S1 Episode 6: The Brewery Lab

Breweries have a lab? For science? You bet. And we got to chat with Zach Bodah, our Quality Manager, and Hannah Johnson, our Quality Specialist, about what it's like to work in the lab here at Allagash. Stuff like, what do we focus on in our lab? How does it help us make sure beer tastes fresher, longer? And what the heck is a zahm? You’ll find answers to all that and more.

Transcript

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Brett Willis 0:00

This is for Maine with love an Allagash brewing podcast, where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine and things that generally make us happy. Uh , I'm Brett, I work in marketing here at Allagash and I am very lucky to have two people from our lab. Uh , joining me, I have Zach boa , our quality manager and Hannah Johnson , a quality specialist here at Allagash. Uh , you'll get to hear about what goes on in the brewery lab, all the various ways we make sure our beers are tasting, you know, fresh and delicious. Uh, what the heck we mean by bottle conditioning or can conditioning for that matter and how we keep our yeast happy and healthy among many other things. Uh, so basically if you're looking to learn about what goes on at a brewery lab, you have come to the right auditory place.

Hannah Johnson 0:53

Thanks for having us.

Zach Bodah 0:54

Yeah, this is , this is exciting, Brett. Thanks for having us .

Brett Willis 0:57

Uh , so today the goal is we're gonna talk about , uh , the lab here at Allagash . So the fact that there is a lab in a brewery , uh , what that lab does and what it's like to work in a lab where the primary goal is tasty, tasty beer, among many other things. But before we get into that , uh , I wanted to start by asking a question. So , uh , I'm gonna start with Hannah what's , uh , something that's been , uh , exciting for you recently outside of brewing. What have you been excited about?

Hannah Johnson 1:25

Oh , um, definitely the warm weather that's making its way here. I'm definitely ready for some sunshine and some , uh, Portland adventures. We , uh, I feel pretty grateful that I live in a city like Portland. Um, so , uh, I guess I'd say I'm really excited about all the awesome food and drink that is constantly going on. Yeah. Um, yeah , we, we just have like endless opportunities in Portland to , uh, eat some good food and drink some good beer. And I'd say that's probably what I'm the most excited about.

Brett Willis 2:01

Love it. Awesome. Zach , same , same question for you. What have you been excited about?

Zach Bodah 2:07

Oh yeah, there's really, there's a lot to be excited about. It's hard to boil it down just to , to one thing, Brett , uh , I'm really excited that some restrictions are loosening up and that we can get some traveling , uh , with the family yeah . Over the course of this year. So I have a couple trips planned and I'm pretty excited about,

Brett Willis 2:26

Ooh , any particular place? One that's exciting. Yeah.

Zach Bodah 2:31

Yeah. Going , uh , to Jamaica with my wife and some friends should be fun and , uh , taking the I'm finally taking sabbatical that I should have taken in 2019. We're we're heading out to Idaho, Wyoming, and we're gonna have some fun out there with a fam.

Brett Willis 2:48

That's awesome.

Zach Bodah 2:50

Yeah .

Brett Willis 2:50

Amazing. Well, thank you. Cool. All right . So I'm gonna kind of toss this up to both of you , uh , and kind of, you can choose who answers it. But I think the, the, the high level question is sort of what is the purpose of a brewery lab?

Zach Bodah 3:05

Cool. I'll, I'll take that one. Just I've answered this question many times. So yeah, the purpose of a brewery lab, it's going to be pretty different, but you know, ultimately we are simply here to make sure that the consumers receive the product as, as we intend them to have it. There's not gonna be blemished beer. There's not gonna be , uh , flawed beer when they get it at the store or they have it on draft at their favorite pub or anything. We're here to make sure that it's , it's all quality focused. We want to make sure the beer so the most quality and it stays that way, even out after it leaves the brewery.

Brett Willis 3:54

I don't even know that's. I mean, that is a very good succinct way , uh , to say that, but I feel like I don't even know if it's , this is easy to encapsulate, but like, what are the bigger things that you're actually trying to look for that would end up blemishing the beer not to get on the negative immediately, but I guess what are the things that you're trying to avoid?

