BREW-DO Ep 02 - The Whodunnit? Show - The Head Brewer’s Headache

Welcome back to BREW-DO 🕵🏻‍♂️

New Issue. New clues. New culprit.

Your job is to figure out Whodunnit?

This week, first the answers and then - the ultimate Head Brewer challenge.

You’re there, having your first coffee of the morning and one of the brewers rushes over with a BIG problem.

This problem is time sensitive and the whole team is looking at you waiting for an answer.

Good luck!

In this episode, Chris Lewington walks you through last weeks case, the answers and who got it RIGHT!!!

And this this weeks clues, step by step and challenges listeners to solve the mystery before the answer is revealed.

If you enjoy solving brewing problems, testing your technical knowledge and learning from real brewery scenarios, this series is for you.

We want you to submit your answers, test your knowledge, and win some exclusive BREW DO merch. Submit your answers here:

https://forms.gle/JK3VWsonJeHT2S687

Grab a notebook, listen closely and see if you can solve the case before the answer is revealed.

Because in brewing, it is never just one suspect.

Welcome back to BREW DO.

Transcript

0:09

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Bruno Mini series. I am not gonna lie, I am impressed not only with all of the people who've got in touch. Through messages, through the form giving their answers, but we actually have, I'm gonna say 2.5 correct answers, which is very exciting. The 0.5 is a small technicality, but there are two absolutely spot on answers. I'll be honest, it's not something I'd ever seen before, so I would've had a very, very hard time solving this. Of those 2.5 correct answers, two of those, or 1.5 of those. Were former guests of this show, but before I give away some t-shirts to those absolute legends who've managed to catch that. Firstly, thank you to everyone who came up at BEERX. I had a lot of positive feedback about the show, especially the mini series. It seems to be seriously engaging, for the people who are listening. So, look, thank you so much. All I ask for you, the listeners, is it please do share this. I think half of the fun of this show is around this part where we, get to listen to the problem live without having any idea. What the real solution is until two weeks time. So what I ask all of you to do is please, please share the podcast around your friends, your teams, , any industry groups you're in, really trying to get this out there. And I feel that, I feel that it's quite a fun learning experience for everyone as well. So please do share the show around as many people as you can, but there will be as promised some prizes, t-shirts. Going out. I can't give half a t-shirt away, so I'm just gonna be a standup guy here. And, give away three T-shirts to the 2.5 correct answers. The first one came through via WhatsApp unofficial channel, but I'm gonna accept it. that's Jamie Ramshaw of Simpson's Malt. Absolutely spot on. I was like, it was an early in the morning. I looked at my phone, I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. Nailed it. So congratulations, Jamie Ramshaw. You'll be a t-shirt coming your way. The second absolutely spot on answer was a friend of mine. No collusion here. I'll say both friends of mine, these two people, absolutely zero collusion. I do promise, although, I dunno why I even said it.'cause now it stinks, isn't it? But genuine answers. Angus Morrison, head of production at Vault City. There'll be some people going, ah, this is a, it's a fix. It's not genuinely, absolutely spot on. Almost to the, to the word. It was incredible, the 0.5. I'm gonna give two actually, the previous, the what he started most of all of this, which is tur Mertons. he was so, so, so close. Just one little piece of information was missing. But I'm gonna give him, I'm gonna give you the t-shirt anyway, tur, so that's three T-shirts out. It also means that these. Three people are in for the ultimate grand prize if you get all five. Correct?, I don't even know what the grand prize is yet, but it's gonna be really grand. I do promise. but thank you to everyone who did submit. Let me tell you again, We're talking about a very specific problem that happened in a very specific brewery. Everyone's answers would catch a similar issue in a different brewery. It's just that this one was very specific, all incredible answers. Honestly, it's, it's great to, to hear how people decipher and go through these issues and look for some of the more. Obvious and super obscure things. People have a very, very good ability to problem solve in this industry, and it's really cool to see that. What I say is, let's keep going. We've got another absolute doozy of a problem coming our way today, so let's not mess around. So welcome back to the miniseries Jonas, and welcome to the mini series, Alan. Thank you. Thanks a lot. It's good to see you guys. Good to see you guys. Jonas, I don't think you were at BEERX, right? I mean, it was pretty hectic, it's tough to know who's there and who's not, but I'm pretty sure I didn't see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, as my turf is more European countries, and last week I have been already. In Italian and then afterwards in Stockholm. Now in two days, I'm gonna fly to Croatia. There's a nice conference in Karlovac. I can only recommend it for the next year if someone is interested. Hmm. I mean that sounds pretty fun. Probably slightly, I dunno, probably slightly warmer than, than Beer X. I hope so. Yeah. Alan, how are you? Welcome to the sh welcome to the miniseries, the show Thank you. Yeah, I'm doing good. All, to be all the way from the