Ep 43 - The Real Dangers of Non-Alcoholic Beer - Dr Grzegorz Rachon - CO HOST - Sean Knight Siren

Are Non Alcoholic Beers Safe?

With demand for no and low alcohol beer BOOMING, more and more breweries are brewing their own.

But when you remove alcohol, you remove one of the strongest safety mechanisms in beer.

And with the rise of unfiltered, unpasteurised NA beers hitting shelves, this episode asks a simple but essential question:

How do you make NA beer safe?

To help answer it, I’m joined by Dr Greg Rachon and co host and brewing legend, Sean Knight - Siren Craft Brew. 

We dig into the risks, the latest microbiological research and the practical steps brewers need to know.

What we cover:

- Why alcohol has been silently keeping beer safe for centuries
- What happens when you take it away
- The key safety mechanisms left behind for NA products
- New research on pathogens and spoilage microorganisms in NA beer
- The role of carbonation, packaging and preservatives
- Why beer line hygiene matters more than ever

This episode features some of the most up to date research on NA beer safety from Dr Greg Rachon, alongside industry insight from Sean Knight.

Huge thanks to Lallemand for supporting the show and for their ongoing work with the LoNa yeast strain.

Connor Bartlett - The Growth of Pathogens and Beer Spoilage Organisms in No and Low Alcohol Beers and Strategies to Prevent Their Growth (https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/74590/)

Preservative Dosing Limit Document - ablease@lallemand.com

Alix Blease - Lallemand - ablease@lallemand.com
Andy Patterson - Lallemand - apaterson@lallemand.com

Chris Lewington - 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lewington/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/chris__brewington/

Dr Grzeorgz Rachon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/grachon/)

Chapters 

00:00 Welcome to the Modern Brewer Podcast
00:25 Introducing Co-Host Sean Knight
02:22 Upcoming UK Brewing Events
03:52 Revolutionising Non-Alcoholic Beer with Lallemand's LoNA Yeast
05:41 Discussion on NA Beer Safety with Sean Knight
09:45 Introducing Dr. Grzegorz Rachon
10:31 Understanding Pathogens in Non-Alcoholic Beer
12:04 Research on Pathogen Growth in NA Beer
20:30 The Role of Carbonation in Pathogen Suppression
28:20 Challenges in Draft Beer Hygiene
39:57 Preservatives and Pasteurisation in NA Beer
47:27 Cold Alternatives to Pasteurisation
54:14 Challenges in Detecting Beer Spoilage Microorganisms
01:05:07 Research on Beer Line Cleaning and Flash Pasteurisation
01:12:02 Sean's Concluding Thoughts on Beer Safety and Research

