Sour times in Portland

I guess it’s going to be one of those blogs where posts come few and far between.

Anyway, this weekend some sensory colleagues of mine and I will be assembling in Portland to discuss various matters, as well as to tour local facilities. Part of the focus for some of us is to be tasting various sour beers. Here’s where you come in: know of any pubs and breweries in Portland, Oregon with any sour beers on tap? It’s been awhile since I’ve spent any appreciable time in Portland, and there are likely a number of breweries which didn’t exist the last time I was there.

So if you have any tips or suggestions for establishments that we can darken with our presence, please let me know by the end of the week!

(Maybe I’ll turn it into a post as well)

Bitterness, Pt. II

Phew! Where’s the time gone?

Anyway, let’s get on with it. I’ve already discussed the primary source of bitterness in beer, so now I’ll revisit the topic of bitterness from a different view: the physiology of bitterness.

The sensation of bitterness is not well understood at all. Nearly every aspect of bitterness is shrouded in complexity, and although new research is continually expanding our level of understanding there is still a great deal to be learned. The reasons bitterness is a tricky subject to elucidate are numerous and varied. There are a wide variety of chemical compounds which are bitter, such as polyphenols, organic acids, peptides, salts, sulfimides, and acyl sugars. This variety in molecular size and shape in turn implies a variety of mechanisms of operation. There is also a huge variation in how bitterness is perceived by individuals, and these variations are largely genetic in origin. Further confounding our understanding of these mechanisms are the difficulties that arise when attempting to communicate the qualities of bitter sensations. There are no agreed upon vocabularies for describing bitterness and its qualities, so while one person may describe caffeine as having a harsh and unpleasant bitterness another person may call it medicinal and lingering. Are they perceiving the same sensation, and is there even a way to tell for sure? Yet another factor in the complexity of bitter taste is the interactions that bitter sensations have with other sensations, most notably sweetness. Certain mixtures of bitter and sweet compounds can have interesting and unexpected effects on each other, with some sensations being suppressed by the presence of other compounds. In some cases there can be a synergistic effect where the total sensation is greater than what would be expected from a merely additive effect. In this article I will explain some of the mechanisms and characteristics of bitterness as we understand it so far.

Teasing out the underlying aromas of complex flavors

One of the most interesting things about flavor science is the fact that certain aromas and flavors are so complex that no single compound can replicate the experience. Even flavors which are represented fairly well by a single compound (like the isoamyl acetate in bananas, or the methylanthranilate in concord grapes) are more of a simulacrum to their natural inspirations, often times having a slight “artificial” quality. While this “marquee” compound may make up the bulk of that particular flavor, there are probably a half-dozen or more other compounds at or below threshold levels which are contributing to the overall impression of the flavor, adding to its complexity and depth. In some cases, these compounds may have aromas in the same category as the main flavor, but sometimes they seem to come out of left-field…

Chocolate, maybe not surprisingly, is one of those flavors that is made up of a strange hodge-podge of flavor compounds which, taken on their own, have no relation or similarity to the flavor of chocolate. Research from the Technical University of Munich is starting to show just how complex chocolate flavors are. They’ve found that there are up to 600 different aromatic compounds in cocoa beans, but you really only need about 25 of them to make a decent chocolate flavor. Twenty-five is still a big number for a single flavor and the ones on that list come from a wide-range of flavor categories, many having no obvious connection to chocolate: potato chips, cooked meat, peaches, raw beef fat, cooked cabbage, human sweat, earth, cucumber, honey… etc etc. Certainly not the types of flavors you contemplate as that decadent Swiss chocolate melts in your mouth, are they?

While not part of the research mentioned in this latest press release (for an ACS meeting), here is a table from a book about ‘chocolate science’ which includes data from the same researcher (Schieberle) which shows a large list of compounds found in the aroma of chocolate (milk chocolate, pg 67; dark chocolate, pg. 69). Since chocolate also undergoes Maillard reactions and is fermented as well (like beer in both regards), a number of these flavors are also found in beer: maltol, phenylacetaldehyde, diacetyl, dimethyl trisulphide (ew!), gamma-nonalactone, butanoic acid, various furans and pyrazines, just to name a few. Fascinating stuff!

How to swirl wine.

It’s not really about beer, but it is about sensory analysis of food products so it will fit in here. And I just can’t pass up the opportunity to share it with you.

I stumbled upon this gem of an article written by a “very knowledgeable” winery tour guide from the Napa valley area. In it, he discusses how the aroma of wine depends on which way you swirl the glass, clockwise or counter-clockwise. The reasons he posits for this are… interesting. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

Enjoy.

Please also note the link at the top leading to an equally entertaining follow-up article where he further attempts to explain his wine prowess and reasoning.

