March 8, 2024

Jeff Horne

Joe's Science Corner: All About Quality

March 8, 2024

Jeff Horne

Written By Joe Spearot

The importance of a good quality program can’t be understated, and that’s why it was so important for us to open with a dedicated quality program from day 1. With fast plans for growth (and that growth happening even quicker than expected), it was important to ensure we were producing beer to the highest quality we knew how.

Background & Education

Before my introduction to the beverage industry, I received my B.A. in Biology + Chemistry from Arcadia University, and later my Masters in Food Science from Drexel University. Coming out of High School, I planned on being a Forensic Scientist!

It was before my senior year at Arcadia that I was given the opportunity to travel abroad to Mudgee, Australia and work for Lowe Wine. I really thought it was an amazing introduction to the alcohol industry.

During my time at Arcadia, and throughout my studies at Drexel, I worked at Yards Brewing Company as a Quality Assurance Chemist, and later on after I graduated, found myself at Dogfish Head where I worked as a Sensory Specialist and Quality Technician. While working for Dogfish Head I tested for and passed my Advanced Cicerone exam (basically like being a sommelier in wine, but for beer), and proudly became the first and only Advanced Cicerone in the state (as of the writing of this blog).

While these might sound like big confusing titles, you can sum it up easily - I was part of the team that ensured the quality of the products we were making was up to our standards.

All this work ultimately led up to 2020, where I was approached about running the quality program here at FSBC, and the rest is history.

*Although this may not look great, this is a good plate! This is our house culture yeast for hazy beer brands.*

Quality at First State Brewing Company

We use a multi-pronged approach in our program to ensure we’re touching on each individual aspect of the quality of beer and raw ingredients. Let’s take a look at what each of those prongs looks like…

Microbiology

During my microbiology work in the lab, I’m looking to monitor all important beer-related living things that you can’t normally see with the naked eye. This can include monitoring the health of our yeast, (yeast harvest), ensuring our brewery hygiene is up to spec, and watching out for any potential spoilage organisms (including wild yeast and bacteria) that may make their way into beer.

Molecular

Related to Microbiology, the use of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) technology allows us to detect certain genes of wild yeast/bacteria in beer like Pediococcus, Lactobacillus, and Brettanomyces just to name a few.

Analytical

Using a variety of different tools throughout the brewing process, we monitor everything we can from the time we mill in grain, all the way to packaging and shipping beer (and even aging beer to see how it holds up after an extended period of time). Over the whole process, we record some 30+ individual data points like gravity, pH, alcohol level, dissolved oxygen, and others, to ensure consistency & quality.

Sensory

Sensory is everyone’s favorite part of the quality program because it often consists of drinking beer! I run sensory panels with every beer we release, in order to ensure it’s up to par with the quality we expect. New brands will go through a descriptive panel where participants will record all aromas and flavors they perceive from the beer, as well as other data points, and repeat beers will go through a release panel to ensure they match previous versions of the beer.

*Gravity check: Using a hydrometer lets us measure the amount of sugar remaining in a beer to determine it’s ABV.*

*One of beer’s biggest enemy is Oxygen. This DO meter allows us to measure dissolved oxygen in different ways to ensure there’s no Oyxgen where we don’t want it!*

Packaging

Packaging is just as important of a quality check as any other. During packaging we will work to ensure we’re hitting proper fill numbers that are within legal specifications, seam specifications are in check for cans, dissolved oxygen is at appropriate levels, and do other checks to ensure shelf stability.

November 17, 2023

Jeff Horne

The Almighty Tulip Glass

November 17, 2023

Jeff Horne

It’s in our logo, it’s painted on our wall at the brewery, and it’s printed on every can label we’ve ever made - what’s the deal with Tulip glasses? While there are hundreds of different styles of glassware used for beer, cocktails, and other beverages - we think the tulip is the best for a few reasons!

At its core, the tulip is incredibly versatile for every style of beer, and in our opinion, the most versatile style of glassware. Its mouth tapers in which concentrates the aroma of your beer into the top of the glass, aiding your drinking experience. The bulbous shape and elegant stem of the tulip is also perfect for a great presentation of your beer. The rounded bottom makes for an excellent place to rest the glass in your hand and allows the heat from your hand to gently warm the beer, releasing more aroma and flavor compounds.

When we first grab a tulip to pour a beer, we make sure we give it a quick rinse. This not only cleans any remaining sanitizer or dust from inside the glass but will slightly chill the glass before we pour your beer, to promote proper head formation. If you’ve ever seen small bubbles clinging to the side of your glass, that’s a sign of nucleation - aka, your glass is dirty!

You may notice certain beers are served in certain-sized tulips in our taproom. A light lager comes in a large, 16oz tulip, and a 15% imperial stout is served in a smaller, 10oz tulip. This is the practice of responsible alcohol serving - ensuring we’re serving higher ABV beers in smaller glasses to slow your consumption and keep someone safe from over-consumption.