Transcript

0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Modern Brewer podcast with me, your co-host, Chris Lowington. That's right, my friends. Today I will have a co-host with me. It's actually gonna be the legendary Sean Knight head brewer of one of UK's craft beer icons. Siren. We're gonna be talking about the dangers of NA beer and if they can genuinely make consumers ill. Often, the rumor mill in craft brew runs a bit out of control, especially when involves a new or poorly researched aspect of the craft beer world. You know, the classic case of being an event or someone's brewery and a brewer says, well, have you thought about this? Did you know that doing this causes that? And because of the complexity of beer production, it requires very specific knowledge to disprove it. You end up just kind of going along with it Or just sharing that knowledge and that's how this ends up being this big rumor mill. And one of the major ones has definitely been the safety to consumers around a BII think this is exactly where we're at. I hear so many conflicting reports, so many people saying to do one thing or the other, can a B genuinely cause illness to consumers? Should it always be pasteurized? The world of brewing really has been turned upside down by non-alcoholic beer. It's changed the very landscape that I think that we're brewing in. It's this episode. Just want to bring more answers than problems around non-alcoholic beer. I've read a bunch of research prior to this, and one name popped up relentlessly. Dr. Rachon Rashon. I then attended a talk at the CIBD sustainability event where he and another amazing authority on NABO, Connor Bartlett we're talking about re-imagining PE ranges in pasteurization. So I reached out and managed to get some time. Before we dive into that, just a quick note on a UK major brewing event that's coming up, the Brewer's Congress, it's up on the 30th of September to the 1st of October, which is actually just around the corner. Can you believe it's one of the most popular UK brewing events and one I love dearly? I am down to be there. I want to do some material on the podcast as well, I have this idea to get as many brewers as possible to share their biggest mistake in a brewery. I want to then compile them and release a fun episode around Christmas where I go through them all. The rules will be quite simple. No health and safety mistakes, and it has to be your own. All will be discussed anonymously, obviously, as it's just a bit of fun. but I, you know, whenever I'm with brewers, my, some of my favorite conversations about some of the mistakes that we've made in breweries and how silly they really were on reflection. I'm also down to talk at the Brewers Congress as well. But the only curve ball is I'm helping Brew Star and Volt City Commission their new brewery, and the date I am on site is still TBC. So if you see me there, ask me how it went. If you don't, you know where I am and then ask me later. Finally, before I bring in my first ever co-host. A word about a yeast strain that had changed my world when making na beers. Have you ever tried a wordy non-alcoholic beer? Of course you have. With the common arrested fermentation method. Worthy outer hides are so common in non-alcoholic beer. What changed the NA game was the introduction of Lallemand's loner yeast. This yeast is Maltose and Malt-trios trios. Negative sulfur, negative phenol off flavor, negative and crucially worty, alderhyde reducing. Honestly, after it launched, it instantly elevated the quality of the NA beers around the uk. Lallemand's Loner yeast is used in just about every respected NA beer in the country, and often removes the need to de alkalize. Say goodbye to wordy sulfur free, or phenolic na beer, simplifying the minefield that is NA recipe development, and allowing you the brewer. To focus more on other critical steps. I managed the production of an NA brand here in the uk and I switched all of our recipes to loner. It's just a no brainer. Furthermore, Alex and Andy offer the best in class support, both former guests on the podcast, their knowledge, technical advice, and troubleshooting are next to none. If you are interested in learning more about loaner yeast and how it can save you time, effort, and prevent you from making bad enables. Please get in contact with Alex or Andy directly. Both their contacts are in the show notes and can answer any questions that you may have. Okay, here we go with a modern brewer. First, me and Sean have been discussing NA beer safety between ourselves for a while, and I kind of thought, why don't we just have our conversations on this podcast? It's no secret that I've actually not been actively running a brewery myself for a couple of years now, So to keep the questions fresh and relevant to a topic I didn't have to tackle myself and bring in Sean to help. So, welcome to the show, the Modern Brewer podcast, first ever co-host Sean Knight. Hey Chris, how you doing? Good to be here. Yeah, man, super excited. it's, we've been talking about na beer and like, sort of the quality of na beer and the safety around na beer, like behind closed doors between each other for quite a while now. So I'm actually really stoked that we can have this conversation basically more publicly and with an actual expert. Yeah, it's gonna be really good. Yeah, there's so much information around na beers, maybe misinformation around na beers. I think it's gonna be really cool to, to clear it up. we talked about it as well, right? I think. like non-alcoholic beer production has been one of the biggest shifts in craft brewing that I can remember. it affects like brewhouse, fermentation, hopping, and like seemingly all the way to like how it's dispensed and the safety to the consumer. you guys make an excellent na beer with the sound wave North Point five, like what's your experience been with Na Bs so far? Yeah, it's, I used to say this three, four years ago, I was not interested in NABN. we decided we want to go ahead with one. And when I started looking at it, it was just like the new challenge to bring to the craft beer scene and, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna do it safely and how are we gonna make it taste good? Was like one of the big, big things. And so it was a real interesting project and almost breaking down the knowledge that we previously had on brewing and kind of. processes and stuff to achieve great flavored beer and stable beer and safe beer to drink as a consumer. So yeah, great challenge and really, still learning as we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing, right? Still learning. Still learning as we go. I mean, I help a little bit with an A brand just kind of on recipe and a bit of production as well, and I found it. very challenging as well. I guess from your point of view as well, have you been asked a lot more to make na beers, to put them in different places? We, yeah, it's definitely growing. and the time between each batches. Shortening quite rapidly. I wouldn't say it's anywhere near our, like, one of our leading products at the moment, but it's probably one of the fastest growing, export is looking for it, which is something we are not really doing at the moment because of, managing the safety of it. and just kind of learning about that still. So there's a market there that definitely wants some, and then we, yeah, we, we limit draft to, customers that we know. We've got some, some things that we talk to them about, making sure that they are, are kind of sticking to protocols that we say full, full dispense. so yeah, it's, it's still a challenge. I think we get requests for lots of smaller, batches of it, which we, which struggle to be able to produce. So there's interest at the kind of white label for sure. Mm. but normally too small for us to produce at the moment. And every one of those people who want white label who are coming out are asking these ques, these type of questions around the safety. And, I think we probably have a responsibility as an industry to make sure that what we're doing is safe. Yeah. and that's why I'm really excited. And, you know, when we were first talking about it, Sean, I was researching online and, you know, finding the papers and this, one name kept coming up, which was, Dr. Jago and I, I, I was really just, and then I saw a presentation with him at the CIBD, sustainability with him and Connor Bartlett. it was fantastic. It was around pasteurization, but I was like. If these guys are elite, I really want to have this conversation, but with them, and so this is where we're at. I am extremely excited to be able to welcome, Dr. Grzegorz to the show. So welcome to the show. thank you very much, Chris, it is great to be here. great to, see you Sean as well. So, yeah, thank you. yeah, it's very good topic, for sure. so yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to this chat. Great. And before I, butcher your, the pronunciation of your name anymore, I know that most people call you Greg. Are we okay to continue with that? yes. Please? Before you make me feel even worse. so, Greg, like I'm really fascinated by your research and everything, but could potentially for the listeners, could you just share your journey into brewing microbiology and how you ended up. Being this expert on this subject. well, my, my background is really food microbiology. So in, 2005, I start working in, car, in Leatherhead food research. when I spent 11 years, being a food microbiologist, looking into the survival of different micrograms, uh, pathogens as well, trying to figure out how to suppress them. so into the more dangerous kind of, you know, situation, in kind of, in, in, in the food. And then after, 11 years, I wanted to do something new. So I found a job in, in, in Camden, BRI, in, in brewing, division. And, yeah, I like challenge, so I, I joined them. So it's been, eight years since I, I joined, Camden, BRI and, I'm leading team of brewing microbiology research. yeah, and it's very exciting. industry because it's constantly things, happening. We've got lots of new things, and especially with non-alcoholic beers and stuff, which for microbiologists is really paradise because, you know, you are exploring constantly new things, you know, and then, and, it's, it's not the end to brewers still making some crazy stuff. So it's, it's really for microbiologists is, is good to be involved and, trying to, trying to help them and, make sure that everything, what we do is, is safe. Cool. how long have you been looking at, pathogens in non-alcoholic beer specifically?'cause the, this, the market has grown really quickly, but it's still fairly new. Yes, I, I think we started, doing this research, I think over five years ago when we started. But we, lots of inquiries to us at the beginning came for how to pasteurize lots of different products. So at