states, Right. Yeah. I'm in Colorado right now. Amazing, amazing. So we, let the listeners know who you are and, and how you ended up in this seat. Yeah. So, I started my beer journey back, about 15, 20 years ago. I. Applied to be in the Master Brewers Program at uc, Davis out in California. And I was told I was accepted, but needed to wait five years to matriculate. So that's why there was that 15 to 20 years. during that time I took my, chemistry degree and did nothing with it. I worked in a record shop. I ended up going and traveling a little bit to Spain, where I met my wife, who's also from Colorado, but happened to be out there. Then I went back to the States, went up to Alaska and got a teaching degree, Hmm, my pilot's license and was a Bush pilot as well as a teacher in Alaska for a no way. And then as soon as I got the call saying I can go to, beer school, dropped everything, ran to beer school and have been in the craft industry in Colorado, primarily. but yeah. Been kind of all around. after working in a few smaller craft breweries, ended up working at a dedicated gluten-free brewery in Colorado, holiday brewing, which is. A little different than it is over there in that you can't actually use enzymes to reduce the gluten. You have to use gluten-free ingredients from the start. So I was brewing with millet and buckwheat malt and using enzymes to get all of the, to get all of the starches converted. and then I took a little bit of time off to be a stay at home dad, but after that, saw that Murphy and son wanted somebody in the states with enzyme experience. so I was lucky enough to join about a year and a half ago. Alan, that is, some interesting CV you've got there. Not gonna lie. a Bush pilot in Alaska is, is not what I expected you to say, to be perfectly honest. That's so cool. do you miss those days at all? not as much because now that I have little kids, I get to explore an entirely different facet of life. So it. That an entirely different side of things now. Ex? Yes. An entirely different side of things. yeah. That's nice. And you're based in Colorado, that's a pretty happening place of the craft beer world. that, and I mean world, not just America. That's, I think a lot of people over here in the UK look at admiration. a lot of what the Colorado breweries have done over the years. So a cool, a cool place to call home brewery wise. Absolutely. Yeah. With the Brewers Association being founded here back in the day, along with the Home Brewers Association for the us, that's all based out of Boulder, Colorado, which is actually my hometown. So. Amazing. that's great. look, I know after these two weeks, there is just gonna be a of people wanting to listen to the solution to this major problem. Jonas, I gotta admit it was. difficult. I, that pattern, that's what just throws through me through a lot of people, is just that odd pattern. Really struggled to make sense of that. So let's go through it. us how that problem was solved. let's see how we were able to solve this problem. And I have to be honest, we're kind of lucky as well. It is a really tricky one. So what we did, we arrived there at the brewery and we also said, let's go through all, all the processes again. Let's go through all the departments. We were taking the water, we were taking the water before adjustment when it came in from the city. after adjustment, after our all, after the minerals were added. We were checking the chlorine levels. We were checking for contaminations at every corner of the brewery. You wouldn't imagine. So we were also like, we try, we were trying to wrapping our heads, heads around it and it was tricky for us as well, so we're kind of running into, yeah, against the wall. But then we said, yeah, we're not leaving here before going one more time through all of the different processes. And luckily for us it was a Friday. So what happened was that we were going through all the processes again, and we were walking physically through the departments for the different, brewery sections. And there as it was Friday, it was cleaning day obviously. So cleaning day means. Chemicals are used, and as we said before, we only knew that there was two chemicals with chlorine, one that was used in the water, cattle. So there we didn't see any residuals or anything that got in contact with the beer, with the product itself. But the second one that we knew that it was used for the floor, but we also didn't see it as a problem because how did the floor get in contact with the beer itself? Anyways, we're walking through all the departments and then we were luckily walking by the filtration cellar, so the department where the filtration happens. And there we saw that the floor was still bit wet after the cleaning. And then we were asked, then we were talking to the guys, to the brewers that were cleaning, and they said, yeah, yeah. So here we use the, the chemicals that contain chlorine. We also have some older ones that contain chlorine, might even contain chlor ol, we're not sure. They said. And then we were looking into this, filtration room, so this room where the powders were stored. And there the, and the PVPP was stored, for example. And here they cleaned as well. Usually they were only hoovering. Sometimes they were cleaning this with the four floor cleaning chemicals. And this was happening really rarely, not too often. So this was coming into our pattern, something that. Didn't evolve or happen often. And then we looked what could be the connection there. And we saw when we went inside this storing room for the powders that the wooden pallets were moist at the bottom. So they were soaking up some of