A few months back a friend of mine, Mike (you may know him as the mad fermentationist), asked if I wanted to assist him in writing an article for Brew Your Own magazine (BYO) about homebrewing with Lactobacillus (here is the table of contents for that issue). After going back and forth a few times, we … Continue reading Beer Microbiology – Lactobacillus pH experiment
Category: Science
In the ever increasing trend to treat beer more like wine, there are now dozens of suggestions online for beer / food pairings. There are some serious and useful (don't get me wrong, I like the food pairing stuff) graphics from places like craftbeer.com to help with this. As far as I can tell, the way to … Continue reading Beer Pedantry #3: Beer Flavor Pairings (science based rant)
Happy Spring everyone, it is finally spring and the long winter is over. Of course on the first day of spring here in D.C. we got some snow. Go figure. I've had a lot going on lately with home life and work life and sort of let this blog go to seed for more than … Continue reading Physiology of Flavors in Beer – Lactobacillus Species
I am a microbiologist by trade, I have a Ph.D. and have been brewing for over 10 years at this point. A large portion of this blog is dedicated to my own homebrew efforts but sprinkled throughout are articles like this one, where I isolate a biological or chemical aspect of the beer and explain … Continue reading Beer Microbiology – What is a pellicle?
As a working scientist, I really want to get deep into the science of brewing, especially the microbiology of brewing. Throughout the life of this blog, who knows how long that will be, I want to sprinkle in articles with high resolution details about the organisms that we, as brewers, work with on a daily … Continue reading Physiology of Flavors in Beer – Saccharomyces Species
I thought I would throw in a quick post about something I've been working on that I've decided to add to this blog. There are a few hundred people that seem to look at this blog and follow it, so before I made a change I thought I would warn people. This blog serves a … Continue reading Introduction to Food Fermentation
It comes up in my blog from time to time but I am a scientist. I have a Ph.D. in molecular biology and currently work at a national lab outside of Washington D.C. I don't do A LOT of chemistry with my beer...I measure gravities and pH sometimes....but I'd like to do more analysis. Part … Continue reading Beer Chemistry #1: Measuring IBUs in Beer
A Ph.D. in Beer - A Study of Beer and Fermentation Science 