Next time you go to grab a glass at home, think about reaching for a tulip to help elevate your drinking experience.

*The gentle curve up the side of the glass allows aromas to be concentrated at the top.*

November 10, 2023

Jeff Horne

Why Do We Boil Beer?

November 10, 2023

Jeff Horne

Technically, it’s not “beer” until we add hops – so a better question is, what is wort, and why do we boil it during the brewing process?

Wort is the sugary liquid we’re left with after we mash grain to turn starch from grains into fermentable sugars.

Boiling wort is just as important as any other step in the brewing process. A boil that isn’t strong enough, or isn’t long enough, can lead to some serious off-flavors in your beer. There are 6 main reasons we boil…

*Hop pellets are widely used in the brewing industry over whole cone hops. They contain all the vital acids with considerably less vegetal material.*

1. Sterilization

There’s tons of stuff that can be found in grain, hops, and other adjuncts that we don’t want in our beer. Boiling wort gets rid of any microorganisms we don’t want making it’s way into the finished product.

2. Hop Additions

Bittering - The addition of hops into the boil kettle is two-fold. Hops added during the boil will have their alpha acids isomerized, which contributes to overall bitterness in beer. These hops, often referred to as your “bittering addition”, are typically added at the start of a boil and don’t offer much for aroma and flavor - only bitterness.

Aroma & Flavor - On the other hand, hops added towards the middle or end of a boil, or at flameout or whirlpool (when the beer is done boiling), contribute greatly to the aroma and flavor of a beer. Alpha acids in the hops don’t have as much time to isomerize and therefore contribute less to bitterness and more to flavor and aroma.

3. Concentrate Wort To Desired Gravity

With any given beer recipe, we are targeting a certain gravity (concentration of sugar in the wort). This will ensure when we want to brew a 5% beer, we don’t get a 2% or 8% beer. Boiling evaporates some of the water in the wort and concentrates the sugars so we hit our desired gravity.

4. Drive Away Off-Flavors

Put your lab coat on – things are about to get science-y! During germination, barley produces SMM (S-methylmethionine), and lighter grains (which make up the majority of beer) contain a lot of SMM. When you boil wort, SMM converts to DMS (Dimethyl sulfide), which if not properly boiled off, can cause a beer to smell like canned vegetables and creamed corn – gross!

5. Coagulate Proteins

Boiling wort helps coagulate proteins by denaturing them, which makes them unfold and interact with each other. These proteins will precipitate and settle to the bottom of the kettle where they can be removed during whirlpool (when we literally whirlpool the beer to remove solids from it), leading to clearer wort and better flavor stability.

6. Stop Enzymatic Activity

By stopping the conversion of starches into sugar, you ensure you won’t create any extra fermentable sugars in your wort and end up with a beer that is over your target ABV!

Even if a boil goes right, there are many factors that go into making a great beer. Every beer we make goes through a sensory panel before it’s packaged to ensure it’s quality is what we’re expecting.

November 7, 2023

Jeff Horne

Brewing Our Biggest Beer Yet

November 7, 2023

Jeff Horne

What does it take to brew a truly massive beer? Well, it might involve several tons of grain (literally… 7,068 lbs to be precise), or consecutive days of double mashing and extended boils. For us, it came down to having a good friend and fellow brewer who shares a passion for crafting robust stouts and barrel-aged beers, join us for a collab brew.

While attending brewing school in 2015 at the American Brewer’s Guild in Vermont, we met Ben! Much like ourselves, Ben is a homebrewer-turned-brewery-owner who now owns Forgotten Road Ales, boasting two taprooms throughout North Carolina.

A few months of back & forth discussions eventually led to Ben making the long journey up to Delaware in July of 2022 for our first-ever collab. We brewed “Tactical Exploit”, a Double Dry Hopped Hazy Double IPA featuring white peach, yellow peach, & tangerine. The collab was a blast, the beer was delicious, and it instantly got us thinking - what’s next?

*Critical Assets required 7,068lbs of grain to brew a 40bbl batch - about 3.7x as much as our Triangle Theory Lager!*

What came next was the biggest beer we’ve ever brewed here at First State. “Critical Assets” is a 15% Imperial Stout brewed with Ecuadorian Cacao Nibs, Toasted Coconut, Saigon Cinnamon, & Madagascar Vanilla.

When brewing beer, you can only extract so much sugar out of a given amount of grain (more sugar = more alcohol). Over two long days we mashed in four separate times and extended the length of our boil to twice as long as we usually do. The resulting wort (the sugary liquid we get before it ferments and becomes beer) was super concentrated.

After several weeks of fermentation, the resulting brew was just what we were hoping for. “Critical Assets” pours jet-black and is crowned with a beautiful tan head. Aromas of dark chocolate, coconut, and vanilla set the stage, while the taste delivers a blend of vanilla, dark chocolate, and a hint of cinnamon.

Ironically, a few days before we packaged this beer we took delivery of a few rye whiskey barrels. Coincidence? That’s a story for another time…