the beginning, this was mostly about pasteurization, and then we moved to actually looking for, Hey, hold on, can pathogens, grow in non-alcoholic beer? So when we start to look into the papers at that time, we find out papers from, Australia, from Gar Mans from 2010, 2011, who shown that. Pathogens can grow in non-alcoholic beer within, within, seven days. So for us was, actually kind of, eyeopener. and we try to find out, okay, what, on what situation this, is happening and how we can make sure that this will not be the case. So how we can adjust the beer in terms of, key parameters such as possibly, pH and bitterness or anything else. How we can do it and how I can advise brewers to make sure that they are, on the safe side. yes. Yeah, that's, that's really, that's really interesting. So let's just like maybe get off some of the key terms here. So for the people who might not understand, myself included, I had to definitely had to look this term up to make sure I understood it to its definition. But what are pathogens and can, which pathogens are you testing that can be a danger to people? Hmm. pathogens are micro gangs that can, harm you. They can harm you, by, by different ways. They can colonize your kidneys, for example, and, and grow in there. And, so this is worst case scenario, which you can, have, then problem that you would have, uh, e coli grow in your kidneys. And this e coli would, become resistant to So in the worst case scenario, you could end up with a kidney transplant. Yeah, so it's, it's really serious. another, salmonella is, one that, also is kind of pathogenic microorganism. It can kind of, is, it can be very dangerous because it's very d difficult to read of, this micros from the human. and, you know, if you are generally in pure health, it may affect, you as well. There is lots of other, pathogenic microorganism like Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium botulinum, producing, most deadly toxin node to human. so, but likely in beer. Clostridium doesn't like hop extracts, so we don't have this problem in beer. also, Clostridium botulinum doesn't, like to grow in the low pH so in beer is not the problem. another kind of pathogens that we can consider, is a risky is, batus. It's batus produce, spores. It can survive, pasteurization, produce, toxin as well, but is also again sensitive for, hop extracts, which is, great news for us. So when we are looking into the pathogens in, in beers, we really focus on those that can survive low, pH and environment, I mean low, about four, 4.2. and, they are not affected by the hop extracts. And those are e coli and salmonella are those main pathogenic micrograms that we really concern in the, in the beer because they are also gram-negative. bacteria and hops are not effective on gram-negative, bacteria. with, with hop extracts, are you talking mainly about a certain level of IBUs or are there other compounds in the hops that also inhibit? well, the, the hop extracts, are very, very complex, components. So there, possibly some, components that we haven't kind of, extract. We don't know this yet, but, but, you know, interestingly, you know, we were, in the past, we were using lots of hop extract in the food, as a natural preservative. So we were trying to suppress different microorganism, like pathogenic micrograms using hop extract. So I mentioned this, that, e coli and salmonella is not affected by the hop extract. It could be affected, but you would have to use so much of it, so you would have to elevate. To, to the level of 200, 250 ppms, which you could not do, but you know, it's hop extract could be, as I mentioned, a very good preservative for a gram-positive bacteria like Clostridium botulinum or, or baus. those potentially, product, especially, or cylo baus can spoil, orange juices, for example. And, you know, adding a little bit of hop extract to orange juice that is, citrusy flavor, is, is very, it could be a very good solution, you know, so there are some, situation, but, this, you would have to still be around, maybe 50 IBUs, over 50 IBUs to be, you know, to, to be effective. So, yeah. And that's, I summarized Alpha Acids if I read the research correctly. Is that what we are referring to? well, we, we try to simplify our, research looking for asome, IVA Hmm, because, you know, if we try to explore this, in depth looking for a different extracts, we would never be able to finish this. So in hmm study, we really wanted to see if there is a correlation the pH, and bitterness, and then later carbonation as a kind of disc interaction of this free, factors into the suppressing of microorganism, in, in beer. because we know that, its own, the bitters are not effective on e coli or salmonella. But in this kind of situation, in beer situation, they may be, yeah. Yeah. interesting. So another thing here, Greg, is that. we are talking about pathogens, and their potential growth in na beer. Is it right to assume that these cannot grow in alcoholic beverages and where roughly if it is that line of where it switches from something that can potentially grow to something that's, that's going to, it's not gonna grow in? Yeah. so I mentioned, the, the study of, from Gary Menz from 2011, Mm-hmm. shown that, e coli and salmonella can grow in non-alcoholic beer within a week. Yes. Mm-hmm. we, we said, okay, let's do something similar, but we will, adjust our beer to different bitterness and different pH levels. Try to find out where we have to be to, to suppress those, micros from growing. So when we set up this experiment, in most of the cases, everything, what we inoculated, died. Yes. So we really, we didn't know what, if we're doing something wrong or, or, or, or we, we, we haven't, selected beer correctly. Maybe this beer didn't have enough nutrients, so we tried different things. So we added bit of more nutrients to the beer, just to make sure that those pathogens can, have something to grow. This didn't help. Then we thought that maybe the, those microorganisms haven't been adopted. Well, because, you know, if you grow them in the nice broth and you dump them into the, pH four beer that, does it have, so maybe they will not survive. So we adopted them and this didn't help as well. And then, we look back on this original paper and we find out the way how, this study, original study was done. It was done in, flask. Meyer flask, is a, is a triangle flask that, is It was 250 m So, those guys used a hundred meals of beer poured, poured this flask, and then, so you had, 150 m of head space. Yes. And then they inoculate those, pathogens. So it, this is like you would do a trial in half empty bottle of beer, you know, so we knew that, okay, this beer become decarbonation. There was lots of oxygen there. So, and, and we realized, okay, that that's probably, that was very key, important factor that this is, we didn't work for us. So when we set up our final trial, we did two, extra condition. One, which was, open bottles. So kind of, simulating that there is, beer was decarbonation and the closed bottles. And we find out that, pathogens can grow in, in the bottles, which they were open, decarbonized. but also they were open, they were growing better in higher pH we find out that actually, bitterness didn't impact any, any way of, didn't impact suppressing of, those microorganism. and we did this experiment in 11, IBO 25, IB, and 50 IBUs. so, and carbonation was the main impactful factor, which, and we shown that, if you have beer that is fully carbonated, pH between 3.8 4.2, equal coli and salmonella will die. Yes. Will die or will, survive, but, but you will have very, a great reduction of the numbers. So it would not, it definitely would not grow. If beer is, decarbonation open for let's say a week, it potentially can grow. But, you know, who would have this kind of beer, decarbonation beer, full of oxygen, you know, in the tanks? Nobody. So this is really far from a real, situation. So, yes, we, this kind of, help us, the, the, the, the, the brewing industry, but also critics of the non-alcoholic beer that, hey, this, this beer is not really dangerous, you know, and, and because it's a pH four, the, this pH is, doesn't help those micro organs to, to, to, to grow. They are barely survive on this, this, pH level. And you know, to be honest, most than more, more dangerous beer is water really, which is higher. pH. So if you're really looking for something that is more, more dangerous, it's really, water really than beer, which we know from the Middle Ages, you know, the beer was much safer to drink. Of course it was alcoholic beer as well, but you know, you know, yeah. Okay. Do these, pathogens exist in. In alcohol, beer, normal beer that we produce. And have you done any specific. Testing on alcohol percentage in beers to inhibit pathogen growth. not, not really, not yet. yes. It's very interesting because, I like non, low alcoholic beer, but I like beer that have, 2% alcohol as well, or 1%. You know, this is, this is amazing, area that, we should be making more beer. So, and yeah, nobody have done this, to be honest. It's just, you know, few papers looking into this, problem and, well, but it's, it's very popular subject, so it'll be more research coming and coming. At the moment I'm researching to find out what the different carbonation level is needed to suppressing microns. Then maybe we can move to different alcohol level, because it's interesting fact is what's the difference between 0 0 5 and zero five? You know, how, how much this helps. Uh uh, so this is quite important. Yeah. Yeah, so you say that pH is obviously important, so even in a beer that has no alcohol, I think you said between 3.8 and what? 4.3. 