I am a scientist and a beer enthusiast, perhaps a bit obsessed. I have a Ph.D. in microbiology and cellular biology. I love all things related to beer. I currently reside in the Washington D.C. metro area. This area, like most of the country, is undergoing a brewing renaissance. My hope is that this will be part homebrew blog, part brewery interview blog, and part “Adventures in the beer community” blog to document this time in the mid-Atlantic beer scene. I’ll review some beers on here, visit some breweries, and brew a lot of beer. I won’t get too scientific but hopefully I’ll provide a nice point of view for the beer scene.
There are three basic threads running through this blog. The first is “here is the beer I make…” a series of homebrew posts about the various beers I attempt to make and the techniques used to make those beers. Second, I like doing things in the craft beer industry so I go on these “field trips” of sorts to touch the process of making beer at various steps (going to brew a commercial batch or going to a hop farm for a harvest). Lastly the science, I use my blog to do different sorts of experiments like measuring IBU or isolating yeasts. This is the slowest growing section of the blog currently but I hope to get it up and running this year.
My beer tastes are simple, I like it. I like dark beers, yellow beers, hoppy beers, sour beers. It isn’t odd for me to drink a Russian Imperial Stout or a gueuze. I’ve sampled over 4000 commercial examples of beers and hundreds of homebrews. I tend to brew a lot of hoppy beers and saisons…I use a variety of organisms like a lot of homebrewers these days including Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and Brettanomyces species. I hope you find something of interest in this blog.
In addition to beer, I’m an ambitious but young gardener, I collect beer glassware (and have for almost 10 years now), and enjoy woodworking. Expect to see a few posts about fermenting food on here eventually.
It is my goal to open a small brewery, 5 – 10 bbl system, someplace in the United States. A small brewery attached to a farm where I can grow some hops or grain and relax with my little family and provide interesting and high quality beer to the masses…that is off in the future.
Here goes everything.
Matt
“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” — Humphrey Bogart
Ph.D. in Beer by Matthew Humbard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
A Ph.D. in Beer - A Study of Beer and Fermentation Science 
I added your blog to my Beer Blogs Directory. I recently bottled an imperial rye saison. I’ll be opening my first bottles of it tonight at my local homebrew club’s meeting to test if it’s carbonated. Cheers!
Thanks! I have a rye saison in the fermenter right now. Write up in 3ish weeks probably. Going to be a few rye beers coming up. I would love to hear your opinions about brewing with rye.
we can chat via phone or Skype sometimes if you’d like. I’ve brewed a few beers with rye recently. my email is in my blog’s about page.
Hello Matt. It was good to meet you yesterday. Looks like your brewing some pretty interesting beers, and I’m looking forward to reading those other yeast posts you were telling me about. Cheers!
My team recently stumbled across the great work you are doing and we thought you were a perfect fit for a an article we were working on called, 24 Great Blogs Homebrewers Should Follow.
It was just published here: http://www.garagecabinets.com/garagetalk/24-great-blogs-homebrewers-should-follow
Take a look and let me know if you have any questions or clarifications.
Also, we’d love if you’d consider sharing the article on your website or social media channels.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks! I noticed some traffic from you blog to my blog. I tweeted the article out and posted on various FB pages.
Matt,
I’m very interested in your beer that used Kluyveromyces. Do you have any results to share yet? I was just reading about this beer – http://www.sheltonbrothers.com/beers/guineu-no-sucks/ and would really like to try the yeast. I have quite a few strains that I could trade if you are interested. Email at Jeffrey.E.Crane at gmail.com if you are interested in setting something up.
Thanks,
Jeff
I had to restart that beer due to a problem I had with the fermentation. Hopefully have something in December, we can trade yeasts for sure though. I’ll shoot you an email later.
Sounds great Matt. And really like what you are doing with the site. And if you are ever out in San Diego let me know and I’ll show you around Council Brewing.
Love your blog. Been following for various while now. It doesn’t hurt that we seem to have similar tastes in beer. Wondering if you could help identify a pellicle?
I’ve been enjoying your blog. I have a PhD in experimental psychology and I also like to take a scientific approach to brewing and related issues. My primary interest is to find ways that modern science validates practices during the Middle Ages. I look forward to more of your posts.
Dear Matt, I am a home brewer in Taiwan and I admire what you are doing for brewing. I also work as a RA in a biolab. I am really interested in trying some sour recipes. However, WY and WL do not ship small packages of those strains to tanwan’s individual customers. Is that possible to get some of the brett and lacto strains from you? Please email me at mcl234 at gmail if you are welling to help me out here.I appreciate if I can hear anything from you. Thank you so much.