these chemicals and what then actually happened, and we also couldn't imagine that it's possible. This soaked up pallets. The chemicals were slowly transferring into the lower bottom of the, the lower layer of the, filtration aids, which were keel or PVPP. And this actually, we were talking with, laboratories afterwards. In this small amounts that this chlor or chloro phenol that was also in the old cleaning agents was TransParenting TransParenting into the PVPP or Keel Gore. It was possible that this keel Gore when it was used in the filtration afterwards, then this was transferring into the beer and that you were smelling afterwards a medicinal or disinfectant like taste. This is also why it only happened. Hmm. Every couple of months because it was no pattern when they are cleaning with chemicals, when the brewery is using the lower, lower layer of the filtration aids. So no pattern at all. And we were lucky that we were there on a Friday, actually. If not, they would've, actually, destroyed maybe even more batches in the last couple of years. So that was, that was the solution of the problem. Oh my Lord. That is, That is so good. That's a, that's a tough thing. I mean, imagine when you walked into that. Into the room where they were cleaning. Was there a light bulb moment or was it like, should we just look at this because we're looking for everything right now? Yeah. First of all, I was surprised that, yeah, they were firstly cleaning that floor where powder's inside and they said like, only a few times, we don't do it always. Usually we hoovering. And that's why I was asking why is it wet in the powder room? Yeah. So. Hmm. There was kind of this not light, not light bulb moment, but then coming with the discussions and talking with the brewers, we said there, we actually might found something there. That's amazing. I mean, I was definitely, and I know a lot of people were as well, thinking of how that chlorinated product in the brewhouse would get into theirs.'cause that seemed like the real source, didn't it? I mean, as you said, how on earth. Would a chlorine based floor cleaner end up in a beer without some sort of massive catastrophe, but actually those wooden pallets and powders, that's a niche entry. Yeah. That's good fun. That's a good problem. Jonas, I, thank you so much for, for bringing that to us. I think there's gonna be probably a bunch of questions can people reach out to you? Is that all right? Yes. with their thoughts and opinions and everything? I think it'd be quite fun for people to have that interaction with the guests as well as just, hearing the problem, but hearing more about it as well. That'd be really good. Of course, definitely we're gonna post, my LinkedIn and my work email in the comments, and then people can reach out, no matter the question, no matter what's the problem or issue. Amazing. And yeah, if someone has random chlorine or disinfectant like aromas in their beer, then you know, go speak to Jonas. It seems to be the, the main guide of solving these. That's an incredible catch. So for now, Jonas, Yep. thank you so much for being on the show. you are gonna come back, right? You've got another problem for us. Yes. In a couple of weeks we're gonna talk about the next problem. Yeah. And you promise I. time it's not gonna be, disinfectant and chlorine in the, in the wooden pallets that gets through to the ilga. I can promise that, but it's also related with an off flavor. So we gonna see what. good stuff. I think all flavors are really fun, they can come from so many sources as we're finding out, so that's what makes them fun. And you know, every brewer gets quite scared about them. I think a chloro one is a disaster, to be honest. That's one of the worst, I would say that's up their top five. Least desirable. That's a true taint on an off flavor, isn't it? Definitely. Yes. Yiannis, thank you so much. Thanks a lot. See you later, man. So Alan, that was a pretty crazy problem. No. I know that's a interesting source for, all heard. I don't think many people have. it's tough to catch that, but there was, there was a couple of clues in there. the clues in there were, it was filtered every time every beer was filtered. So for me, I was trying to look at what processes were happening every single time Mm-hmm. it was so sporadic. So it must be something that's happening to every single beer. And then also had to be this chlorine, right? The, the water. They'd gone through the water. So it was, how did that get in there? That was really what I just couldn't quite, and it was quite difficult to work out, but that was a good entrance into the, Yeah. No, that was into the world of problem solving in breweries. so Alan. thing I've always really wondered about is, how difficult it must be for us brewers to ship across their whole area. I mean, it's such a big, massive area to cover different temperature zones and everything, and. I remember our, our good friend from a previous episode, tur, did some amazing research on increasing shelf life. I think that translated into a, into a product in the end, but can you tell us a bit more about those challenges? Mm-hmm. Yeah, no terms. was doing some research into antioxidants, in brewing, and that ended up coming out as our mash life product, which the US shelf stability is king. We're shipping across multiple state lines. We're shipping hundreds, if not thousands of miles away, and that means that any. Out of date product is going to be very difficult to recall or dispose of. So being able to increase shelf stability and shelf life against oxidation is incredibly important here in the States. so, and there's also some