4.4 is, roughly the finished beer pH range. Is there, is there a danger of when you start going above that 4.5 or where does it start to get more likely that you're going to have these things grow if they can? well, e coli can, survive, at pH 3.6. Yes. if you are producing non-alcoholic beer and you will not pasteurize it, there is a risk that e coli will survive. Yeah. but, it will grow at, a much higher, pH I think it's, 3.8 is where it would be growing, but this would be growing in this kind of more nutritious environment and not, not in beer. What we find out in beer that, growth would be really in fully carbonated, it would happen, maybe about 4.6 pH. Yeah, so it is very, very high. And, but if, if beer would be decarbonation it, this growth would happen at, 4.2. and also, you know, when we did our research, we, we basically wanted to see if we can find any pathogens in the, in the beer that on which are on the market. So we, we haven't found any CO or salmonella, but we find out that some beers, pH of those beers was, was 4.6, 4.8, Mm. which, kind of, opened eyes for us a little bit because if there is, pH 4.8, and if this particular beer will be, will not have much hopes there is potential for their Clostridium, growing there and s as well. but the, it wasn't many of those beers, so, yeah. Yeah. Sean said you still have to somehow get it in there. Right? It's not, it's Yeah, it's, it's all about trying not to create an environment that if you do get it in there, you can cause yeah. liver Well, as I mentioned, you know, when is the human, where is the product? The, the, there is chance to, for the cross-contamination. But, you know, after all, this product is not a, a nutritious like, product. Like milk, for example, or like a bullion or, or whatever, you know, is, is is product that is low pH, have not much nutrients. after all, yeah. Have, have hops as well, which, yeah. So, Yeah. Because I think there's, we always think with, especially arrested fermentation method of. Of na production or non-alcoholic production, you're normally left with quite a lot of residual sugar. especially if it's, left with malto in another like super fermentable sugars. So I've always assumed, so there's quite a nutrient base for things to grow compared to where you would say, like your standard, beers would be at. But I what, from what I can gather is that if the carbonation at the moment seems to be the, the biggest thing that's inhibiting, Yes. Yeah. that's, that's correct. Hmm. that's very important. We were surpri surprised with this finding as well, because e coli and salmonella, those two pathogens can grow in your guts, kind of, you know, can survive very rough conditions, you know, so they can, when we grow them in the lab, we can grow them aerobically or anaerobically. There is no difference. So you would not expect them to be, be, be growing much slower under carbonation. But in this situation, in beer, they don't, you know, their carbonation, doing their job. Yeah. yeah, it's really interesting. we, if we had, any of these pathogens in beer, we do our normal micro plating. with the media that we normally plate on, we wouldn't see these pathogens growing on there. Right. not necessary. well, we using in brewing w for total aerobic count, we may use WLN, agar plate, which, we can, the and e coli potentially could grow there. but, it doesn't look any, any special way. so we would not see if this is, e coli or salmonella. We would just probably say that, oh, this is, just, bacteria, and, we have to use specific agars to be able to detect, those microorganisms, which, probably in the, in the, in the brewing laboratories, you would not be get away with using those because if you would start trying to look for them, you would find it, you would create a lots of, problem for yourself and your, your, your colleagues. yeah, you, yeah. So, Okay. Yeah, I could just see, yeah, love being like, yeah, let's go this. Oh my God, look how much we've got showing the plate around. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be, yeah, that'd be so funny. I mean, It is a good question, Sean, because, I think the aerobic plate's probably the one I would've pa paid the least attention to in the final pack. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, it would just be interesting to know if there were tests for this, but like you said, you're struggling. You haven't found it in any existing beers in the hmm. yeah, so that's really interesting. and we, we tend to focus on small pack, and then there's obviously Mm-hmm. a different risk. it's also really interesting, the carbonation being quite a big factor. and I think you mentioned already that then when you tap a keg, you can lower the carbonation. So that's another interesting factor leading to, to draft beer. But I've also heard from another burano who works with a German brewery the low alcohol, no alcohol beer market in Germany is quite mature. And they don't, they're not as, Stressed or worried about pathogens in beer as we might be. And do you think this is because it's a new market here and we are exploring it still? Or do you think the risks generally are potentially lower than we worried about? Or is it still too early to be able to tell this? well, I know that it's lower because I, I have done the tests, so I, I know that when we inoculate thousands of e coli and salmonella to beer, yes, to carbonated beer, I cannot detect anything after, you know, so, so I know this and I know this, that if the beer is decarbonation, it'll grow. So yes, there is a risk. There is, and, and there is no risk. so, but yes, we haven't found a e coli in beer. Nobody have found it yet. And if you go to a, shop, buy a, a sandwich with salad or have a burger, risk is huge. Yes. That you will find this microorganism there. if you, that you may have remembered that big outbreak of, e coli on cucumbers in Spain when the whole kind of, you know, shipments of cucumbers, were haled, you know, so we didn't have any cucumbers in the uk. Uh uh, so there is much more, many more different product that are 1,000 times more riskier than than beer. yes. But well, that, that you mentioned draft. Draft is interesting because yes, once you open it up, when you leave it to the line. The poten, the, the lines have two ends. You've got a, a, a coupler end one is a very big interaction with the human as well. You know, how important is maintaining good hygiene and cleaning of this. And very often people don't do it, very or they don't do enough often enough. And then another end is where the nozzles are. And nozzles are very difficult to, to clean it. Well, as, David Quinone and the different practices where been used in the pubs are not, not correct. So, and this is where you've got potentially in, places where those pathogens can come, to beer, which is already slightly decarbonation, especially after when the consumption is, is low. and, when, somebody switched off, CO2, or, you didn't have any CO2. So this beer becomes decarbonation. So the, the risk risk there and, yeah. And, you know, probably states of the line cleaning, you know, no, not, not so many people clean the line very well in the, in the puffs as well. And, you, we can get away with this with the normal alcoholic beer, but you know, if you've got non-alcoholic beer, is, is is very risky. What, just so I'm clear on this, Greg, what kind of levels of carbonation in, I don't want to say ensure safety, but look like they, they prevent the growth of, of these pathogens. Are we talking like completely decarbonation, half carbonated, 2.5 volts, five grams a liter, whatever a, So now I'm doing a research and we almost finish, we are on the. Month three of this research when we looked into a survival of, so basically we've got beer that can, in this beer, e coli and salmonella can grow. And this beer is fully decarbonation. Yes. When mm-hmm. and we set up experiment in six different carbonation level 5.5, 4.5, 5.5 gram per liter, 4.5, 3.8, 2.4, 1.5, and, fully decarbonation. Yeah. So we wanted to see exactly what is gonna happen. So, we see that, 5.5. On next time, next time, point next week, everything is dead. Yes. So, and then, inactivation at 4.5 is happening, but it's not happening that quick. But is, is microgram is, dying. They not growing. And then, probably breaking point is between kind of 2.4 grams, per liter. And, 3.5. This is where the, we will see that there is something happen. So 3.5 may be enough, good enough, but below this, this, may be danger zone. also in the same experiment we added, to this beer, extra altos and extra lactose as well, just to make it more interesting. and you know, finally, you know how people use lactose sometimes and, but lactose is very well linked to e coli. E coli, like lactose. Yes. Hmm. and so this is potentially for us, it was very interesting to, to, to, to explore. But, we, we added, during this experiment, we added one gram of each of the sugar to each can. So it's, it's not, it's not enough to be honest, but yeah, it's, it's, it's making a difference. But, because when we thought that, how much we should be adding, we should be adding five grams of lactose to one can. And when, when you see this volume of sugar, like, oh no, I cannot add this much. And we said like, so yeah, we end up, adding one gram, which I think it was maybe not right decision. Maybe you should add more because we don't see this, impact, huge. But, we, we still, see the impact. Well, it's really interesting'cause I think originally lactose is used as a product quite often to build body in Yes. And yeah, and as I mentioned, the e coli like lactose a lot, so, you know, it would be fermenting this much better than any other sugars. Yeah, I. cool. Well, my dream of having a cask lactose there has gone down the drain. I. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well you have to check carbonation as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. yeah. That's really interesting. So you said about 3.75 vols? sorry, grams liter We, we still, don't 3.8. number it is. yes. We still have to wait for this. Yeah. yeah. because I was also reading a good paper on, or talking about the draft. It was from Conor Butler. I think you, you know, well, you know, 'cause you did a presentation with him. I watched it. Yeah, it was quite interesting talking about how it's probably more likely to have these eco, pathogen issues within draft beer because of that poor hygiene and lots of human contact. and also that often beer in lines especially is, it's gonna be pretty much noncarbonated, much warmer and probably a little bit oxidized as well, or a bit of oxygen in there. And again, if it's left over a longer period of time, I don't know, 12 hours overnight, for example, 16 hours, when the pub's not open, they can start. If there is something in there, then it can start to form, biofilms. And then we're starting to get, enter a realm where this can be quite. Then inf effectively have a problem with any beer that comes in contact with it, as long as it's not carbonated, I assume. Right. How does that fit into that research? like how dangerous? So there is a lot less danger if it's carbonated, but what happens when that beer enters those lines that have got biofilm and maybe lower carbonation, et cetera. there's lots of, to talk about this. so I try to, capture very quickly so it's, carbonation is, one fact. So we can, when we know when is the, level, carbonation, that critical level carbonation that suppress pathogens, we can, we, we will know this and we can, carbonation in the, beer line. Let's say you, you feel the beer line with the 5.5 gram, per liter beer. You can live it overnight and see what this carbonation went down to. Yes. Very simple thing. So then you can assess if there is a risk or not, you know? So, and another thing is that the way how the be beer line cleaning is, performed. you know, I don't think that we have any kind of, supplier that, shouting that, okay, our beer line cleaner is suitable for dispense of