Zach Bodah 4:14

Oh yeah. I got a little pyramid for you. So number, number one would be top of the pyramid of course, is consumer safety. You know, it's one thing. If, if a consumer has a spoiled beer, that's a bummer and man, don't, we look bad and, and they're never gonna buy our beer again. Right. But if, if we provide them with a package that's not safe , um, if it's an over pressurized bottle or can, or if they're , you know, if our keg machine, if our kegger didn't work properly and there's chemical in the keg, there's a number of things that can go wrong and harm , uh , consumers. So that's that's first and foremost. Um, and two definitely is superior quality, right? We want them to have the best experience possible. They know that we provide a premium level of quality. We have to do that time and time again. So that's when it comes down to , um, one sensory, but to the microbiology program and making sure that the only organisms in our beer are the ones that we want to be in there and not ones that can potentially spoil the beer down the line. Um, and thirdly, it , you know, the bottom of that pyramid would be consistency. We gotta do that time and, and time we can . So that's where analytical chemistry comes in and I'm sure we'll get into more of some of this, but those are the different levels. It's consumer safety, it's premium product and consistency. That's how we look at it.

Brett Willis 5:47

That's great. So I guess kind of to get more specific about it, like Hannah, what would you say would be some like day to day things that you're doing in the lab?

Hannah Johnson 5:57

We bottle condition our beer. So it's basically the beer is going through a second fermentation within the packaged vessel. So a lot of my day to day is making sure that the beer is re fermenting, that it's coming up to the proper carbonation that it's getting through all of those res those sugars that we purposely dosed into that beer and that it's ready for sensory, that beer then gets tasted on panel by all of our tasters here at the brewery. And if it passes, then we're good to go. Other than that, I help out a lot with our micro program . So that's , um , sampling and analyzing beard to make sure, as Zach said, nothing is growing in there. That should not be, that's basically just confirming that the brewers are doing a really good job cleaning. And then another part of my job is kind of the consistency component. So testing our beer, basically every batch for color and IBUs to make sure that we're brewing consistently and we're getting the same product every single time. So every time you open a white it's the same as the last time you opened it, <laugh> ,

Brett Willis 7:09

There are a couple things in there that I kind , I feel like I want to like, just touch back on. So like, when we say sensory panelists, that's people at the brewery who are both looking at and tasting the beers. So could you talk just a little bit more about like, what, what that entails not to get into the entire sensory program? Cause that's like an entire different podcast, so don't feel like you have to encapsulate all of it, but I feel like that's just a fun one to , to , to touch upon.

Hannah Johnson 7:35

Yeah. So here at Alagash we have an entire sensory program, so , um, we've got Karl, our sensory manager and , um , Matthew Davis, who does a lot of work with Karl and they lead true to type panels daily , uh , where we put every single beer that we package onto panels. So , um, our tasters here at the brewery, which is basically all of us, anyone from the brewers to the people who work in the office, we're all trained to taste our beer. So we're basically looking for any red flag flaws. We tasting each of our brands and making sure that they taste as they should, because each time they, you know, someone opens one of our beers. We're hoping that it's the same flavor every single time. And there's certain off flavors and flavor attributes that are undesirable in beers. Um, even things that are, you know, naturally produced during fermentation. Um, you know, like , uh, it could give us an indicator that the beer hasn't been fermented fully , um, yeah. All kinds of different things we're looking for . Uh, and , uh, yeah. Zach , do you wanna add anything? Oh,

Brett Willis 8:52

You nailed it. You nailed it. <laugh> definitely nailed it. I feel like one of the , one of the things that's kind of was interesting to me to learn as I went up in my own journey through the tasting program is like part of that, that tasting panel is actually kind of a test for you as a taster , uh , and not to get too far into it , but like Karl's a trickster. He does, he does all sorts of tricky dosing things with different things because you can actually have off flavors, intentionally put in a beer. And so I always thought that was interesting when, you know, we will intentionally make a beer taste different to make sure our tasters are actually picking up on it. Um, alongside other beers that tastes totally normal and it's , uh , really hard.

Hannah Johnson 9:31

Yeah. Karl definitely keeps us on our toes. Uh, his, my favorite trick he does is when he'll put a different brand on panel , uh , and see if we can pick up that it's a different fear than what he is saying, right ? Yeah . Um ,

Brett Willis 9:45

It's not easy.

Hannah Johnson 9:46

He's always, you know, like mixing it up and making sure that we're all paying attention and tasting properly and able to pick out those flavor attributes that shouldn't be there. Um, and you make a good point, Brett, because a lot of it is like training, you know, like even when we're doing true to type , uh, he'll, he'll throw those spikes in there and, you know, test our knowledge and make sure we're picking up on 'em totally.

