The beginnings of brewing traditions

Along with beer, students are brewing up new traditions…

At the start of the year, seniors Aidan Bomski, Lauren Carlisle, Ethan Saye and Harith Razif mashed their resources together to brew some of the department’s first ever beer in the new John C. Kuetemeyer Instructional Laboratories. Brian Pfleger, a Karen and William Monfre Professor, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, and R. Byron Bird Department Chair, runs the lab. PhD student, Josh Abraham, works alongside Pfleger to run the lab and help the students.

Now as they finish their education in Summer Lab, the beer is done and they can now taste their hard work! Among the lists of original brews are “Last Brew rah rah” Hefeweizen, “Caramel Cream Dream” Cream Ale, “The Oilrig” Red Ale, “Midnight Monsoon” Strong Belgian, and an English Bitter Ale.

Abraham notes how rewarding it is to see how the brews turned out. He’s proud to observe an increase in the brew quality between some of their first batches and more recent batches.

Germinating goals

Even a common process like brewing involves many relevant chemical engineering principles, such as heat exchange, kinetics, thermodynamics and material balances. When students worked in the fermentation lab for their Summer Lab informal modules, they had the chance to explore different aspects, ranging from temperature and pH of the sugar extraction to how additional nutrients affect the final beer flavor.

A primary goal of the fermentation lab is to encourage students to propose a hypothesis and use that to drive their exploration and experimentation. By using an approachable subject, it can make this process easier for the students and help with creativity. “I hope that students learned how to ask interesting and important questions, and to design clever and measurable experiments that may answer those questions. In their careers, maybe none of them will brew beer, but all of them will have to think critically and consider data-driven ways to make conclusions,” said Abraham. “It was especially exciting to see how the results from early summer lab experiments could be used to improve the brew process in future experiments, acting almost iteratively to enhance the ways which we utilized the equipment in the space to create better and better brews.”

Mastering the mash

Though brewing might be an approachable and simple subject on the surface, that’s not how it always goes in practice. For Saye, Bomski, Carlisle and Razif, they were new to the brewing process and the equipment. “Even when following the instructions to a T, something is bound to go wrong,” said Saye. And in fact it did. Their first brew, a blonde ale, turned out to be “completely undrinkable.” The ale failed to fully ferment and the mashing process was imperfect, both of which contributed to low-quality flavors in the ale.

Another challenge they faced was overcoming difficulties in their initial extraction of the sugars from the grain. To achieve high sugar extraction for high ABV brews, like Midnight Monsoon, they had to learn how to better select pH, temperature and operate the recirculation loop, which occurs during the mashing process of brewing to improve the efficiency of sugar extraction that can then be fermented into ethanol.

From his experience, Saye found the brewing process to be one that is best learned by doing. “You have to keep doing it over and over to get better. You might follow the recipe exactly, but there are too many little tricks that improve the workflow that can only really be learned by doing—there’s no way around the learning process.” Thankfully, professor Pfleger was there to provide his expertise and help guide the students.

The making of Midnight Monsoon

One brew in particular has a very fitting name. While brewing Midnight Monsoon, Bomski and Abraham, found themselves stuck in the lab due to tornado warnings on the evening of Tuesday, May 21st. Afterwards, Bomski gave it the name. A Strong Belgian, it has aroma notes of orange, citrus, and clove which are also present in the flavor of the beer. It has a smooth and sweet flavor primarily with a semi-dry finish and subtle bitter aftertaste, which is what you’d expect for a Strong Belgian ale.

Out of all the recent brews, Abraham considered it one of the more challenging brews for multiple reasons. One reason being the timing; they had to contend with the storm and other students using the lab. The brew was also technically difficult. “It has a high ABV and we had issues with the temperature of the basement during the fermentation window. There was a day where the humidity and heat pushed the basement temperature past 80 degrees Fahrenheit. We suspected our yeast died, so we had to re-pitch additional yeast in the middle of the week,” said Abraham.

Those students, including Bomski, who put in the work to product a stellar beer receive a top grade. To get this grade, the beer needs to check a whole host of boxes, including style, presentation, flavor, and color. “What I’m looking for is whether it could reasonably be a product you could package and sell. ‘Would someone purchase this beer?’ is the question I’m asking,” says Pfleger. Receiving a top grade gives students the opportunity to sign the fume hood and leave a lasting mark on UW-Madison. A tradition Pfleger is looking forward to continuing in the years to come.