legal framework that makes it even more so because you're dealing with other businesses, being the ones distributing your product and also being liable for some of that out of date. of date beer. So being able to increase shelf life is a huge, huge benefit to craft brewers as well as the macro brewers here in the states. Mash life is doing a really great job of helping to enhance that, especially with all the hop heavy beers that we have coming out in the states. so typically a, a craft, a craft. IPA West Coast style IPA that's really heavy on the hops, you know, six plus pounds per barrel, in US terminology. Whatever that means. Yeah, no, this is gonna be something that is incredibly heavily dry. Hopped typically as a shelf life in package of 90 days is pretty Wow. For a craft brewer, and that makes it difficult to pick up distribution. So being able to enhance that through mash life, is a great resource for brewers across all sizes. we've also had luck with people using it at small, small scale where they're only putting it into their competition beers because you have no control over the beer. Once it goes into competition. So for things like GABF or World Beer Cup or some of the local, Guild beer competitions, having something that is just extra protected against oxidation, helps when you're going into judging, and the way that Mash Life works. Is it binds or chelates to iron and copper in the mash or the kettle, and pulls it out preventing secondary oxidation through some of those free radical oxidation pathways that occur in package. oxygen itself, O2 is fairly inert. It's not going to break apart on its own volition, so you do need something to catalyze that oxidative reaction in package. And a big one is iron. these transition metals that can have a few different oxidative states breaking apart that O2 bond, leading to cascading oxidation in Hm. So by cutting off the metal at the start. You're not gonna be able to have oxidation in package to nearly the same degree. It has to find other pathways which are less favorable for oxidation in order to occur. Yeah. That's so interesting. I do, you know what that pro, that's a big problem having to ship your beer. I mean, I know the people here in the UK. Don't like to ship their beer into Europe, but that journey is so short compared to some of the journey and especially like East Coast to West Coast. Right. That's a big trip. even where I'm in, in Colorado, we used to ship, beer at my last brewery from Colorado down to Texas. That's a day and a half truck ride sitting in high yeah. and getting a refrigerated truck is incredibly Hmm. So we're talking about trying to minimize shipping costs. Trying to reduce it from like $3,000 just to get beer where it needs to Yeah, that's, down. And so a lot of people to not use the refrigerated shipping. So anything you can do to prevent oxidation before it gets consumer is huge. yeah. Amazing. Alan, that's, yeah, obviously it's so interesting to hear. I, I love hearing about challenges outside of the UK and Europe, because that's what I'm kind of used to. so it's really cool to hear that, especially with temperatures and shelf stability but let's keep people waiting no longer. Let's dive into. The second problem that we've occurred in this mini series, and today's issue is going to be fun and unique it's time critical, right? Mm-hmm. So I want people to listen carefully to the brewery setup as unlike other issues, you are going to have to crack this one without previously explored avenues. This is a pressure on situation. You are a head brewer and someone's brought this problem to you. It's time critical, and I want to know what you would do to first act and then later solve the problems. There's gonna be a two part answer to this, Alan, take it away. All right, so is a brewery that's based in the us. It's a craft brewery. we were producing at the time about 2,500 barrels per year. And as you can imagine, we were making a pretty diverse range of styles. this brewery was located, is still actually located in a historic building built circa 1899, which please remember is old for the us especially for Colorado. yeah. The state was founded in 1876, so this is 20 some years after the state was founded. We have a building that's still up and the brewery's still in there due to the age of the building. uniquely for the states, the brewery was split across two floors. And it was not designed into that building. with the main floor that held the brew house and most of the fermenters and the basement held the serving and conditioning tanks, the canning line, four additional conical fermenters in a separate room, and four open top fermenters in another closed room, as well as the grain and hop storage and the mill room. The mill room was typical. We had two silos feeding in from the ground level down into the mill room in the basement. was a two roller mill feeding to a grist case in the mill room that then the grain was fed up to the second floor for the actual brewing. there was also a manual hopper here to add bag malts depending on the recipe. the brewhouse was a two vessel pub style system with a mash slash louder tun and then a kettle slash whirlpool. it was pretty standard. That's the standard, set up for most breweries of this size in the us. But one of the cool things that made it a little different was that it actually had one of the last remaining steels mash arms in the US for the mash ton. that steels mash arm is now sadly scrapped. but it was one of the last ones remaining at the time. The team was typical as well. was three brewers who split duties across brewing, cellaring and cleaning, the head