Mash Hopping and Beer Stability with Scott Janish – BeerSmith Podcast #305
41:13 Share

Scott Janis joins me this week to discuss mash hopping and beer stability. This is Beersmith Podcast number 305.

This is the Beersmith Home Brewing Show, where brewing great beer is our passion. If you want to take your brewing to the next level, visit beersmith.com, where you can download a trial version of our Beersmith software, subscribe to the newsletter, and get dozens of free articles on home brewing. And now, your host and the author of Home Brewing with Beersmith, Brad Smith.

This is Beersmith Podcast number 305 and it's early June 2024. Scott Janis joins me this week to discuss mash hopping and beer stability. Thank you to this week's sponsors, Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently launched an all-new experience, Craft Spirits and Distilling. If

If you make or love spirits, check out their new website, spiritsanddistilling.com, for recipes, how-to videos, Spirits and Distilling podcast, and much more. Again, that new site is spiritsanddistilling.com.

And Beersmith Web, the online version of Beersmith Brewing Software. Beersmith Web lets you design great beer recipes from any browser, including your tablet or phone. Edit recipes on the go with access to the same full suite of recipe building tools as our desktop version. Try Beersmith Web today by creating a free account at beersmith.com. And finally, a reminder to click that like and subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're listening on. Clicking those buttons is a great way to support the show.

And now let's jump into this week's episode. Today on the show, I welcome back Scott Janisch. Scott is the author of the book, The New IPA, A Scientific Guide to Hop Aroma and Flavor. He's also co-founder at Sapwood Cellars Brewery in Maryland. And he is a co-founder with Michael Tonsmeyer, who we had on just a short time ago. Scott, it's great to have you on the show. How are you doing, man?

Doing great. Thanks for having me back. It's been a while, and hopefully people aren't sapwooded out after the two of us are on here back-to-back. No, not at all. I want to say congratulations to you. You just got married last weekend, so awesome. Yes, thank you. It's been a busy weekend, for sure, but it turned out great. Everything went to plan, so back to the routine now. Appreciate you coming on the show after being so busy.

Anyways, it's great to have you back on. I think I mentioned I had Mike on, uh, Michael on just a couple of weeks ago talking about barrel aged stouts. Um, what have you been up to at Sapwood, Sapwood Cellars? I know you guys are always scheming new things. Well, I mean, on top of just, um, coming up with new beers, um, new variants and that kind of thing. Um,

You know, I think we're up to over like 800 beers or something like that in our little over five years of being open. So we're always 800 different beers. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of those would be very instill. So that'll be, you know, taking a keg of finished beer and kind of jumping that on to, you know, in a brink with some other citrus zest or something like that.

So that's a good chunk of them since we've been doing that every Thursday since we've been open from the beginning. So that kind of forces us to continue to be creative. But on top of just coming up with new beers, we're actually –

took over some more space. We'll be expanding our tasting room and adding a commercial kitchen. So I think in the next two to three months, my role will probably transition more into overseeing that whole thing and probably less on the beer side. So we'll see how that goes. So you're going to be a restaurateur, is that right? We're going to try our best.

That's a little scary. We're still trying to figure out how to run a brewery, so this will be a learning curve for us. Luckily, we have great help in our tasting room manager. Spencer Love has done this before, so we're lucky to have him.

Well, that's awesome. Congratulations to you. Yes. Well, today you want to cover a variety of topics, and the first of those is mash hopping. Now, I've always been a bit of a skeptic on mash hopping. You know, it doesn't add a lot of bitterness. It doesn't add a lot of aroma. But I know it's enjoyed a resurgence recently as a brewing technique. Why is this? Why would anybody really want to mash hop?

Yeah, I mean, this is something Sapwood has been doing since pretty much day one. And it was, you know, when I was researching for the book, you know, I came across a couple studies, one in particular that really just kind of convinced me that it was something worth trying. And in the end, being something that's relatively minor and kind of a good minor in terms of it's, you know, how much it costs to mash out since you don't need a whole terrible lot of them. But

The research in particular just showed that the alpha-beta acids from the hops themselves have the ability to complex metals from mostly your grain. You get some metals from your hops as well, but just kind of lower those overall concentrations. And kind of the whole idea is if you're having less particularly iron,

in your in your wort and then having less than you know carry through to your boil and your ferment you'll have less of a chance of those reactions that could cause oxidized issues after packaging in even during the process and in this particular study found that you know hops themselves were able to reduce the metal concentration when added to the mash by about

30%, which is a pretty big jump. And that was about 20 to 25 IBU addition, I think, from your mash hop. And they also found that after forced aging, I believe it was about 80 degrees of forced aging, the heat age like that, they found a reduced amount of the staling aldehydes too, which plays into that whole

What we're looking for is a good product that is good on day one and good on week three. And so whenever we see science like that, that says throw in some hops in your mash, have a relatively low amount of bitterness come from it, and then hopefully less oxidized issues down the line, that's something that we just kind of took hold of and ran with.

