The Chemistry of the Brew: College of Science Alum Opens Microbrewery
In 2020, the U.S. beer industry shipped 204.8 million barrels of beer, according to the National Beer Wholesalers Association. One barrel holds about 31 gallons, and one traditional keg in a bar fits about half of a barrel. Doing the math, well, that’s a lot of beer.
But have you ever wondered about the science behind one of the world’s most popular beverages?
Beer brewing is an intricate process that can work with only three organic ingredients: grains, hops and yeast. Sounds simple, right? Given its 13,000-year history, you’d think more people would attempt to do it. But there’s so much more to it than combining a few ingredients.
Tiffany Simms Lindsey, LSU College of Science alumna and co-owner of recently opened Fighting Hand Brewing Company in Pineville, La., has been able to use her experience from her undergraduate and graduate days at LSU to perfect the pint.
At its heart, brewing is chemistry, enzymes and microorganisms, and while there are steps, like activating enzymes in the grain and accelerating the deconstruction of starch, which becomes glucose that will later turn into alcohol—this isn’t actually where brewers should start.
For the scientist-turned-brewer, the first step in making a good glass of beer doesn’t even involve beer. The first step is actually sanitation. Without a proper cleaning program in place from day one, quality issues can negatively impact a craft brewery’s batch before it ever has a chance to shine.
Simms Lindsey said it was her time spent in the research labs at the university, both as a student and as a lab manager, that drilled into her the importance of cleanliness.
“One of the most important things in brewing—and one of the things home brewers often get wrong—is sanitation,” said Simms Lindsey, who received both a bachelor’s and master’s in biology—in addition to a separate master’s in chemical engineering. “You can ask anyone who has brewed with me at all, I’m very much a stickler about sanitation. Unless it’s going to be boiled, it needs to be sanitized.”
And if it’s not sanitized, then it needs to be pasteurized, the brewer said. While Louisiana’s environment is perfect for yeast growth—one of the three important ingredients—, the humid setting can lead to inconsistency among the batches if not treated properly. Pasteurization is the process of heat-treating beer to inhibit the growth of potential beer spoilage microorganisms and prolong the shelf life of the beer.
Brewing with fresh fruit opens up the doors for creativity, but using real fruit can contain flavor-altering components, like microbes or yeast. This leads to inconsistency of flavors. But that hasn’t stopped Simms Lindsey, who said the brewery does have some seasonal beers that include real fruit—most recently the satsuma wheat beer, which uses satsuma peel and tangerine.
The dozen or so recipes featured at Fighting Hand are all Simms Lindsey’s creation. The “Dreamsicle” is a blood orange wheat beer with a shot of vanilla bean, and the “Jen Barber” is a hefeweizen with a shot of raspberry.
And the name “Fighting Hand”? Well that’s an ode to one of the most popular and longest-running British science fiction television programs: Dr. Who.
Fans of Dr. Who may recognize it from the show’s Christmas episode, “The Christmas Invasion,” when David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor loses his hand in a sword-fighting battle, only to recover it through his regeneration. “This new hand? It’s a fightin’ hand!” says the Doctor.
If you’re interested in learning more about Simms Lindsey’s “long and weird path” from academia to brewery mastery, check out her interview with LSU Experimental: https://soundcloud.com/lsuexperimental/episode-43-tiffany-simms-lindsey-the-science-of-beer-at-fighting-hand-brewery
Learn more about Fighting Hands Brewing Company, their beers and events at their website: https://www.fightinghandbrewing.com/home