Brett Willis 10:14

Just to go back a little bit, another term you put out there and I think you kind of defined it, but I just wanna make sure we really did is SRM. So can you just talk about SRM and how that works for like a beer, like white?

Hannah Johnson 10:27

Sure. Yeah. Um, we basically have a range where we want our color to be or SRM to be. Uh , we call them the, a max and minimum , when I'm doing my audit, that's, that's the range. Uh , and , uh, basically we're just making sure our malt that's coming in is up to our standards. Um, you know, like we're, we're making sure the brewing process is also, you know, there's nothing like wonky going on in the brewing process, which there really, you know, there are certain things that can happen during the hot side that can affect our color. We're also just, you know, making sure that our contract is being, how would you word it, Zach ? Like our, our malt is up to spec. Um, yeah,

Zach Bodah 11:15

Our , our suppliers account , we're holding them accountable to the specifications.

Hannah Johnson 11:20

That's awesome. Um, yeah, so like, if, if we do have a , like a kind of a wack lot of malt, we can make adjustments to the brew house to , um, account for it.

Zach Bodah 11:32

It really is. It's especially important, Brett for Allagash white , cuz it's such a pale beer in any even small increase in color can really affect the overall beer color. If, if we go up, you know, 0.5 SRM , um , doesn't seem like a lot, but that's, we could visually see that when we have that on sensory panel. Wow. Um, and it can look like stop looking like Allagash white and become Allagash orange very quickly. <laugh> so we're we take the, the color of our malt pretty seriously.

Brett Willis 12:10

Yeah. And I feel like that brings up just an interesting point too, where, you know, you both are in the quality department and I've kind of like, I've learned this as the more I've kind of tried to write about what all of you do , uh , you know, within the brewery. And it's like, you're kind of like the , the , the tip of the spear when it comes to quality. And I guess Zach , could you kind of just talk about our philosophy of quality that goes way beyond our lab?

Zach Bodah 12:34

Yes. Yes. Uh, man, where did it even begin? It's it's such an elemental part of our structure here. Um, we could really talk about it forever, but I I'll just start with, with Rob. Um, since Rob opened the company in 1995, you know, quality was a huge priority for him at that point. And if anything, it's only grown over time. He is so dedicated , um, to making Allagash white , to making all the Allagash beer , um , really investing in quality. So from there, yeah, it doesn't quality is not just the lab. Um, it's throughout the entire brewery, we do have a slogan that says, you know, quality is, is everyone here? Mm-hmm , <affirmative> at Allagash , it's so true. Um, you know, we select raw materials, those raw materials enter the warehouse. We have warehouse specialists digging into those raw materials to make sure that they're up to spec for and say, we're getting grain in they're checking moisture. They're checking to make sure that the, the oats are actually oats it's, it's not Rye berries um , they're , you know , we need to look at hop lots as they're coming in. That is not the lab studio . They are , the warehouse team is taking that into account upon arrival. Um, it's going into our system and those are lots that have to be very carefully traced throughout the entire process through , from the warehouse to the brewery as our brewers use it. Um, the numbers that Hannah will go through to, to tie it all together with the data , um, it's all very meaningful in the brew house . Um, same steps. Uh , we we've dialed in SOPs over the years to do things the same every single time, right. There's not one brewer who, who brews this way and another brewer who brewers this way, we're all , we're all brewing the same way. Right. Um,

Brett Willis 14:37

So thinking, I guess more specifically for both of you, I think cuz there are probably a lot of people who would think, well, how do you get a job at a brewery? Like how do you, how do you come into that position? So I I'd just be interested for , uh , I mean both, both of you to tell me, just kind of like how, how did you find yourself at Allagash

Hannah Johnson 14:55

Sure. <laugh> well, I'm laughing because you could probably ask one of us because we had a very similar path <laugh> <laugh> true . That's amazing. Yeah . Uh , so , uh, I, I kind of like, well, I don't wanna say this because I'm obviously super passionate about beer, but like I kind of , wasn't seeking out beer. It kind of fell into my lap in a way. Um, I went to school for environmental conservation and um, I focused in biology conservation and um, I worked in a lot of water quality labs. Um, one of which Zach also worked in at U N H uh, we both worked for the lake slay monitoring program. Um, and Zach was at your first lab job.

Zach Bodah 15:42

That was my first lab job. Yeah.