Facepalm, headscratch, mouth agape, etc.

Myrcene: the Green Giant of hop aroma

And we’re back!

Myrcene is an aromatic hydrocarbon which is an important part of the essential oils of a number of different plants, most notably hops. In perfumery, it is used as an intermediate in the production of various aromatic compounds like geraniol, nerol, and linalool. In brewing, it is considered the headlining feature of the “green hop aroma” and is often found in many dry-hopped beers. It has an odor which is described as “herbaceous, resinous, green, balsamic, fresh hops, and slightly metallic” and can be quite pungent at higher levels sometimes smelling a bit like floor-cleaner. In water its odor threshold is about 14ppb, but it is a good deal higher in beer. While it is found at very low levels in kettle-hopped beers, its high volatility and low solubility in aqueous solutions means that it doesn’t tend to stick around very long during the kettle boil. In fact, some studies have shown that myrcene levels in beers which were hopped at the beginning of the boil are around 0.13ppm, while beers which were hopped after wort cooling had about 66ppm – a 508x difference! Myrcene is also readily oxidized and there are some ideas that if it doesn’t volatilize up and out the kettle stack, then it probably degrades and leads to a handful of other aromatic compounds.

Cascade hops tend to be regarded as the classic “myrcene hops”, and in fact it makes up roughly 50-60% of the total hop oil fraction of Cascades. Some hop varieties do have higher levels of myrcene than Cascades, however. Amarillos (~70%), Citra (65%), Crystal (40-60%), Horizon (55-65%), Simcoe (60-65%) and others can have higher levels than Cascades. Conversely, most of the European Noble hops have some of the lowest levels of myrcene: Saaz (5-13%), Hallertau Mittlefrueh (20-28%), and UK Fuggle (24-28%) are among the lowest. Keep in mind, however, that geography, growing conditions, and storage conditions all play a part in dictating myrcene levels. The same study mentioned above showed that a post-wort-cooling hop addition with hops aged at 40C for 30 days yielded myrcene levels of 0.82ppm (as opposed to the 66ppm with cold-stored hops). As with most other aspects of hop quality, there is a difference between whole hops and pellets as well. Whole hops can have as much as 70% more myrcene than pellets of the same variety, but that difference is flipped when the wort is hopped as only 5% of myrcene is extracted from whole hops compared to 17% from pellets.

(note: there are some discrepancies in the literature regarding myrcene levels in Hallertau Mittlefrueh, with some levels reported to be around 10-30% of the total oil fraction, while another study has found higher levels of myrcene in Hallertau MF than in Cascade hops. Since more sources are reporting that H.MF has very low levels compared to most other hop varieties, that is the idea I would stick under most circumstances).

References:
IndieHops, In Hop Pursuit Blog, Hop Oil: Is Bigger Better? A Preview of Ongoing Research at OSU

Kishimoto, T., Investigations of Hop-Derived Odor-Active Compounds in Beer, Hop Flavor and Aroma, Proceedings of the 1st International Brewers Symposium, 2009, pg 49-58

A light at the end of the tunnel

Boy, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, hasn’t it? Well, I’ve been a bit busy, to say the least. We replaced our driveway and front stairs and did some landscaping at home, traveled to a distant state to attend a family wedding, and I’ve been covering various shifts at work and training new employees and working overtime (summertime tends to be busy in the brewing industry and our plant has had elevated shipping goals these last few months, which we’ve beat by double-digits). I think the employee training phase will be over next week and I can move back to my normal shift/duties (sensory), although I’ll be distracted by a couple trips I have coming soon: one to the summit of a large snowy mountain, and another relatively normal backpacking trip a few days later.

But I’m starting to plan the next topics, and hope to post again soon!

Cheers!

A pretty corny post.

One of the most ubuiquitous flavors in beer, present to some degree in pretty much every beer, is dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. It’s a normal part of beer flavor but, as usual, its acceptability is dependent on the intentions and desires of the brewer. It can be a large portion of the flavor profile of certain beers, while in other beers it is expected to be at much lower levels. For example, Rolling Rock is considered to be a prominent example of a beer which is high in DMS (although in the past it may have been swamped by skunky/lightstruck flavors as I believe Rolling Rock has not always been brewed with light-stable hop extracts).

DMS has the aroma of canned vegetables, particularly corn or creamed corn. It’s a small and simple molecule; as the name conveniently implies, it has two methyl-groups flanking a sulfur atom:

Typical flavor threshold for DMS in beer is about 35ppb, and beers from around the world can contain anywhere from 10-200ppb. Typically lagers tend to have a bit more DMS than ales do, but what dictates the DMS levels in your beer more than the yeast is the production parameters in your brewery, particularly the kettle boil and wort-chilling.

