah, I should go try one of those. Josh Moran: 28:49 Super cool. In the simplest terms possible, could you maybe break down the brewing process? Just for a simple beer, nothing crazy. Shane Walker: 28:56 Oh absolutely, yeah. So in many ways, it is a very simple process. What you're doing, is you're taking barley ... Now, as a brewer, you're not typically malting the barley, you buy your barley already malted, that a whole process into itself, that we won't touch on. But you get your barley, you steep it at a temperature that's conducive to the enzymes that are in the barley, breaking down the starches and the sugars. Okay, I should have mentioned that you have to mill the malt. Josh Moran: 29:30 So you get the ... that will help you extract the sugars when you[crosstalk 00:29:33] Shane Walker: 29:33 Yeah, because you got to break open the kernel, so that the water can get in, it hydrates. Josh Moran: 29:37 But you don't want to mill it too much, like it turns to flour, right? Would that ... Shane Walker: 29:40 No, because then you end up with that great thing, which is a stuck mash. Gums up all your equipment, everything just gelatinizes, and then that's a huge problem, no. So basically what you're doing, you're taking your malted barley, you're basically just cracking the kernels a bit, so that the moisture has a chance to get in there. That hydrates the starches and everything else, and the enzymes can then start to get to work. You want to have it at the right temperature, around 63 to 66 degrees Celsius, and you want to keep an eye on the PH as well, because there's an optimum. Being enzymes, there's an optimum PH for these things, but you don't want to get into that too, too much right now. Shane Walker: 30:19 But basically, you let that happen for an hour, and hour and a bit. You're then draining all of that, what we call, sweet liquor, off of that spent grain, because that's what it's become at this point, it's now referred to as spent grain. That spent grain, typically, will go off to farms for animal feed. You can do interesting things with it. People bake with it, they put it into bread. We've used it, we've actually dried it, milled it, and used it to make waffle cones for beer flavored ice-cream. So the sweet wort at that point, is then boiled. And it's at that point that you start adding hops. Shane Walker: 31:02 So typically, you're going to do something between a 60 and a 90 minute boil, and the way hops work, for a lack of a better way of putting it, is that hops have a certain amount of what they call iso-alpha acids. Those acids will isomerize during boiling, and it's a process that's dependent on time, okay. So if you boil for 60 minutes, you're basically going to convert all of those alpha acids into bittering components. Otherwise, if they're not boiled they're not going to be bitter. So if you want something that's quite bitter, you're going to make sure that those hopes got a high level of alpha acids and you put them in early on in the boil. If you don't want the bitterness, you pull them back a bit, and put them ... You can put them right at the end, what we call a whirlpool. And that case, you're really not getting bitterness out of them, what you're getting instead is all of those what you would consider to be the characteristic hop aromas. Sometimes grassy, you know, pineapple, earthy, floral, all of those characteristics. Shane Walker: 32:11 So hops go in, the wort is boiled. From that point on, you have to be really careful about sanitation. Everything has to kept super clean. So you're going to take your sweet wort, you're going to put it through some sort of cooling. We have a little plate heat exchanger. If you're doing this at home, a lot of people use like an immersion coil, something like that. And you will pump it, or at least get it into a sanitized fermentation vessel. At that point, you can pitch the fermentation organism of your choice. Typically, that's going to be standard brewers' yeast. Whether it's an ale yeast, or a lager yeast, depends on what you're trying to make. You can get really interesting, and start doing things like sour fermentations, or you might add some other things, like Brettanomyces Pediococcus, that type of thing, and you start getting really funky flavors. That's another whole area of brewing, again. That's like a really quick overview. Josh Moran: 33:14 And how would you calculate your actual alcohol content, and that? Like your ... Shane Walker: 33:18 The easy way, and the way most home brewers would do it, is what you will do, is you will measure what we call the OG, or original gravity of the wort prior to fermentation. Because if a liquid has a lot of sugars in it, it's going to be much denser. So we have what we call a hydrometer. There's a mark on the hydrometer ... like, they're graduated, so you can see how much more dense the liquid is than water. So water, plain distilled water at 25 degrees Celsius, is zero, on a hydrometer. Once you start adding sugars to