Hannah Johnson 15:44

That was also my first lab jobs . So , um, <laugh> uh , from there, I, I did a couple more internships, both focused and um, freshwater biology. Uh, and I was just at a point in my life that I wanted something more permanent. Um, I've always been super into science, so I wanted, I knew I wanted to stay in that field. So I actually had a ton of , uh , friends who were in sales, in the brewing industry. So , uh, they basically convinced me to apply to a brewery to work in the lab because they were like, oh, it's essentially the same thing you're doing now. Which one would think because beer is like, what 90% water? Um, we don't do any water quality in the lab basically. I mean, we're looking a little bit at our , uh , the different water that we use , uh, for micro counts just to make sure our water's looking good and clean, but , um, just in general that water quality experience , uh, did help me out a lot when it did come to working in a brewery. Uh, so I ended up taking a job as a keg cleaner at Smuttynose brewing company in New Hampshire. And , uh, basically weaseled my way into the lab . I just wouldn't leave the tech , the quality manager at Smuttynose alone until she let me start , um , testing some of the beer. Uh , and from there I just worked part-time at QC, but at the same time, I , um, I was trained to sell her and brew and uh, yeah, so , um, my first job at Smuttynose brewing company, I just absolutely fell in love with beer. I fell in love with the industry and the community. Um, and it was pretty awesome because I could also do some, you know, science as well. Um, yeah. And I would say , uh, I , I noticed that there was a fulltime job or, I mean, I, I actively looked <laugh> , there was a , uh , full time job at Allagash , um, that was posted. So I obviously applied and the other amazing thing about , um, coming to work here is I'm able to kind of utilize my , um, degree in some way, because we're so focused on our sustainability efforts. So , um, I really lucked out with where I ended up because I feel like I'm using a little bit of that environmental , um, mindset , uh , but I'm also doing what I love , um, which is science every day and drinking beer <laugh>.

Brett Willis 18:22

Is that kind of what you did, Zach? It sounds like they're probably a few differences maybe .

Zach Bodah 18:25

Yeah, that's pretty similar. Just, just go back earlier decade probably. But I was at , uh , I was at the same college university of New Hampshire and , uh , studying the sciences and I did a lot of freshwater biology as well and got to spend the summer, you know, out on canoes sampling all the lakes of New Hampshire and taking that water back to the lab and running a bunch of wet chemistry on it. It was the best. So you get to be outside and you get to do science. Can't ask for more than that. So that's where the , the love of science really stepped in. Um, but then you go to graduate and you know, there's not really a lot of jobs out there where you jump in a canoe and collect water samples. So yeah. So you try to figure out what you're gonna do with your life. I went into biotech right outta school and , um, didn't totally dislike it, but I wasn't very passionate about it. And I wanted to do something that I would look forward to do every day . And I was super interested in brewing. My dad was a home brewer when I was growing up and I had plenty of memories of capping bottles with him. Um , so, you know, as I was going through college and getting a science degree, I remember that he used to home brew and I was like, dad, we should home brew again. Like I know science, man, let let's figure this out. So I got into it with him and then , uh , realized maybe that's a career opportunity. And you know, this is years and years ago and there wasn't as many breweries by far and the drops were pretty few, but I was lucky enough to get an internship at the Portsmouth brewery , uh , in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And at the time Todd Mott is he is the godfather of new England brewing. Um , he was, he was the lead brewer there and I got to learn brewing through him. Um, and then we , we knocked on the door at Allagash for a long time to get some full-time work. And eventually it worked out. And when I was at Allagash, gosh , this was probably 2009. Um, we have been in this building maybe for a year at that point, but you know, there's, there's maybe 10 people in production and everyone's brewing and cellar and packaging and building orders. And it's , uh , you know, it's very different than it is now. Um, but it was a ton of fun. And man, I couldn't imagine doing anything more fun and enjoying anything more and to, you know, over the course of the past decade or a dozen years, it's, it's only gotten better, which is it's unimaginable. So , uh , you've got to grow a lot with

Brett Willis 21:10

The company. Yeah. I mean, kind of on that point too, like I guess what would you say are the biggest differences, like in what you're doing from the early days to now? I'm sure there are pretty big difference. I mean, both big and small differences.

