1. Quality Control and Beer Science at Jack’s Abby Brewing Kate Steblenko
Microbrew
Quality Control and Beer Science at Jack’s Abby Brewing
Kate Steblenko

2. Jack’s Abby Brewing Started in 2011 New Brewery opening this winter
2011 – 500 bbls
2012 – 1,500 bbls
2013 – 6,000 bbls
2014 – 14,000 bbls
2015 – 22,000 bbls
2016 – 50,000 bbls?
New Brewery opening this winter
~5X bigger
Lab space 60 ft2  270 ft2

3. The New Space
Jack’s Abby Instagram

4. QA/QC team
The highest in quality

5. Kate Steblenko Beer Scientist
UVM 2013 graduate
BS in Biochemistry and molecular genetics
Resident nerd

6. Tim Wilson Quality Manager
Siebel Institute of Technology & Doemens Academy – 2007
Runs sensory program
Enjoys Corona

7. Sarah Pott QA/QC Technician
Part time kegger
Part time lab rat
Full time push up champion
Graduate of Drop-In’s American Brewers Guild program

10. Tasks Daily Weekly/Monthly Forced fermentations Cell counts
Microbiology
Fill heights
Dissolved Oxygen
Sensory Education
Grist analysis

11. Forced Fermentations Naturally carbonated beers Bung timing
Batch to batch consistency
Wort quality
Yeast health
Conducted day after brew (as soon as entire batch is in tank if possible)
Run for 1-2 days, until yeast floccs
Bung tanks 1.1 plato above forced ferm gravity
allows enough natural carbon dioxide evolution, goes into beer, gives us co2
Compare wort fermentation between batches – change malt bill
Monitor beers that have slowed or stalled

12. Cell Counts Current Future Adequate pitch
Lager – 1.5 x 107 cells/ml/
Underpitching and overpitching
Yeast health, growth, and viability
Yeast propagation system
Slurry counting
Appropriate pitch
1.5 x 106 cells/ml/°P OG
Flow meter on prop system  pitch exact volume needed
Underpitching is a big problem
beer won’t ferment well – off flavors and other bad stuff, might not finish at all
Overpitching is also a problem
***off flavors related to overpitching
Yeast health – monitor growth, viability –
had a beer that was stalling, not doing what we wanted
yeast had stall out, not replicating
although we had an adequate pitch to start, it didn’t grow  stressed yeast  stressed beer
Working on establishing a procedure to count yeast slurry
currently cone to cone yeast pitching
will be able to pitch the RIGHT amount, not simply “enough”

13. Microbiology Media Frequency HLP WLN/WLD Sampling Plating
Anaerobic in 15 ml conical tubes
Detects lactobacillus and pediococcus
WLN/WLD
Brewery related organisms
Add cycloheximide to inhibit Saccharomyces species
Sampling
Day 1
Day 7
Brite tank
Finished Product
Plating
Every 1-2 days
Hu’s Lactobacillus Pediococcus media
contains thioglycollate to scrub O2 out of solution
Wallerstein Nutritional/differential media

14. Aseptic Technique
You do not NEED a sterile hood! (although it REALLY helps!)
Requires an undisturbed air space
Limit movement in the air space as well as people moving around it
Flame everything
I can talk more about this later if anyone needs, if the workshop doesn’t teach it

15. Plating – Past and Present
Plate 1 mL of beer in process onto large petri dish
Allow time to soak into plate
Filter ~25 ml packaged beer through a 0.45 µM membrane
Use autoclavable, glass filtration system
Invert and incubate 4-6 days at 30°C, 10% CO2
Filter 10 ml of beer in process through a 0.45 µM membrane
Biosart 100 monitors
Plate onto small petri dish
Invert, incubate anaerobically 4-6 days at 30°C, 10% CO2
Larger sample size means results are more reliable
Peace of mind – filtering removes most bacteria, not missing anything
Filter, funnel, and membrane in one
From Weber - $1/each
Completely sterile

16. Anaerobic Incubation Systems
BD GasPak™ EZ Pouch System
BD GasPak™ EZ Container System
Avoid scary, expensive false positives
Container
reusable
still need to buy saches ($70/20) for o2 removal
can fit more, larger plates
usually $300/box
Pouch
high quality ziploc bag
fits fewer plates
we can fit 16 small plates, or 4 larger plates
~$90-100/20 packs (slightly more than replacement saches (70-80) for boxes)
we fill one pouch every 2 days
ONCE SYSTEM HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED, CANNOT OPEN TO ADD MORE PLATES
Eventual box systems maybe, once we have some more splash cash

17. A busy day in the hood Only WLD plating shown here Tools needed/used:
sterile beer samples (ours in Whirl-Pak bags)
2 plates WLD media for each beer to be plated
1 sterile biosart 100 monitor
flame source (we use blazer hand torch)
tweezers in alcohol – flame before each use, allow to cool
vacuum pump attached to hose
**secondary flask for catching beer – our manifold replacement
extra membranes
sterile 10 ml serological pipetts

18. Fill Heights At least 3 months of data for TTB
Use weights, final gravities, and math
Adjust filler accordingly
Underfill – unsellable
Overfill – loss of product
Total Packaged Oxygen
5 ml of overfill x 600 cases/run = 250 bottles of overfill
5 ml of underfill… bigger problems if someone comes knocking
Goal fill height = 355 ml

19. Dissolved Oxygen Centrifugation Before bottling
Adjust clamps, gaskets
Before bottling
Compare to post centrifuge levels
Assess oxidation levels
Purge with extra CO2
Throughout the bottling run
Adjust FOB

20. Sensory Monthly sensory training Employee education Off flavors
Warm aged bottles from time-points over the past few months
Employee education
Intentionally spiking hoponius union with off flavors from siebel
determine thresholds of detection
there are industry specs, but we want to see what our employees can do
start with way above threshold, work our way back down
Warm age 4 bottles from each run, test for shelf stability in worst case scenario
www/pinkbootssoiety.com

21. Grist Analysis Analyze each new silo delivery Test sieve
USA Standard test sieve
No. 10 (2.00 mm) – No. 100 (150 µm)
Still establishing specs
Industry specs are one thing, but what matters is what works on your system
We tried adjusting for some baseline industry specs after doing an analysis, ended up being too fine for our needs
Brewery by brewery basis

22. Sizing up the Program
Out with the old
In with the new!

23. Our First Investment
Tuttnauer 2450
Fits ml media bottles

24. Future Improvements Liquid media Larger hood space
Saves time, money, resources
Only works with Biosart 100 monitors
Larger hood space
Less turbulence
More room to move
Permanent hood installation
Manifold for vacuum pump
Multiple samples at once
Currently using solid agar media – time to pour, solidify, takes up hood space and time, wrapping, fridge space
Hood space – less movement, less chance of contamination,
more room to move – less chance of knocking stuff over, especially if doing HLP and WLD at the same time
Manifold – can buy them, we’re in the process of making one
adaptors available for Biosart 100 monitors, we found tubing that had the right diameter

25. New Lab, New Tools UV-Vis Spectrophotometer Alcolyzer
IBU
Color
Diacetyl
Alcolyzer
Alcohol percentage
Density pH
Calories
Dissolved O2 and CO2 meters
ca.hach.com
uk.hach.com

26. Cheers!
Kate Steblenko