So what is it about adding hops in the mash that gives them this special property? Because obviously you're using hops in the boil, you're probably using them in the whirlpool, dry hopping and so on. Yeah, it's one of the big factors is, you know, because alpha acids are able to kind of flex these metals and make them in your beer in fewer concentrations, it's actually better at doing it at higher pH levels.

Um, and so of course, if you're adding these mash hops at the very start of your mash and you have not, um, adjust, you know, done a acid adjustment yet to bring that down, you know, anything above five, one, five, two, five, three. I think that in one study looked at, there is, you know, a 40% reduction in iron levels from just jumping to like a six, um, pH, which is, you know, probably higher than we want to be, but just shows how.

impactful the pH could be for the metal concentration. And so, you know, what I think we like to do is just add the hops. We actually, we still don't have a mill at the brewery. That's something else we're working on. But so we have all of our bags open on brew day and we sprinkle some hops in each one of those bags. And then, you know, adding those at the very, very start

of the mash where that pH is higher than you have, you know, those hops enjoy an environment that are even better at reducing that metal content. And again, it's iron that we're particularly worried about. And what's so bad about iron? Why is iron such a bad thing to have in the beer?

it's just the one that's, uh, can really has been found to, to, to react, um, with oxygen and at higher levels and just cause more of that, of those problems. I mean, there's, there's other metals in there too, like, um, you know, manganese is another one that can cause issues. Um, but you know, it's, that's, that's one that so far the science, um, hasn't been able to, uh, uh, the brewing science anyways, figure out how to, to reduce it in, uh,

the final concentrations of, and you pick up quite a bit of that actually from, from dry hopping, but iron just, you know, looking at, you know, a lot of the older research in brewing, it's just kind of always been that, that, that main one that we want to keep low. So does mash hopping contribute a certain flavor or character to the beer? I mean, obviously there's some bitterness imparted, but it's a pretty low utilization. I would think. I think that you're likely going to get a very low flavor constant contribution from,

mash hopping, just, you know, getting filtered essentially through the grain and, you know, the boil is going to reduce a lot of those hop compounds. You know, most of those hydrocarbons are probably being lost during the mash temperatures since that's, you know, fairly warm too. So, you know, you're going to get a little bit of bitterness, which, you know, would be less pound per pound than you would be expecting from like a 60 minute addition since that temperature is even lower.

Yeah. But I, you know, I, you know, there's certain hops that I think if you used in high concentrations might carry through and that would be, you know, I think like a Roaca is a one that really carries through well on the hot side. But other than that, I don't think you're likely to do it. I think if you're looking for flavor contribution, and I'm sure this is something you've probably already covered on your podcast, but you know, if you're going to use one of those lower file producing yeast strains, like a cosmic punch, um,

which does about 10 times the threshold for 3MH or White Labs Tropical. I believe that's 077. That's about two and a half times the threshold. So I think in that case, you might get a little bit of

flavor contribution if you're adding hops high in precursors to your mash and i think you give your your pop or your yeast a better chance to to convert those precursors but i think that's likely the only really the biggest case you would yeah i've heard i've recently heard there are people using uh hop additions in the mash to try and enhance the thiols and the flavor boost they get bio transformations or something like that during the uh during fermentation but i've

I've always been kind of trying to figure out how that chemistry actually works. Well, I think if you're, if you're using, so, you know, kind of a, I think one thought process is there's a lot of enzyme activity in the mash already, and maybe that's helping some of those, uh, those file precursors, uh, be readily available for, uh, those, uh, these strains that have the ability to, um, unlock those bound tiles. Um,

But, you know, I, you know, if you're doing like a star party or one that's, you know, 100x or whatever it is of the sensory threshold that I don't think you need to worry at all about.

you know, loading stuff into the mash. It's already so good at releasing thiols. It's just more in those, those lower producing thiol strains. Interesting. Cause I've talked to brewers that have had some success using mash hopping with their, you know, with their thiol producing yeast. Um, it was how much hops are you using for mash hopping? You mentioned, you mentioned it wasn't a big expense or a big addition, uh, to get, to get what you want out of this.