the water, that's going to be denser, so the hydrometer's going to sit further out of the water, and you'll be able to read out the value. Shane Walker: 34:00 A fairly typical value might be 1052, right? We've got a certain amount of sugars that relate to that number. At the end of fermentation, those sugars have been used up by the yeast, they've consumed them, they've turned them into alcohol, which is a lot less dense. So you put the hydrometer back in, and you'll see that that level will be down to maybe 1006. So you just plug in those values, 1052, and 1006 into a very simple equation, and then you have your alcohol by volume. Josh Moran: 34:34 Interesting. And also, I know a lot of beers are carbonated. So I'm wondering, do you add a prime sugar towards the end, to allow for carbonation? Or what would you do there? Shane Walker: 34:46 When you're starting out in home brewing, the easiest way to carbonate your beer is to ... you do your complete fermentation, and when you get to the bottling stage, in a five gallon batch of beer, you might put three quarters of a cup of dextrose, to maybe one and a half cups of dextrose, depending on the level of carbonation you want. Because you're not pasteurizing this beer, so it still has live yeasts in it, right? So you just stir that up with a little bit of water, dump that into your beer. You bottle the beer, that small amount of residual sugar that's in each bottle will ... after a couple of weeks at room temperature, the yeast will converted that sugar to a little more alcohol, and carbon dioxide. Of course, the carbon dioxide, under pressure, is what's carbonizing your beer. So that's how most people start out with carbonation. If you get a little more into it, you will start doing forced carbonation at home, where you've actually got a bottle of CO2, you have soda kegs, and you're actually like ... Josh Moran: 35:55 Hard core. Shane Walker: 35:56 You're actually ... yeah, you're actually force carbonating the beer. So it's still ... so if you're looking at, say, two or three weeks for so called natural carbonation, using sugar. You can probably carbonate a beer in five days, with forced carbonation, thereabouts. We have a little contraption that we use, which is basically, it's kind of like an aquarium stone sort of a thing. And we run beer past this, it's like a centered aluminum piece that we force CO2 through. And so, we have a huge amount of carbonation, or CO2 going over a small area, and the beer is just flowed through that, in a recirculation instead of a loop between the keg and this device. So you can carbonate a keg of beer in 30-40 minutes. Josh Moran: 36:51 That's unreal. Shane Walker: 36:52 Yeah, so often we'll do that, just because it's easier and more convenient, and you can get exactly the level of carbonation you're after. Josh Moran: 36:59 It's more hit or miss if you were missing ... more room for human error to ... Shane Walker: 37:03 Yeah, I mean, you can kind of judge, if you're using sugar. And when I say sugar, I actually mean dextrose, not table sugar. But yeah, you can choose the carbonation level you want, if you're actually using a forced carbonation. Otherwise, you're just leaving it to the yeast. And so, different beers have different levels of carbonation, right? So you're not going to want to carbonate say a stout, or a porter to anywhere like the level that you might want to carbonate a lager. Josh Moran: 37:34 I would love to sit here and talk beer all day, but unfortunately we're running a little low on time, in terms of the podcast, so I'm going to leave you with a few more questions, just a few quick personal questions. Shane Walker: 37:45 Absolutely. Josh Moran: 37:46 I know it's probably hard to pick one, and I know I most definitely couldn't pick one, because it varies from season to season. But right now, what would you say is your favorite beer? Or favorite type of beer, if it makes it easier to break it down. Shane Walker: 37:57 Definitely favorite type of beer would be a much easier question to say instead of favorite beer, because the flippant answer to that would be whatever beer I happen to have with me at the time. Josh Moran: 38:07 Whatever's free. Shane Walker: 38:07 Well, not even free. But if I'm at the right place, and I've made a good choice, then that's the best beer right now. I still like IPAs. Josh Moran: 38:17 IPAs, yeah? The bitterness? Shane Walker: 38:17 Yeah, absolutely. For sure, I mean I love hops. I really like ... there's a few Flanders Red styles that you can get in the LCBO here. And that's just a really interesting, complex, sour, slightly funky style of beer, and I think those are awesome. I like sours as well, we're brewing some Berliner Weiss right now, we're going to put some rhubarb in it, from the organic farm on campus. Josh Moran: 38:48 That sounds amazing. Shane Walker: 38:50 I like that too, so yeah, anything. Josh Moran: 38:53 That's fair. I mean, and it varies so much. I was just on a big run of enjoying