BREW-DO Ep 06 - The Whodunnit? Show - The Last Word

The final episode is here🕵🏻‍♂️

One last answer.

After five weeks of strange brewing problems, hidden culprits and technical head scratching, it is time to close the case.

In this episode, I - Chris Lewington, are joined again by Murphy’s technical expert Fran Carr to reveal the answer to last week’s mystery.

The plates were showing a serious aerobic bacteria problem.

The yeast samples looked infected.

The team were checking tanks, changing seals, reviewing CIP logs and tasting beer like their lives depended on it.

But nothing quite added up.

So where was the problem actually coming from?

If this is your first BREW DO episode, go back and listen from the start. There are five real world brewing mysteries waiting for you.

A huge thank you to Murphy and Son for supplying the problems, the expertise and the proper brewing nightmares.

Welcome back to BREW DO.

And for now, case closed. Thank you for listening.

Transcript

0:09

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final edition of Brew-Do, the Modern Brewer podcast miniseries that shares real world brewing mysteries that have caused brewers years of head scratching and asks you the listener to solve it. It has been a hell of a ride, and whilst I am very sad that it's coming to an end, I'm of course thankful that it's even happened. I can't stress how big of a thank you to everyone at Murphy's who have, of course, without them, without their contribution, this would not have been possible. And of course, to you, the listener, to everyone who's tuned in, whether it was your first episode, or you've been through them all, whoever's got involved, shared the podcast, come up to me or any of the Murphy's team and have shared their answers, shared their admiration, or even just given some good constructive feedback, it's all gone down really well. So thank you so much. As always, before we get into the final answer to the final problem with Fran, a quick announcement from me personally., Unfortunately I'm gonna say the Modern Brewer Podcast is gonna be taking a bit of a break. It's not going anywhere. It's not closing, but I am gonna take a bit of a break. Basically, I have installed energy monitoring submeters at three major UK craft breweries, submetering around 65 to sort of 75% of their total site energy consumption through only 10 or 15 of their major electrical users. I'm receiving data every 30 seconds from these major electrical users, and that data flows into a secured server where I work on reductions, spotting patterns and trends with the breweries, to actively work on the reductions of these major electrical users. I've also built an email insight and alert system., Yeah, sick. It's been like providing these brewers with daily, weekly, monthly energy reporting, allowing them to stay in kind of complete control of their energy consumption. I work with them every step of the way., It's not just a one and done. I've been working with these three breweries actively over the last three months now., And, you know, , with the UK energy prices and anyone who subscribed to Brew Resourceful's email would know the impact of the Iranian war on the UK energy prices., They're on the rise, unfortunately. So it means that I'm actually gonna be spending a lot of my energy on building the proper software that this deserves on top of everything I've already built. And I kind of need to fully dedicate myself to do this., This is why the Modern Brewer Podcast is gonna be taking a break., It's been a hail, a busy few months, , with this my normal work and of course, building this new business and realising that the accelerator has to be pushed to try and help as many breweries as I can, , before we see any more closures, to be honest, which I don't think we any of us wanna see. So, yeah, the Modern Brewer Podcast will be taking a small break. I can't say exactly when it'll be back, but I hope to be, you know, summertime. I will keep everyone posted, of course, on socials, et cetera. And, , if you hit subscribe the next time the Modern Brew Podcast comes out, it'll get straight , onto your notification so you won't miss it., And finally, of course, if anyone is interested in having energy monitors installed in their brewery, , so far it's looking like the breweries that we are installing, the Energy Monitors route, we're kind of looking at five to 10% annual reduction, and that's of total site energy,, across just those 10 to 15 submeters, , and for making the exact same amount of beers. So yeah, if anyone is interested in this and wants to come along, this the first three of the pilot study, we're almost coming out the end of that. Now I've got, and then I'm stalling in another two. So I got room for a few more,, over the next few months. So if you listen to this and think it's something of interest, please just hit me up and I'll let you know how it all works. And hopefully we can, we can start actively fighting energy together. So, yes, without further ado, I'll waste no more time of your precious, precious time. So here we go. The last episode of the Brew-Do miniseries commences. Here we go. Welcome back to the show, Fran. How have you been? Good. me everything. So I've been visiting breweries like I do. Of course. a living. troubleshooting, people with their liquor reports, making sure that they're using the right liquor treatments, Mm. some enzyme filterability trials, which I always enjoy doing. and more optimizations. Kettle fining optimizations is the I, of my life. That's all I do. it's them in my sleep. not a person who's been on the show, who hasn't mentioned finings, optimization tests. Seems like quite a common thing happening throughout. it's, Yeah, through everyone. it's a bespoke dosage rate to the brewer, so it has to be done. You, you need to get the right rate.'cause if you don't get the right rate, you're gonna have a haze issue either way. you, Yeah. or over fine, you're gonna get Hayes issue. the majority of I, the majority of Hayes issues happen in the brew house, right. I'm so, so convinced by that, just for my own life. You always look at the centrifuging filter fermentation's. Nearly always, always, the work hell or Whirlpool or around the hot side. So it's really important to do it. I did one recently where they was dosing in at 40 parts per million, but the actual result was five parts per million, which is a huge difference. And it's, you just don't notice it until you, you test it. So it's really important to get them what happens to the, to the work when you are over finding at that level, what happens? Mm. fine. Your, your, your sediment, your bottoms become fluffy. You get fluffy bottoms, not compact bottoms, what you're, you're meant to get. And they also can become very gel-like and that can carry off onto the next stage and cause the haze. Yeah. So always look for a really compact bottom and then a clear haze in your. How often should you be optimizing recipe, every time there's a New season's malt, every time you change, I think like vessels, if you've got different vessels or equipment. Yeah. And if you don't have any of that going on, then at least once a year. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm trying to think of what time, how often we, we used to do it, So actually I tell you what we were doing, but anyway, and we had him hof cones on everything for the words, actually there was a guy called Tony, who I used to work with. he used to optimize. Most weeks. Yeah, we were, yeah. Yeah. We did cones on everything. Pictures of all the cones. We'd report on them, check it, and be like, yeah, that's not right. Up and down every week. That was his, not his. That was his job, but that was his like that was his project. Yeah. Tony's Conies, that's what he used to be called. be honest, the more you do it, the quicker you do it and the more you know you get used to it. It's, it doesn't take too much time out. So on him and yeah. Good Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. really helps. We, as I said, like a lot, we just found that nearly all of our haze problems came from the brew house, so we just went straight to the source. That's where we found, and to be honest, our haze problems really rescinded after that. the brew house, always start from upstream and then go downstream. You'll have a knock on effect of improving it better as you're going down. So yeah, look at your water first though, your water Yeah, I always remember that. You know, that's a very Fran statement. Always look at your, yes, it's a ba, it's, yeah, it can cause so many problems not getting your water treated properly. So yeah, okay, Fran, I'm a nag, we can't, keep people waiting any longer. Every time we can't do it. We keep finding ways, Let's go for it. Okay, so. as you know, all brewers, they're really, really busy and sometimes, you know, everything's getting on top of them and, you know, plating isn't the top of their priorities. one day one of the brewers had realized, oh no, we've run outta sterile ionized water. What can we use? So he used an old tub of ionized sterile water dilute the yeast to plate up with. there you go. Eureka moment was they replaced the water with a fresh batch all of a sudden TTC was not read anywhere. You couldn't see colonies anymore, and the problem was solved. That's mad. That's it. Yeah. So the short period he had used this small amount of dnis water Oh a couple of weeks, my God. was what caused the issue. So dread. All that stress. All those, stress from the breweries, all of those flavor flags, what were they? What were they from? False. Well, what do you think, have you ever had any issues before in the Brew house and you do this flavor flagging thing on what happens? Yeah. Well, do you know what the Yeah, it's, it's the hysteria. is, Honestly, brewers become hysterical when they, and especially on the floor, it's like a little, old school gossip parlor. You know, like people are just, they're just chatting. They're chatting and then all of a sudden people, once I know if we had sensory panels, right? So, but if the word got out that there was a batch, that was a bit whatever. You the amount of things that were flagged with like, let's say sulfur for the next two weeks. We have no sulfur in whatsoever. Brewers are very like, they're like, oh no, yeah, I get this and I get that. When there's a problem, they go looking. When they think there's a problem, they go looking for the outcome. I mean, I do it myself sometimes as well. I get it. It's just, off flavors, I think every off flavor was listed in their records. You know, that's just ridiculous because Yeah. some Yeah. Like I get chloro, possible, H two s and everyone's like, ah, this is crazy. And all it was was, yeah. You know what? well old, not fresh water. And I, I tell you why, because you only, of course, you're only, ever diluting yeast samples. You don't dilute work beer or, so you have to dilute the yeast because you can't play, No. you can't play yeast. So yeah, that's why it was only coming up on that. That's so funny. Oh. Yeah. No wonder they don't forget that. I remember you saying you spoke to them and they Yeah. You don't forget that I, I find micro fascinating. I've worked with it throughout nearly all my career. I think it's important to have one person in charge of it for this, for this reason. This is what happens when people try rush plating. It's, it's a skill. It takes dedication. attention to detail. Massive. Hugely. If Yeah. if you do micro rush, you're gonna end up with things like this because, but it is quite time consuming in itself. I get it. And, yeah, I quite like plating as a, as a, I quite like doing it when I used to do it, but only very, like, I couldn't be doing a brew house and plating at the same time. It doesn't seem like a reasonable thing. always, always look at your batch numbers. Always look at your expiry dates so everything's got an expiry date. Just make sure that everything's up to date Exactly. Yeah. And don't use old dnis water. That's also a solid one. But you know, it happens. You just, you're busy, you pick up the tub, you, it won't look contaminated. It's just water. Yeah, Yeah. I'm sure there's a few people who've been racking their brains about what this could possibly be, and it's almost just contaminated di wall. it's just a massive dome moment when you find out, oh, which brewery did, which brewer did it? Which one replaced the water? And Yeah. Yeah. And they all kept doing, something it's a good skill. That's a nice takeaway. Well, Is the beer was perfect. yeah, the beer was perfect. Yeah. Ridiculous. I mean, they sold it anyway.'cause it was, you know, overall it was fine. Right. I think they were, the taints they were getting were very like, art small and it wasn't like it stopped the whole of production, but it was just something that just really like perplexed people as to what was happening. Yeah. Bamboozled them. Yeah. look, Fran, that, that was a great problem to bring to the table. Thank you so much. And the big one, the showstopper, the final one. I'm sure that after four episodes people are really going down some paths trying to find out, you know, we've had contaminated or cross-contaminated pallets leaking into key into PVPP that was getting into the product, Oh into beer. So we've had it all up and down this, series and I don't think anyone might have got this one so straight away, we've had a whole range of issues and solutions and I hope, the showstopper was one to remind people that sometimes the problems just don't exist. All in. It's all in your head. Actually what you thought was nothing. It was a figment of your imagination and it caused you nothing but stress for absolutely no reason. Yeah, And on that bombshell of bad information. thank you so much, Fran. it's a Thank you so much Murphy's. this has been nothing short of fun, so thank you so much for coming on. It's a pleasure. And if anyone has any technical issues, just give us a call. I am normally first portal call for technical, so yeah, do it. Ring us if you've got any problems. Yeah. The Agni answer the brewing industry. I'm I thank you. for Brewers and you. Thank you. Bye.