non-alcoholic beers. I dunno how much work has been done to validate this. also, you know, how the, how people do line cleaning, they have to fill the bucket, with, with, cleaner, you know, this, this bucket left, for days, dirty. And when you do the RINs, you use water. You have to make sure this water will be clean. And very often it may be, very dirty. And when you do the line clean, you still use again, water. To rinse it. So you have another thing that you may, may clean the line, but you may introduce lots of, potentially risky micrograms with your water. Depend how you, how you do it, and because people will think that, okay, we use this bucket for the line cleaning, we know that it's clean so they don't kind of pay attention to, to this so, so, so much. so there is, lots of risk in there. And yeah, you, you just, and you know, we just postulate that you have to make sure that you're cleaning the lines. often at the moment. We just postulating this to do it once a week and every seven days. and you know, but you really, you must do this, you know, because you can get away with not doing this if you are dispensing alcoholic be, and we know that people don't do it, but you know, you just, you just cannot, just, let it go with no alcoholic beer. You just have to make sure that you do it as well. Yeah, you can get brand damage from alcohol beers, but you can Hmm. really sick Yeah. Yeah. low, so it's, it's quite a difference. And you know, at, at, at the moment, we are doing lots of work for different clients. we, can, mimic, situation when day beer is put on the dispense system. Yes. So we can, connect the, the beer connect into the system. We can validate, the procedure for line cleaning, and we can see how quickly, basically every day or every few days, we can test the beer for microbial content and for alcohol, for hash and pH and stuff like this. And then we can see how often they should, clean the line because some beer may be susceptible for pathogens than others. So, for some beer, let's say if you've got beer, 4.4%, 4.4 pH, it can be spoiled much quicker than a beer that is at, pH four. So pH four may, Required, maybe, maybe, maybe surviving better in the line than the, the other one. So it's very often depend on the beer line, but also, you know, you know how the situation in UK is you've got a line that is very long, you know, so it's, it's, it's extremely difficult to clean it. Yeah. The mechanical action is rarely enough in UK bear line cleaning. You know, it is, quite often it's people pull it through and let it sit, so it's just never really enough to, to clean. heat either, so Yeah. Yeah. so Yeah. and. concentration of the is your main thing. And, you know, and after all, you know, if you, if particular beer will not taste well because the line is not clean, people will not buy it. as simple as that. And will, damage, yes, your brand, because people will not, yeah. Not, not, not, not buy it. So circling back to, I've got two things I definitely want to talk about. I think we'll go for, I want to talk a bit about preservatives if you, if we can, because we add preservatives into na beer, in the craft beer industry, I think most, not all, but a lot of people do. I probably am, am I right on that, Sean? You think most people do? I think it's definitely different for a lot of brewers, but yeah, and there are lots of different options. and it's interesting, we, we've explored quite a lot of them and we can get hold of some, we can't get hold of some in the uk. so yeah, we'd be an interesting thing 'cause when we are looking at producing a beer like this, normally it's of the beer is like one of our biggest priorities. But with a beer, we've gotta think about safety and flavor. And so by adding a preservative, what are we doing to the, to the beer? And another thing with in the na beer is heating your beer is often. The cause of like all flavors down the line, but we have to, we mash in at above 80 degrees Celsius to we do, we, we produce them by embracing fermentation, just making really hard to ferment. and so, you know, we're doing all these things to create this product, but we are doing it kind of not the way I'll do it for a normal beer. And so preserved as we've looked at, you know, adding them, do they have a flavor impact and are they actually giving us the safety that we want with that flavor compromise is, is great. Great question to kind of explore. well, again, we, we, at Camden, we validate lots of different preservatives for different CL clients. so, at the moment, very popular are ones which are not allowed in UK at the moment. So it's, it's the same. we've got a two, great products. one is called Nado and another is called Chiba. they both from extract from mushrooms, and very interestingly then, one from Nado, is not confidential. It is, everything is in the public domain. So I can talk about this, freely. So the one from Nado is from mushrooms that are edible in, in, in, in China, for example. But, the cheaper is from this kind of white mushroom that we can buy in, in, in any supermarket. And this is from the stamp, you know, so this is, but you have to add more, but unfortunately it's not allowed in UK at the moment. Yes, those preservative potentially quite good, to use, although Nado is not, advertised as a one that can suppress, pathogens, but can suppress yeast quite well. But, Chiba is advertised that can suppress, pathogens as well, with other preservatives. you, I think, yeah, you mentioned Connor's name. he, published papers looking into different preservative ones that are used, commonly, and are allowed, and he had some good results. So, yeah, I probably have to refer. listeners to, to his work so they can explore this? I don't wanna, I I can't comment much What exactly he did? I don't remember. But, he have good results. his beer is, on dispense system and is doing very well. so yeah, I think I can, I think his papers in the public domain. I could be wrong, but, master's, uh, yeah. Thesis Yeah, it's master's thesis is, which is one I read, and I'll put that in the show notes for people. I think that one of the things was like the potassium sorbate is not a legal addition to an na bid. that was a, a good takeaway for me because I know that a lot of people, it's not yeah, I think it's to prove it, Okay. not a, it's not allowed under EU regulation to have, potassium sorbate in. the regulations are pretty strict, rightfully so, on these additions, I did speak to Alex at Laman and if anyone wants those, legal limits, Alex will, she'll email you over the la latest legal limits, her, her contact details in the show notes as well. I think there is a loophole with potassium absorbate if there's fruit involved. Correct. Hmm. Yeah, think as beer. Right. talking about that is, well, great. I know how much work you've done on pasteurization as well. and there has been a a trend towards unpasteurized unstabilized, na beer. What are your thoughts on the pasteurization and its necessity for beer? Well, well, yes, I think it is necessary at the moment. Yes, because it is uncertainty of, of this, subject. Yes, I know that in Italy, there is a law that if you craft brewer, you cannot pasteurize it. Hmm. So this is potentially quite big risk for the aircraft brewers in Italy, which they want to bake non-alcoholic beers, but they are forced to not pasteurize it. So they are extremely worried about this. but yeah, you, you know, there are ways that, pathogenic eco can, can grow in beer, but it can survive. So you, we have to remember about this. Yeah. so you really have to, kill it off. Hmm. unless you prove that your process, is, killing everything, then probably you can get away with this. But, yes, it's, I think it's necessity to have pasteurization and, but Okay. much to be honest as well. You have to remember about this. and do you think, Like tunnel pasteurization in packaging is much safer than flash pasteurizing and then packaging on a line.'cause you still got the risk of your Of course, yes. Yeah. I, I agree. You know, once you pasteurize it in the can in tunnel pasteurization, you don't worry about anything. You know, and you, you're doing this, at, well, you're doing this at lower temperature. Well, the, at the moment people over pasteurize it. So, you know, there is a kind of argument. but also now I'm doing research in the flash pasteurization. So I'm trying to find out how, quickly you can kill microorganism it in flash pasteurization temperatures. And to be honest, it's, it's, there's not much data available, because it's very hard to do. So we just finding this out at the moment, and the, the, the, our finding is that if flash pasteurization, let's say if you need 20 P internal pasteurization flash pasteurization, you may need 40 p, for example. Yeah, so, so there, there may be some, some differences. Of course, you can do this at 70 degrees for, for 15 seconds, much shorter, but you know, that you, you still may have to do, much more. So this is kind of our initial thing that we finding out. but yes, I, I'm, I, I like, tunnel pasteurization because the product is packaged, is, pasteurized. And, then potentially, well, there is some research coming out soon, from Germany that, they, doing experiments trying to prove that, of course when water is dirty, it may, ingress, into the bottle, but this is depend on the quality of the crowns of other kind of closures as well. But again, people should be maintaining quality of water in the pasteurizer, yeah, have you done much research in, I think they call it cold pasteurization or like non-heated, so using either pressure or UV lights, anything like that? Is that, is that technology kind of. Around, or I only did a little bit of research on it just before the show, and I think it's interesting. I've never heard not, not, not much. Uh uh, I have done, well, we can, validate this at calm, but it is not my, we don't have many inquiries about this, so I never explored this area. UV light, is, is, is effective, but, you know, it's not, it will not guarantee your, full kill as well. So you have to be aware of this. Yeah, it was just an interesting thing Hmm across before the show hmm. I think you'll have shadows probably Yeah. Yeah. Well, the liquid is very simple to, to, to put UV light through for the lamp. So it, it should be effective. But I don't think that beer is very good, to, for UV to be used, actually, because something happened, some changes. for pressure is, yes. There, there, there is, quite good potential. there is, yeah, I've seen, this year as somebody looked into this in, in France. so people looking into this, but again, you will end up with, doing similar as you're doing for flash pasteurization. You will sterilize it, but you still have to fill the bottle or can and close it. So you still have some risk there. Yeah. yeah. I am asking, asking a question