So the study that was quoted in the book, I think they did about 0.4 pounds per barrel to see that 30% reduction in iron. So I think that's probably close to only like an ounce for homebrewers in five gallon, five gallons. And again, that would be, you know, adding that one ounce of hops to the start of your mash before you,

change the pH of the mash. So you're doing this before you make any pH adjustments, I assume? Yep, exactly. How long do you let it sit before you add maybe the lactic acid or whatever acid you're using? I mean, just the time it takes us to mash in would be probably about all we do, and then you can adjust from there. So maybe just give a little bit of a head start and just, you know, increase the chances of, you know, lowering those concentrations. But

Another thing to consider is, you know, there's been a couple of studies and one of recently that was looking at spent dry hops and kind of what remains in those spent dry hops after you're done using them. And you'll still retain about 70% of the alpha acid after dry hopping. And again, those are the acids that are helping.

pull, complex some of those metals. So if you really didn't want to spend any money, you could consider just taking some of your, if you're brewing on a day, you're cleaning a tank or dropping a tank, you could consider just using some of your spent dry hops in the mash to hopefully get this added insurance for stability without really having to pay for much. Interesting. Has anybody recycled them into the boil too? Because if you've got 70% of the alpha acids left, it seems like you could boil those. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's actually exactly what this particular paper did. I forget the name of it. I think it was just last year, 2023, where they did do some tests where they were using them for bittering additions and whirlpool additions. And they had a sensory panel that kind of looked at them. And I believe the sensory panel actually preferred the spent hops as the bittering addition. They thought it was a little smoother. And I would assume I would have to look closer that that smoother bitterness might just be a little less effective.

I summarized activity from the, from those hops, but since, you know, that there is a slight reduction in the alpha acids, which would convert to iso alpha acids for the, those bettering additions, but I'm not surprised the heavy world was not a, a,

favorite it wasn't i think as bright as the you're missing all the all the aroma as the fresh the fresh hops yeah right but they they didn't really like them as a as a bittering charge and they just thought it was like a little i think the term was a little less resinous and aggressive so maybe kind of like a first word hop is a little bit milder in some cases you know yeah no i could i could see that it's just you know for a lot of breweries and brewers there's you just have a lot of

hops on hand especially you know for us it's it's we have hops that we tend to use for dry hopping but they kind of don't pass our tests in terms of you know what we think they should smell like and what they actually smell like so we'll have to audible on dry hopping day on dry hopping days and a lot of times we can just use those hops for our mash hop um and so for us it's

We have plenty of hops, and it's easier just to use some of those fresh T90s. But I think those studies are always fun to read. So have you had some success with the mash hopping? Yeah, it's tough to say.

you know, with a hundred percent certainty what we're getting and not getting from it. But I do really think that our beers hold up really, really well. That's, you know, our mixed fermentation beers to our stouts or our hoppy beers. I think they hold up well, even the ones that we, you know, keep warm and come back to in a month or two. They really seem to

They definitely do a lot, lot better than what I was doing as a home brewer. And there's a lot of different parts through the process where you're trying to prevent oxidation and do everything for stability. I mean, mash hopping is just kind of one of those. But I think without us having a centrifuge or doing any sort of filtering, I'm pretty impressed with the long-term stability of our beers. Nice.

Well, another trick you've been using is to use pomegranate extract to enhance the stillability of beer. And this is something I've never heard of, so I'm kind of interested in hearing how this works. Yeah, this is, you know, there's a PhD thesis from Terry Mertens, who's been nice enough to answer questions for me after reading one of his studies and another, I believe it was a follow-up study, on essentially using different acids being tested in the mash to see which

but could potentially reduce those metal concentrations. It's probably helpful just to, as like a little background on what the literature says in terms of, you know, how much metal can do what I think it's iron at about 50 micrograms a liter can have taste implications. You know, I think that's, you probably taste some beers that are a little like minerally or they're just something kind of,

aggressive to them. I get this a lot. Yep, exactly. I get this a lot in low alcohol, maltier beers, stouts or something with like a lot of crystal 120 or 50 or something like that. And that's the research says anything around 50 micrograms a liter could have taste implications. But of course, the

The type of beer probably alters that. It's going to be harder to taste, something like that. 12% ABV stout that's been barrel-aged, coconut or something like that. But the...

levels as low as 10 micrograms a liter can be the start of where you might have some, you know, oxygen issues. And so really just trying to get that down to zero is kind of the goal when it comes to using this research to have a better shelf product beer. And so really what they found was, you know, they tested like,

green tea um they tested pomegranate extract and it was particularly the 90 it's called 90 percent elagic acid um pomegranate extract and when they were putting this into the mash they were seeing like an 80 to 90 percent reduction of metals of iron in particular i mean and that was after adding it just to the mash so this was getting lower levels because you'll lose some

during fermentation. I think in their study, the lowest one they tested after fermentation was an all-pilsner malt, which was right at that 50 microliter taste threshold area. And they were getting lower than that before fermentation by just adding pomegranate extract. So it's pretty... So I assume the pomegranate reacts with the iron in some way or something?