Zach Bodah 21:25

Um, probably I was gonna say shooting from the hip , but there's still some shooting from the hip <laugh>. Um, but organizational , uh , organization wide , I think we're just, we're more prepared. Um, more organized, more structured in , in terms of, you know, our operating procedures. I don't want , I'd say rigid too, but it's not rigid cuz we do keep pretty loose here at the same time. I guess we've maintained that balance of, you know , it's, it's a pleasure to work here. It's a pleasure to be around the employees. What we're doing is, is pretty fun and , and , and that hasn't changed at all. It's just, maybe it's just the scale and the technology at our fingertips

Brett Willis 22:14

For some reason, talking about like you for starting and stuff. It reminded me of a story actually that , uh, I just remember when I first started, I, I think , uh , one of our sales people , Suzy gave like a , did like a beer test. She's like, see your knowledge on beer. And I went thinking like, oh, this is gonna be fun. Like, you know, we'll talk about beer stuff. And I got like a four out of like 30. It was awesome . And they gave , she went around being like, and everyone did. Okay. Like, no, I don't think anyone was terribly confident about it. And Zach , you came out with like a 29 or something. It was like absurd. That's awesome. <laugh> it was great. It was great. It was talking about like Burton on Trent and stuff. And I was like, I don't know what that is . It's yeah. Anyway, so kudos to you on your beer knowledge.

Zach Bodah 22:58

Um, thank you, B rett.

Brett Willis 22:58

Yes. So I there's some other things I think we can talk about for our lab , but there one that I actually was really interested to hear both of your take on was if you were talking to a smaller brewery, what sort of fundamental quality checks would you , uh , encourage them to do?

Zach Bodah 23:15

Hannah ? You want to take the lead on this?

Hannah Johnson 23:18

<laugh> uh, sure. Um, I would definitely say it's really important to know your product like inside and out. So , um, I would say, you know, sensory just , uh , sitting down and having beer with your coworkers, I mean, that's pretty easy , uh , just, you know, shoot the and drink some beer and get to know your brands. Um, but also just, you know, taking note on like different things like fermentation, just know how your yeast, you know, like ferment and what's normal, what's not normal basically like take all the notes that you can , um, and look at them daily. Uh , and you know, like you can do quality in a lot of ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be like a huge lab. I think another really important part is just paying attention to, you know , um, like carbonation in your cans. That's also another really easy one. You can get a zahm, your like finished product, keep an eye on it, make sure everything's going right in there and definitely do some micro. Um, you don't need a ton of, you know, expensive, crazy equipment to be able to do some quick checks on , um, different parts of the brewing process. I can't understate how important it is to pay attention to quality. Obviously we all live that life here at Allagash. Like it's, it's really at the front of our minds, all of us , uh, when we were talking about , um, where Zach was talking about the warehouse and production , um, I kind of like to say, we're all quality specialists here at Alagash like, even if you're working in the offices, like you're helping us taste our beer every single day and making sure it's ready for the market. Um, but yeah, like I said, for the smaller breweries out there, there's a lot of different ways to, to do quality , um, without having to put in a ton of finances. Um, Zach ,

Zach Bodah 25:17

You know, sensory, you know, even if you don't have a sophisticated sensory program, if you have, you're tasting your beer in a controlled environment day after day, even if you can't name 10 esters and phenols and uh, 10, 10 off flavors, you , you still get a really good idea of what that branch should be so long as you're chasing it every day . And if something's different , um , you'll you'll know right away. So that's, you know, at that level, sensory is free. Um, and you can do it other than that, I would say, you know, just having some expectations or specifications for your brands, right? So no matter what it is, the colored, you know, we have a range of acceptable color. We want it to be within these limits. Um , even if that color is on a rating system using your own eyes, right? So you don't have a , a spec or a spectometer to , to measure color. You can still look at it day after day and kind of read it. Yeah, CO2 I agree is very important. Um, and mostly in terms of stability, one really cheap thing you can do is you can archive each packaging run , um, and we'll go back to consumer safety, right? Like that's should be all of our biggest concerns. And , um, a huge risk in beer is, is hyper attenuation in a can. So Hannah was saying, we monitor , uh , the CO2 production in cans, very, very tightly, right? She's looking at that every day for every beer that we package over time, 1, 2, 3 weeks, six weeks, 12 weeks, 24 weeks. We not only want that beer to reach a certain CO2. We don't want it to go above a certain CO2 either. So it does become over pressurized and possibly dangerous to someone. Um, even if you don't have , uh , so there's an instrument Hannah referred to briefly as a zahm it's, it's a Zahm and Nagle is the name of the company and the industry there just refer to as zahms. Um , but essentially you, you can pierce a, can give it a shake and the instrument will tell you both the temperature and the pressure inside the vessel, based on those two units, we can, we can tell the CO2 volumes in . So, you know, even if you don't have a zahm, you can age your beer and crack one open at certain time intervals and make sure that, or even if you , if you're canning, you can grab all of the can. And if that sucker is getting tight, you know, that might tell you something, but even better, if you, you can either pop it open and see if it's over carbonated or actually put it in an instrument and measure CO2 , um , that's, that's basic stuff, but super, super helpful.