I would probably ask if I didn't pasteurize and didn't stabilize my craft. Na beer. would be if carbonation inhibits the growth, if that's the correct statement, that I can withdraw and the beer is over 3.75 grams, probably at the end of fermentation and beyond. Mm-hmm. The only chance you would have of having a pathogen enter is in the fermentor on, you know, either the W side, although that's boiled, so you know anything from the cold side of the w, heat exchanger, et cetera. And then into maybe dry hop. But even then the dry hopping, it's mostly depends. When you dry hot, you dry hop at start of fermentation, you your risks are gonna be much higher I would guess. And then on yeast inoculation, if you are dry pitching in the top for example, probably more likely to get it there. But they're the sort of critical control points of where a pathogen could get into an, into an NA beer before it would be.'cause if you, my thoughts, I basically, if I, if we were to get it in later, Hmm. if I'm playing that role of that brewer, if we were to get it in later, we'll always have carbonation and therefore it would inhibit the growth. Mm-hmm. How much can you actually get in from just hu one human contact in something? That's another, probably another level of question. well, you, you have to remember that this will never be a septic, situation. when you will add different, hopes or anything else, or, ease. There will be contact with the air. This air will not be a, a septic. This will, so there will be always risk. of course the level of, contamination will be very, very low. but there will be, if micro gangs can grow in it, they will grow very quickly. So they can multiply very quickly. So, so level of initial inoculation is not that, of course more you have, they quicker they grow, but still, if it's a little bit, they will grow fast as well. well, you know, hands of human, are quite dirty as well. So, you know, even you was, they still will be dirty. They will not be a septic, you know, so, so there is still a risk there? yeah, I think so. But, so, but it's, it's good news that we can rely on this, carbonation. And, the study that we've done, with carbonation, we inoculate, 10 thousands of, e coli, one mil of beer into the can of 500 mil. So it was a lot. Yes. So if, if this, 3.8 grams per liter can kill it off, you know, that's, Hmm. that, that's ending up with you with kind of, assumption that it's quite safe, you know, that you can kill a lot, you know. So, of, preservatives, are not effective, like this, let's say velco, only claims to kill 500 CFU per meal. Yeah. so car carbonation can do much better in beer. did you say some spores can survive boiling early on, and then would they, how would they then appear the beer later on? yeah. So spores, there, there is kind of two species that produce spores, Baus, and Clostridium. Yes. so, Clostridium, you may have Clostridium, botulinum that is well known because producing neurotoxin is just, an, is, is neurotoxin is just, blocking your, your nerves. so, so it's very danger, but so it, this, those spores are, heat resistant, so you would need boiling long time boiling to, to kill them. Yeah. So potentially they will, survive, in, water boiling or, or, or whatever you're doing. mashing. and, But they required, good condition to grow to germinate. So they would, required good nutritions, but also high pH. but also they, required, they don't like hops. Okay. However, we, there is recently paper coming out that there are some baus that, have this hope resistant genes as well. So this kind of, showing how things are changing. however, I never seen beer that was infected with Baus. Yeah. Okay. and in in our study, we looked into ba in the survival of, the, and grow of Batus and Clostridium in, in those beers at the, this different, pH and carbonation, sorry, pH and, bitterness level. And they did also survive. Nothing has changed. They didn't die. They didn't grow. They survived there in beer for six months. Yeah, on the same level. and this is how they, this, they kind of mehan on this, to, to survive, kind of defend, makes hanis of population to survive in, in the world. So produce super resistant, sports. Yeah. Cool. I'm trying to think here as well. from this conversation if you are dry pitching, that yeast inoculation phase is probably the most critical because not only has it got a load of aeration or maybe some aeration, it's also high pH. So, you know, 5.2, 5.0, and. You no longer have that protection of alcohol. So would I be right in saying, let's say there was a process that you were doing that was somehow getting in these pathogens in your normal everyday craft beer life. If that beer was to f ferment down to 4.5%, that 4.5% would be enough to kill that, pathogen. But in an Abe, you don't have that. So then it would be there. a problem with pathogens in beer. Never. You know, even if you look, but we don't even look because we know that it's not No, no, no. will not survive there. So, Hmm. Yeah, I think it still means you've gotta take all the precautions you take. We're producing normal beer. We can't now go Oh mm-hmm. cool. NA beer safe. Like you've gotta create the safe environment, and clean environment. And then it sounds like carbonation is the, the bigger preservative, from research. Yeah, it So, Again, it's surprising, but, but it is so, and yeah. and I'm, I'm really happy that our second research proving this, because when we publish, first paper, this what were results came out and always like, really this draw. we done all the work, but I still kind of, you weren't believing in this, like, you know, is e coli and salmonella can grow in the guts. You know, they can. So, but, but, Hmm. then we, so I published this, so I said like, wow, if somebody will, will, show something different, I will be dead. But, you know, actually our second, study proving this, you know, proving this amazingly well because we are looking for different carbonation and the lines on the graphs are amazing, you know, so, yes, it's, yeah. so maybe summarize some of the findings that you, made outside of carbonation. pH is still a very important factor. So let's say carbonation was gone for whatever reason, pH is still an important factor in the growth of, Yes, pathogens. Yes. If you Yeah. a beer, if you do it as slow pH as possible is better for you. It is much safer this way. yeah. Because Sean sent me a podcast not long ago where they were talking about phs of like 4.7, 4.9 on Hazy, Yeah. Yeah. Risky. which is, Yes. yeah, Yeah. making sure that doesn't translate down. and then bitterness, just to root circle back as well. You, you said bitterness not that important. not for salmonella and e coli, which I Mm-hmm. disappointing because I really, created this kind of, the, the research that I was hoping to, to find something that, you know, that, 50 IBO beers will be more safe than 11 IBO. But, but it wasn't. So it was disappointing, you know? So, because I thought that, okay, if you've got more hobby beer, there's definitely more safe, from this perspective. But it wasn't, you know, in fact, if you've got more hops, hops may have oils as well, and oils may protect as well. So more hop beer actually may be more, dangerous because, you know, that, the oil may, protect cell, you know, yeah. So, That I that's just made a lot of people sweat. about this, so, But that's why you gotta do the research. So we know that ivus don't project it, but we now know that carbonation can Yes. Yeah. so. And this is what we also find out when we did our research. So we had, we done research with, 11 IBO 25 and 50. Yeah. So we did this at different phs, so, pH and we found e coli dying in all this, combination. But then after three months, we find out that actually we still finding, cells surviving, in, in, beers that were 50 IBO. Hmm. haven't seen this for the beers, which were 11 IBO. we really freak out like, what's going on? You know, this is not possible, but, you know, that's, this was only explanation that we have. Maybe that oil that was introduced with the hop extract or something, you know, was, this, but yeah, well, it is not verified, Yeah. I, I really shouldn't be talking, you know about this, but, well, this was observation. and in the different methods of. Making alcohol free, period. Do you think, arrested, fermentation has more, risk to it.'cause the nutrients left over compared to say alcohol distillation or, Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yeah, you're right. and you know, to be honest, micrograms doesn't match, doesn't need much nutrients. You know, if you've got one gram for them, it's like full supply for, for two months or whatever Hmm. So, you know, it's, yes, and, and more nutrients is, is bad news, but, yes. yeah. But I guess, you know, if you, if you will still maintain right carbonation, you, you'll still be okay. So, yeah. Hmm. I'm just curious on the pasteurization as well. just because that presentation that you did with Con was outstanding. and you mentioned it a little bit earlier. Are people potentially over pasteurizing na bs. And why is that, and what's your research sort of shown otherwise? yeah. Yes, people, definitely over pasteurizing beer. Yes, definitely. the current guidance, is between eighty eight hundred a hundred twenty, and we shown, our research shown that some beers would require, 30 po non-alcoholic beers. Yes. And especially because the heat resistant of micros is dependent on the pH bitterness. Yes. so more, high hop beers. Will require less pasteurization. guidance that people are using was produced in 1995. They didn't even look for the, pH and bitterness at that time because they didn't make so many different beers as well at that time. And also, this was not really, in the, there is a table in this guidance that is, kind of, telling you maximum and minimum. So it's not that is actually something recommended. It's typical what people were doing at that time, and try to find justification for those values, you will not find any. So this was what people were using and what vape people put on this kind of, guidance. another point is that if you've got beer that is, high pH and very low hop, content. Very low IBO In this situation, you may have to require, you may have to treat this more like a soft drinks rather than the beer. So in this case, this beer may require more than 120 pasteurization units. so you have to be aware of this. But, I guess in UK we don't have this problem because we, we making a, most of the beers are quite, well, more than seven IBO. Yes. Hmm. yeah, Mostly, yeah, mostly. what about, so in relation to pathogens, what's their heat re, I know obviously with it, it's a moving scale with the pH and the IBUs, but, or bitterness, but generally how heat resistance are pathogens in comparison to, the classic brewery spoilage, microorganisms. we