brewer who would help out. There was also a couple temporary staff for, the canning line. Rarely did the same brewer run the brew house on consecutive days, so the team kept moving around, shifting duties. schedule was split and working days were between Monday and Saturday with everyone having Sunday off and then having an additional day off during the week. The historic nature of the building meant that the brewhouse was largely Yep. suit the space, and the basement was just a maze of interconnected rooms with barely enough space for the equipment wedged in every corner. There was an 1890s elevator that had been torn out and replaced with fermenters feed storage for horses back in the day was turned into the mail room, and every other nook and cranny was stuffed with beer, either aging in barrels, there was keg washers, there was spare pumps, and every so often there was a customer who just got lost looking for the toilets down there. So one Monday morning I was running the canning line we were brewing a peach cream ale with a simple malt bill of about 50 52 row base malt and a pilsner malt, with about 5% by weight of malted corn from a local Maltster Peach comes in, that was coming in as a puree, and it was going to be added in the fermenter later on. We were short staffed that day, so the brewer was helping me on the candy line. When the shift brewer ran in panicked, the mash was just finishing up and she was starting to louder to the kettle. But the wart for the peach cream ale was very, very dark, and it tasted sour to her. The pH reading was close to four, maybe a little bit below. naturally everyone was alarmed. The head brewer exact asked her exactly what she had done that morning and what had happened in between starting the brew to this, she explained that nothing than usual had happened and she had followed the SOP as normal. that SOP was, that the mash ton was rinsed and warmed up through the steels mash arm, which also rinsed out the steels mash arm. At that time, that water was dumped and it looked normal. After that, there was a base layer of water added to cover up the false bottom of the mash tun. Then water was left running through the mash arm for grain nun. Grain nun starts from the mill room in the basement. The brewer from the previous Saturday had pulled the specialty grain in on a pallet just to help out today's brewer, so that way the today's brewer could just add the base malt through the silo auger. And she also confirmed that that visually looked fine, then she opened up the bags of specialty malt and started to add those. Those also were looked completely fine. She turned the auger on from the mill. she turned the auger on from the milled grain bin, and then went back upstairs to check on the mash as it was progressing. By the time she arrived upstairs, the mash ton was already about a third filled evened out the top of the grain bed and just repeated that step towards the end of grain in with the steels mash arm. It was all mixed in. You just had to create a smooth layer on top to make sure that it was able to have the normal filter bed. The mash was left to convert for about 30 minutes, after which she started a boil for about 15 minutes. The wart seemed a little dark at that time, but she had never brewed this beer before and was not overly concerned yet thinking that it would lighten up as water was added during the sparge and lauter. Unfortunately, due to us being short staffed, she didn't take PH readings at the start of that mash rest, so that was something that had to happen a little bit later. Vof, she grabbed a sample and let it sit with the pH meter just to stabilize the reading, and then began the louder. Once the grain bed was visible, she turned on the sparge arm, and that's when she noticed the brown color of the wart in the kettle. the pH that she had grabbed, and it was about 3.8. instantly shut off all the valves, turned the water off, and ran to get the head brewer. And now here we are. the head brewer. The whole team is looking at you. What do you do and how do you solve this issue? Alan, this is so good. This is so good. That's it. I mean, in theory. People shouldn't be able to go back and listen to this. You can maybe listen to the first part, but then you've gotta be like, you've gotta have this. That's the true challenge of being the head brewer, right? Everyone's looking at you, just like you said, and then you've gotta come up with the answer. You've gotta have a, let's do this, let's do that. You don't have to have the solution, but you do have to know what to do next. So the answers for this parts. What do you do next? What's your immediate steps next? How, and then what is the root cause of this issue? How do you solve this from happening again, Yeah, I mean, you have a mash, you've hit pause on it, but you can't let the reactions go much more. You need to move forward and have a plan. Is it gonna get dumped? Do you have a solution to fix it? Have to it out on the fly. That's what being a head brewer you can't just stand there for two weeks. Once you figure out the root cause, you can't. You gotta do it. And. You can though as a Yeah. Yeah, you can let it pause the two weeks. That's so good. Yeah. okay, so Alan, look, I'm gonna see you in a couple weeks time where you're gonna do the big reveal. Sounds good. in between that time, please make sure you fill out the form, submit. If you've got any questions, please feel free to reach out and remember, if you're new here, hit that subscribe button. Make sure you don't miss the answer. You never will miss another one of these problems. I'll catch you on the next episode of BREW-DO.