Hannah Johnson 28:28

Yeah. And I , I feel like just to add on to that , um, you know, like just some more innovative ways is , um, you can like buy plates that are already poured and that sort of thing, and, and be able to plate all of your beer to look for like the certain organisms that we don't want in our , uh , product, you know, like you don't have to like do it all here. Sorry. I'm not saying that's super great <laugh> but what I'm trying to get at is like, there are easy ways to do micro , um, without having like a full blown micro program . Like, you don't need an autoclave, you don't need all the like special, expensive equipment. Like I I'll never forget. My sister asked me to come in and teach her third grade kids about the water cycle. And I was like using words, like a Vapo transpiration. And like, <laugh> like all kinds of like scientific terms. And they were all just like looking at me, like I almost cried...

Zach Bodah 29:30

<laugh>

Hannah Johnson 29:30

But luckily they didn't cry . No, they didn't. It was just you, they were like super pumped, even though they had no idea what I was talking about. I said I was a field technician and they were like, what's that <laugh>

Brett Willis 29:42

It just made me think too a little bit with like, you know, we've been talking about how, like, you know, the whole brewery is quality to a certain extent. And I think like, it, it transfers over even into marketing, you know, beyond the fact that we, we , uh , taste the beers like Zach . So Zach and Jason are brew. Master are actually CC'd on every single quality response we get, which still honestly blows my mind that you guys are like, yeah, put CC me on that because I think they're like, it could go other places, but like, so I'm actually, CC'd on those as well. And it's just interesting to see, you know, there's a lot of care. Like we , we care about when people say I had this experience with that beer, a lot of the quality submissions we get through our website are about, you know, how the beer tastes or how it's perceived. And so a lot of that is, is , um , you know , uh , subjective. And so even the ones that we think are pretty subjective of like, oh, perhaps this person just hasn't had this in a while and they forgot how it taste or , oh , perhaps like, you know, whatever it might be. We're still looking into a lot of those batches to make sure double check, oh, there's not, there's definitely not anything that's, you know, biologically organically wrong with this, with this beer. So what do you, what's next for the lab? What's, what's the future of the Allagash lab?

Zach Bodah 30:55

Even over the past few years, the focus of the lab has really kind of SPR in a number of different directions throughout the brewery. Um , two of the , the big ones off the top of my head being, you know, we , we , we talked a lot about lab work today and we talked a lot about quality control. Really. We didn't talk a lot about , we touched on quality assurance and it's important to note that there, there is a distinction between quality assurance and quality control. Um , we're the , the classic brewery lab, very quality control focused, right, where we're taking that beer after it's packaged and we're, we're measuring it in different ways. It's reactive, right? We wanna make sure that that beer ended up the way we wanted it to . So where quality control is reactive and a reactive process, quality assurance was preventative. Insurance is preventative. Um, we're making sure that things don't go awry in the first place. Um, so we're , we have a much larger focus on quality assurance and we also have more of a focus on data management. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, you know, the , the hop lots that come in from the warehouse or from the supplier to the warehouse, to the brewery , um , we also rely on those lots, that's a quality department. Um, and that's just one piece of data. There are so many pieces of data that go into every raw material, every measurement throughout the brewhouse brewing process, the selling process , uh , the packaging process, we, you know, across the brewery, there are many different consumers of that data and we need that, that data to be the same for everyone. We're all working with that same data source, right? Like it's this one truth. Um , and there's been a lot of momentum and centralizing , uh , the quality data for us to use in the laboratory and across the brewery.

Brett Willis 33:01

That's great. Well, thank you both for taking the time. It was so good. Sorry .

Zach Bodah 33:07

I was good . I drifted , um , sorry,

Brett Willis 33:10

Not at all.

Zach Bodah 33:11

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, Hannah, thanks for joining too. And thanks for thanks for including the lab. That's awesome. And I can't wait to start hearing these roll up .

Brett Willis 33:21

So This has been an Allagash Brewing production. If you have anything that you want to ask us, anything that you're interested in hearing us talk about, please let us know at podcast@allagash .com .