sound that they are similar. with, Okay. if you kill, vegetative, beer spoilage, bacteria, you will kill, pathogenic such as ecoline and salmonella as well. So, so they are similar. yeah. For, for pasteurization, we are using this bio indicator. We are using East ASCOs ports. East ASCOs ports are significantly more heat resistant than any beer. Spoiler, spoiler. So if you kill East ASCOs ports, you know that you kill this as well. And this is, also valid for pathogens as well. so we have huge confidence, in this. and, yeah, it's, it's, it's good that, you know, in the uk and in Europe, people are quite flexible with, how they, pasteurize product. when I've been in the U us, trying to tell them, Hey, listen, you don't need to pasteurize at 80 POI said like, well, we don't have choice. We, we have to follow what kind of authority are telling us, you know? So, bigger players have, much more power because they very much, smaller players, they, they, they make, let's say, 35 IBO, a beer, and they pasteurize at A-T-P-A-T-P-O, yeah, which is, which is crazy. and, yeah. And I tell them, Hey, listen, you, you just, you don't need this. You, you, you know, you, you can do 40, 50 without doing any validation, you know? So, yeah. But they said like, yeah, sorry Greg. We just, have to do what, local authority approved for us. Yeah, we're very unregulated on NA beer, aren't we? So a good question for you, Greg, Would you drink an unpasteurized na beer, or would you drink an NA beer that has been pasteurized from a draft line? I guess two, two pronged question. well, I've been on the festival recently and I had to come back on the next day. So whole day I spent on the drinking non-alcoholic beer from draft, you know, and it was, was great. Yes. so I think I, I drink seven pints of this, well, I drink two pints of alcoholic beer. But, you know, because I had to take, my daughter and her friends, I said like, no way I can drink. So, yes, I do drink, with is with, in terms of non-pasteurized, well, I still kind of, think that the risk is still low, because it's still very low pH so if you, you would have to really mess up really badly if you would allow eco to be in there. And I, I know that carbonation is important, so if I would open beer that is flat, you know, I would probably not drink this. but, yeah. It's really interesting. You know, I don't think I ever would've linked carbonation to any sort of this, this kind of risk, I don't think, I dunno if you would've, Sean. No, it's, it's really interesting and surprising, but, but good to know Yeah. that you validated it twice. Well, multiple tests, but Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I've been in a brewing summit, in California one month ago, and I've seen poster about this. They, they proving this, what we find out as well, that they're looking into carbonation. So they test lots of different, beers, with different carbonation, and they prove that, this is working for them as well. So, I'm, I, I was, really, really happy with this. And it's great because, you know, when, when we, we, we meet, we are like, super friendly. It's just, we discovering new things, you know, so they, they, yeah. is, is great to see that somebody kind of proving the same what you do and something is new. That's great. Really cool. Greg, what, so you mentioned that there's another paper coming out. What are the, what other sorts of research projects are you working on at the moment? so at the moment, where, I'm working on this carbonation, which will be also linked with, showing, if we can find pathogens in non-alcoholic beers from the collected, from the pubs. Hmm. far we've got 47 samples. We haven't found any. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's good news. this is, this, paper is coming. I'm just, hopefully it'll submit this, this year. Another thing, is, that we trying to, look for the different way of, beer line cleaning, which is quite unusual. but I cannot tell you what it'll be. It, it's not sonication or anything like this. It's something completely different. much, much, much simpler. another thing that I'm doing is I'm, working on the flash pasteurization as well, what I mentioned, trying to determine the, the critical values, the, the decimal reduction time at higher temperatures, you know, because, Yeah, I, I just don't wanna go too much details into this, but you know, that that value of our, a bio indicator is quite low, and, but that value of different micrograms is much higher. So potentially, we, when you kind of on the graph, when you extend those lines, you see that they are crossing at 65 degrees, so potentially over 65 degrees, other microorganisms may be more suitable for bio indicators for pasteurization. So we validating this. So for this, I've got, 10 different products, and for 10 different products, we measure heat resistance of, our indicator, but also heat resistance on, of enterococcus vision, which is in used in food industry as a, surrogate, as an indicator for, thermal processes against salmonella and e coli. So, so yeah, so this will come. Another thing that I'm really trying to push for couple of years is, trying to find the best, better ways to detect pectin, naus and Megas Ferra. Those are micro gangs to be very difficult to work, with, and we know that the current media current term recommendation from EBC are not the best one because we, we try it as well. So, so, but we, we found the, the thing that we believe that is the, the, the much better solution. and we will, yeah, we have a few beers, non-alcoholic, medium, medium, alcohol and high alcoholic beer. We will, do recover with different agars and we show which one, which a is the, the better. also on the same, situation, we will measure different metabolites of those. so, we kind of trying to create model that instead of looking for the, those micros, we will look for the metabolites for the specific, product that those micros can produce. And if we can detect those, which can be detected with the analytical methods, gas chromatographic or something else, we know that there is a problem. but also you'll measure heat resistance of pectin nagas. So, so, so this, another thing, in the future is, looking into how carbonation affect pasteurization as well. so, but this will be, in, in two years, maybe time. Yeah. So, yeah. That sounds like a lot of work so far. Yeah. yes, you is have to be lots of fighting, you know, to get this approved. All the research, you know, because, we still have to, you know, do commercial work because we still have to pay the, the, the bills as a company. But even though we not for profit making organization, we have to put everything back. we still have to make. But, but my department growing micro budget research is doing very, very well, very well. Very good this year. So, and in past few years. So, so I've got, I'm good in kind of convincing, my bosses to, to let me do this and, and, well, if I don't convince me, I still do it with my, my, my colleagues. this, it's very important, you know, and this is how we started with the ASCO sports, you know, this, originally was not approved, kind of project, but with my colleague Chris Rowley, we said like, Chris, this is very important. Just we don't, this project is not a problem. Let's just do it. And we just did it, you know? And, and this leads to so much great work. And he's doing PhD. He's finishing PhD. So, so yes, he's, he's, and this is very impactful study for, for, you know, for many, many places. Yeah. I've had a, at a previous brewery we had a pitis and Megas sphere infection and it is not something you want in a brewery or be a, wasn't a siren, but it Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's crazy how this MicroGen how many nasty, the metabolites can produce. So, you know, if they can produce a lot, you can find them very quickly, I think, by doing this. But we have to first link them with this metabolites. So this is, super, yeah, but they smell a lot, so the lab will be very smelly for a couple of months. Yeah. yeah, yeah. It took us a long time to figure it out. It was one in 24 cans and eventually we figured it out. Was this in, in the UK or, outside the uk. in the Okay. yeah, it was a 24 head, filling. and pretty much close to one in 30, one in 20 Yeah. hands. And we found some massive biofilm behind one of the filling heads that you couldn't see unless you took it Okay. Wow. that's where it came from. And comments from customers describing the smell were to believe at first until you Yes, yes, yes. We, we had it was a few situations like this, well in, in the samples coming over and we open one beer and whole lab stinks. You know, it's, it's crazy. Yes. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. A horrible, horrible infection Yeah. Sean, do you have any, questions around any, any of the safety around neighbors? Anything you wanna add? No, I think, it's really interesting to see the research that you've done and, and kind of. Yeah, it's, I don't wanna say it's a simpler solution than we thought it would be when me and you first started talking, but it's great to see that carbonation, which already exists in in BS and we want, actually a incredibly good inhibitor of these, pathogens. So I think that's been really interesting to find out. And I think, yeah, you've covered the subject really Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Hmm. I like simple solutions, you know? So, you know, fact that there's carbonation. There you go. Yeah. So it's good. So, yeah. walk away. Easy money. Yeah. also it's, I'm, I'm, I'm so, I'm so happy that brewing industry doing all those stuff because it's much better to, to drink, you know, non-alcoholic beer than a soft drinks, you know, full of sugar, you know? So Yeah. it's just, it is just amazing, you know? It is, drink those, I know that trends are changing. So, you know, my daughter is 17. She doesn't like really much happy beer, so she like, like, oh, that I wanna really drink, like some lagger. yeah. So, so, which I, I see lots of people telling you that is that they different is, is changing, but yeah, it is day generation. She's S 17, so they, they drink different things. They don't really like much happy beers. What, what we like. but, but, yes, hops are amazing. So, yeah, so much flavor and it is just amazing to have, to be able to drink this, yeah. well actually, I really relate with your 17-year-old drinking habits, to be honest. I mean, I do love laggers as well. but yeah, I, I just wanna say a big thank you to you, Greg, and everyone who you've worked with on this, this kind of research is just, I don't know, I find it so almost invaluable. I said it right at the top in my, in my intro is that sometimes the rumor mill around craft beer really starts to get outta control and people end up doing things to protect that might not necessarily be the case, or they have to look in another avenue. So I feel like research like this and your research on the pasteurization, which I obviously have a, a big heart for, with a sustainability angle as well, I think is absolutely fantastic. So thank you so much and please, please keep it up.'cause this type of research is like invaluable to us. thank you so much, Chris and Sean. It was great to speak with you and, very good chat. I, yeah, had to be lots of fun. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care, man. you. Bye bye. Thanks a lot. yeah, that was really fun, right? it's really cool to have Greg on the show. I think his research is really interesting, but I'm really curious to see how that might have affected you. Like what are your thoughts from that and like, has it changed your perception of anything to do with their ABE and the safety of it? I think it's, it's really interesting. It's You know, it seems like, like I said, like carbonation being something that we want in beer ends up being the thing that's helping inhibit pathogens the most. Like, I'll take that for awin. With all the challenges we have in brewing, I think, you know, we, I don't think. drop beer, I think has still like, got risks in it. it makes my small pack a lot more comfortable now that I know that. we still keep, you know, we do, we'll do all the sanitation that we do for everything with, with, all our NAS and our normal beer is still not gonna cut any corners now that we got this information, but we are definitely a lot more comfortable and I think we'll work on protocols for. Draft dispense now to kind of understand that we've got a bit of a safer product to get out into the market, making sure that. Combination stays there, the line cleans are done. beer's kept cold. Like, I think, you know, it, it, it's really interesting knowledge in getting it from the source rather than filtering through a bunch of papers. so yeah, it's great. And I, I liked how he, he said the risk is low. Like you can, you know, getting a burger or sandwich with lettuce on or something can, can, you know, you have more chance there in his opinion on getting. A pathogen. So you know, it, it definitely relaxes the fear, but it's not gonna change like the way we approach making these beers. Yeah. Yeah. And that I also found it interesting because it's still pasteurized. it's carbonation isn't the silver bullet that eliminates it entirely. It's just that it, it does inhibit its growth and I Yeah. it's really fascinating. I think his, his research seems quite radical as well, which I think is pretty cool. It seems to really buck the trend on a lot of, the former research because, I think a lot of where people assume that na bid does grow pathogens is from that original research that Greg talked about, right? The, the start where it was dispensed into ert my flasks with a head space, and then in seven days it grew. And so, but the, the reality of that is. For a practical brewer's point of view, it's pretty pr. I don't, I don't really know if anyone's gonna be keeping beer out for seven days and drinking it. No, I hope not. Yeah, Yeah. I hope not. And if so, then it might be in trouble, Yeah. The observation will be. Way worse than that in normal beer. So, yeah. yeah. for, from a flavor point of view. But yeah, I think it's, it's definitely, the thing that stopped me looking at Na beer originally was that I just didn't drink any good ones. And now there's a lot of good ones on the market and I hope this allows people to be innovative and, and. Go produce them, but with a little more knowledge that we have now from Greg's research. So Yeah. And also my, my other biggest takeaways, dream of Cask and Abe has gone out the window. yeah. As soon as you said those levels, it, it, I was like, oh God, you wanna imagine that? yeah. Yeah, Oh, I mean, anyone who'd have like a cast dispense and over there would be, so that would be that nice fresh cellar air going straight in. yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad that is, is up there.'cause yeah, I think that was always gonna be a risky one, but now it's even more risky, so. Yeah. it's great. It's a great, he's great at sharing his knowledge. It sounds like he's doing a lot of real relevant research as well. That's for small breweries as well as big breweries. So, yeah, he is a great guy to kind of keep an eye on for the research he puts out. Hmm. Yeah. Do you think it will change the way that you do anything in the brewery after that? Or if you think it just gives you, as you said, like more confidence in what you're doing already? I think we were really careful with everything we've done and it'll keep us on that path, but Great. that we are doing like that, we in the right direction. I think that a little bit of knowledge helps us. kind of focus, we can focus on flavor and, getting the beer right now without having to stress about, you know, I've heard so many brewers talking about sleepless nights from NAB out to market. and I think that will give us a few more night's sleep, so, yeah. That's good. That's what we want. Yeah. and on draft a beer itself,'cause I know everyone's getting particularly challenged on that. Do you think that it's I think, I think we still need to get an industry standard that's communicated pub. I think there's still education for, publicans to be able to run N ABAs on the line. I dunno how fast. A line will sell if you hold it on for like, you know, two weeks beer on the line, you know, that's, that's a problem potentially in my opinion. And, you know, also beer sitting in the line maybe from a Sunday. Pub, pub is an open Monday, Tuesday, and then open. Are they cleaning lines every time? I think there's definitely education and there's, there should be a standard that if you're serving a, in a BIU. You've got a line clean once a week. That line, you've got to keep the bear cold so that nothing grows cold, also helps carbonation all like all those sorts of things I think need to be documented and you know, I don't necessarily say want to say that you put all the responsibility onto a pub then, but there should be almost like a contractor signing over. You are now looking after this product and keeping it safe. So where I think we should get to, but we'll see. Yeah. Do you think that you, well, I know you can't speak on behalf of all of Siren, but as Siren or as if it was a different brewery, would you be quite cautious of who you put your NA beer into in draft? are at the moment and we'll stick that way after the, I think still, because like you said, it's a great inhibitor and a great thing to know, but it's not the silver bullet. it definitely makes me trust our small pack. Do to reach a little wider, but draft, I think is, is something I still want a bit more, time before we can open that up to just kind of consolidate what are the bare minimum that the dispense, needs to have for us. Tell them NAB in draft. Yeah. Agreed. as you said before. It's still a young market. maybe it will change, you know, maybe everything will look different in five years time, Yeah. And as a fine line, going to a pub going, yeah, you can take our a bit, but you have to stick to these rules. They might just go, oh, I'm just gonna buy from someone else, but. yeah. you know, those are the, those are the precautions I think we have to take.'cause the risk within the beer lines is, 'cause, you know, beer lines also can, gas can diffuse out of them. So they will, overnight, they will lose carbonation. it's, it's really emphasized just how important that carbonation is. as you said, it's not totally unusual for kegs to lose carbonation. but that also becomes, like, that now is critical control point really, isn't it, for all. Keg. Beer Yeah. and gas fails in the pubs. Non-return fail. All sorts fail. And, and if that's the case, that bit has to be discarded. Otherwise, now its risk factor is, is significant. You Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I think like those are now, it's less worrying to me than it was before this conversation, but still something to, to really keep an eye on. or, or have a standard that, you know, the pub's gonna work too. And pubs are renowned for being hard to get to clean their lines and stuff like that. So. It Yeah. will still be a challenge and I think there should be, there should be pride in the pubs and there should be reward for pubs that look after beer really well. And it definitely was a thing when I started, brewing in the UK was like, you went to the pubs that you looked after beer really well. But then there was a dedicated seller person, and, and that was possible back then. It's a little tougher now. Everything's a bit tougher. So, yeah. hopefully it, it helps spread some, some knowledge and education to the brewing and hospitality community and hopefully more breweries can get together and kind of get a standard for how to dispense NAB and, it can be spread to every dispense point for NAB. That would be so cool. Something to work towards. Yeah, yeah, as you said, I think people will take pride in it again, that they kind of have to, don't they? I yeah, and have to take responsibility. I like the idea of signing it over a little bit and being like, it's your responsibility. You have to understand the dangers of this. But at the same time, it's not great branding, yeah. it's. And I think like there was this mass thing about, oh, you're making NABF people gonna get sick and die from it. And actually in reality. That's not necessarily the case, but the risks are still, there is still possible if, and it's something that could become a, a, a route for someone to get sick, but if we follow the protocols and we have the understanding that we have now, we can actually prevent that and we can get to drink. They favored NAB on draft. Absolutely. Sean, look, thank you so much, man. How did you find the co-hosting? Yeah, it was fun. It was interesting. Also new for me. So yeah, I, I enjoyed it and I've listened to, all your other podcasts, so it's been fun to be on this side of it. and yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to you gotta keep the conversation going and have the questions, but, you also gotta concentrate on everything that they're saying, so yeah, Yeah. that's a new experience for me, for sure. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I think you smashed it. I think every question you asked wasn't one on my list, and that's like kind of the, was the whole point of Yeah. really, really glad, you found the time out, your very busy schedule to come on, so really, really appreciate it, man, and hopefully we can do something similar in the future Yeah. Awesome. It'll be, it'll be fun. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks No worries. everyone, I guess I'll catch you on the next episode of the Modern Brewer podcast.