DMS is considered to originate from malt, although it is actually formed in the brew kettle. All malt contains a variant of the amino acid methionine called S-methyl methionine (SMM), and it is an intermediate in a number of biosynthetic pathways which plants use to make other compounds. SMM is pulled into the wort during mashing and lautering and as the wort is heated the SMM degrades and is converted into DMS. While the wort is boiled, however, the volatility of DMS allows it to be removed from the wort and out the ventilation stack to never return. If there is no way for steam condensate to escape from your kettle (like if your homebrew pot is covered during the boil) then that condensate will drip back into the wort returning that DMS back into your beer. In such a case, the SMM is still creating DMS because the wort is hot, but the DMS can’t go anywhere so it just continues to build up into higher and higher levels. For this reason, the whirlpool and/or wort-chilling stage after the boil is a critical time in DMS control: if the wort sits too hot for too long, DMS will continue to develop since there is no boil to drive off the compound. I recall some power outages here at the brewery which knocked out the brewhouse for a bit. The brew that was in the whirlpool at the time wound up staying in there for much longer than it should have, which lead to a beer with astronomical DMS levels. At first glance, you may think that controlling DMS might be as easy as making your boils longer to convert all the SMM to DMS and drive it out the stack, but there is enough SMM in most malts that this is not a practical solution: the boil times required to convert it all and volatilize it could be hours long and would be quite detrimental to other wort parameters and the quality of the beer. Some kettles are more efficient at stripping DMS than others, as well. A simple direct fire or steam-jacketed kettle would be less efficient at removing DMS than a kettle with a calandria, which would be less efficient than a Merlin kettle. In fact, I recall brewery which, after installing a Merlin-style kettle, wound up being so efficient at stripping volatiles from the wort that they had to “de-tune” the kettle to make it less efficient since it was throwing off the flavor profile of their beers.

Even after the wort is chilled to the point where SMM is no longer being converted into DMS, the whole corny story isn’t over yet. During fermentation, the carbon dioxide that is produced by the yeast has a scrubbing effect on the DMS, carrying some of it out of the beer. This happens more efficiently at higher temperatures since the fermentations are more vigorous, and for this reason ale fermentations are better at this than lagers. This is why many lagers tend to have somewhat higher levels of DMS than ales do.

Here is a pretty handy chart I found on the internets showing some data about the DMS levels in wort/beer over the course of production. You can see how the levels drop significantly during boiling, but how they can potentially rise again before the wort is chilled. Then they fall again during fermentation as the yeast help blow off some more of the remaining DMS.

Finally, another potential source of DMS can actually come from bacterial infection. Some species of Enterobacter can produce DMS, along with diacetyl. This is quite uncommon in normal production scenarios, but it could conceivably happen more frequently in homebrewing situations. However, the vast majority of DMS in beer comes from the malt and the boil, so if you have an issue with corny beer, check the brewhouse parameters first.

But the story of corny beer doesn’t stop there, no! A challenger appears!

As I collected various flavor compounds that I understood were in beer, I came across a reference to another malt-based compound which was described as “biscuity/malty”. I thought this might have something to do with the biscuity aroma which is a dominant malt flavor in beers which use Victory or “biscuit malt”. Well, I was wrong. As I opened the package of 2-acetylpyridine which Sigma-Aldrich had shipped to me, I realized “This isn’t biscuity at all. This smells like freshly cooked corn tortillas!” It was like opening up that container of steaming tortillas at a Mexican restaurant, or a bag of high quality corn chips. So that’s what my panel calls 2-acetylpyridine now, “corn chips” rather than “biscuity”. Wikipedia says that 2-ap has an odor threshold of about 60 parts-per-trillion, but other literature values I’ve seen indicate that in beer it is closer to 40 ppb (and my experience with it shows this to be pretty close).

2-acetylpyridine, as seen below, is found in malt (and corn chips) and is created by the Maillard browning reactions. These reactions take place when certain types of sugars are heated in the presence of amino acids. It’s a highly complex series of reactions that take place which lead to a whole slew of compounds, including flavor compounds and color compounds. It’s not caramelization, but it can be confused with it if you are unfamiliar with the differences. The browning of the bread as it toasts, the malting of barley, the browning of beef as it cooks – these are examples of Maillard browning reactions.

I’m not going to go much into 2-ap, but just brought it up to show that not all corn-type flavors in beer come from DMS. In fact, I’m starting to think that some of the flavors in our beer that I have previously associated with low levels of DMS might actually wind up being 2-ap and that’s pretty interesting.

Hope to post again soon! But probably not.