wheat beers most of the summer, now I'm starting to turn more to drinking stouts now. So it's always varying, and that's what's so interesting about the industry, is that there's so much variety, right? So another quick question for you is, what would be your favorite beer that you've brewed yourself? Shane Walker: 39:12 That I've brewed myself? Oh, again, it's like whatever is just about ready, or what we've been brewing this week. I did mention the Berliner Weiss with rhubarb. I'm actually only at the point of that primary fermentation's just happened, the rhubarbs all lined up to go in, they haven't met yet. I think that's going to be one of most interesting things. Well I'm really looking forward to it. Josh Moran: 39:34 I love rhubarb. Shane Walker: 39:35 Yeah, exactly, right? Jordan Terpstra: 39:36 That's awesome. Shane Walker: 39:36 Yeah, so that's probably one of my favorite. But like we have standard beers that we've formulated, and we have like a raspberry sour that we make, and I really like that. Josh Moran: 39:45 That sounds very good as well. It's always interesting to see a raspberry sour, and that red versus that standard gold in there. Shane Walker: 39:53 Absolutely, because you look at it and go "Well, is that beer?" Josh Moran: 39:56 It looks like a clamato. Shane Walker: 39:57 Yeah well, except you can see through it. Josh Moran: 40:00 Yeah, a dilute one. Okay, and then I have two more questions here for you, quick questions. Is there anything you want to share with your audience, anything particularly exciting going on in the life of Dr. Shane Walker? Shane Walker: 40:12 Doing a lot of brewing ... oh gosh. Me personally, no I mean, really I would encourage anyone who's listening who's at all interested in beer, there's a few avenues you can explore, to learn more about beer. One of them is the School of Hospitality here actually. They host a lot of beer courses. I would suggest if people are interested in learning more about beer, there's a great thing the ... Josh Moran: 40:38 Prudhomme? Shane Walker: 40:39 Prudhomme, yeah they host level one and level two of Prudhomme. I'd say if you've got even more than a passing interest in beer, look into doing level one, which is the beer enthusiast course. I think that's coming up. I think they do it every October, I think they also do it early in the year as well. Josh Moran: 40:54 And it's a once a week commitment, I'm excited to get mine. Shane Walker: 40:56 Yeah, it's like a Sunday afternoon, and I think it's three hours for four weekends, something like that. I really, really would encourage people to look into that. The other thing is, there is a Guelph, Cambridge, Kitchen of Waterloo home brew club, called True Grist. And you can look them up at truegrist.ca. They are an awesome resource if you're at all interested in home brewing, and want to get into it. Check out True Grist, and they're a great bunch of people. They meet every ... Sorry, the second Wednesday every month, for that. The other thing is, I guess a plug for our Food Science department as well, we've started doing classes on how to home brew from grain. So we're going to run another one of those in a little while. And hopefully, we'll be doing those fairly consistently. So look at the Food Science department website I guess, or even just go to the U of G website, type in beer, you're bound to get either us or Hospitality. Look up both. Josh Moran: 41:59 Awesome. Shane Walker: 42:00 We can teach you how to make beer. Josh Moran: 42:02 And for your last question we have here. Is there any individuals you want to give a shout out to? Shane Walker: 42:09 Not so much individuals, but I would like to recognize the great beer that's available from some of the loca breweries here. So Wellington, Royal City, Fixed Gear, Brothers. Don't just try the stuff that you can get from those breweries that's actually in the LCBO, or the beer store. Like actually pay them a visit, because what they have on tap, on their premises, is usually far more interesting and varied than what you'll ever see. You'll ever see one or two of their beers for sale in stores. So actually pay them a visit. Josh Moran: 42:43 Cool. And with that, we're running a little over time, but we're super duper thankful to have you on, this was a great conversation. And I look forward to getting my home brew kit out this weekend, seeing what I can do. Shane Walker: 42:55 Absolutely. Josh Moran: 42:55 Thanks again for being on. Jordan Terpstra: 42:57 Thanks for joining us Shane. Shane Walker: 42:57 Thank you. Josh Moran: 42:58 Until next time guys, take care. Josh Moran: 43:03 The Why&How podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College, of the University of Guelph. It is produced by Stephanie Craig, and Jordan Terpstra. Recording and editing, done by Jacob [Hiesic 00:43:15], and Kyle Richie. The host is me, Josh Moran. Funding for this episode was provided by the WS Young Memorial Communications Grant, through the OAC Alumni Foundation.