Yeah. And, and complexes it out. And, and, you know, it's, it's interesting too, that the, um,

The more specialty malts actually were retaining way more. So there was a beer in there with like 50%. I think it was Cara 50 and the other was 50%. Pilsner, and that was, again, using that micrograms a liter, was well over 300. So, you know, that's above that taste threshold by quite a bit. And then definitely in a range where you might get more oxidizing, staling,

products down the road. And I think you've probably noticed that in beers just like Crystal Malt or something like that, where quicker than you would want, it turns into more of a cardboardy

you know, sherry kind of thing. It doesn't have that like fresh malt character. And I think that's where, you know, using experimenting with something with pomegranate extract might actually, um, you know, really help, help those beers, particularly, uh, more malt forward beers. Now you mentioned they added in the mash. Are you adding yours in the mash as well or somewhere else?

Yeah, we're adding it to the mash. We just experimented with adding it during dry hopping to a West Coast IPA. Just to confuse people a little bit, this was actually with another acid that was studied.

punicallagen is the name of it, um, which they found to be even more effective than pomegranate extract. Um, but if you're already close to 90, that's, that's with pomegranate, that's pretty high. But, uh, I was actually giving a presentation in Sweden and I was saying, I can't believe this isn't a product yet. And then, uh, someone came up to me right afterwards and said, we're actually working on the product and gave me a sample. So, uh,

We use that one during dry hopping to help get metals out of the beer from the mash, as well as hopefully removing metals from dry hopping itself, because those have them. And that particular one, Punicallagen, that can actually help clear up a beer. That was kind of our take after reaching out to the company and someone else or into a

Bertens who's done a lot of this work and so we added it to hopefully get a clear West Coast IPA because we've actually had issues all of our beers seem to be hazy despite doing everything we can to make them clear and so that one I think is our clearest one to date so

We need to do more with that, but maybe that was because of adding that. And that particular product is called Mash Life from Murphy & Sons. And I don't believe that's out yet, but something to keep an eye out for when it does launch. And I assume you're not using much here, right? You obviously don't want to alter the flavor and so on of the beer. Yeah, exactly. I think the figures that they used would be...

It's about 60 grams per 10-barrel batch, I believe, is to use the same levels as they did in the study. And you can kind of see in the study, there's a chart that shows how much pomegranate extract they use and then how many measured metals they see in the beer. And it was sort of like that. It just kept going down. And as soon as... The lowest ones that they studied was about 60 grams per 10 barrels, which is

You have to double check the math, but I think that's only as little as about a gram in a homebrew batch. So we're not talking about it much.

Purebulk.com, I pulled up today just to see how much it would cost for homebrewers. And it looks like you can get 25 grams for about $7. So not a huge investment to do some experimentation with. And again, you need to get the 90% biologic acid pomegranate extract. Cool.

Well, I know you and Michael have also been working on a variety of other techniques to minimize oxygen uptake to ensure the long-term stability of the beer. Can you tell us about some of those? Yeah, sure. I mean, that's kind of what I was saying earlier. It's not just mash hopping. It's not just experimenting with like pomegranate extract. It's doing everything you can. There's so many, unfortunately, there's so many ways to ruin a beer during the whole process. And I think that's why a lot of

Home brewers and professional brewers lose sleep at night thinking they've ruined their beer. But it's just good practice, you know, doing things like purging. You know, if you're doing a transfer, purging your whole transfer rig with CO2, you know, having teas on each side of the transfer so you can push CO2 through. We do a lot of water pushouts if we're going to be transferring into...

say, a bright tank or something, filling that all the way up. We have water, you know, essentially coming out of the top of that tank and then pushing that out with CO2. And then, you know, if the timing works, then we can use that water to brew the next batch or collect some for cleaning or something like that. So it's not going to waste.

Little things like purging out your little CO2 adapter on your tank before opening the valve. So you're not just hooking up your CO2 and then it's immediately going into your tank where there's like a little bit of tiny bit of oxygen in that little valve that could go into your tank.

If you're going to be burping your tank at the bottom, you hook up a reducer or maybe you have a 90 on there, something like that, purging that a whole bunch before you actually open it up to the tank. Because, of course, any oxygen that's just in there to start with gets pushed into your tank. So the more you can purge it, with each purge, you're getting less and less oxygen remaining in that setup. Yeah.

Anything like that is obviously probably a good practice. We dry hop with a dry hop doser. And so...

That's on the top of our tank where we're adding hops. And then once the hops are, you know, 22 pounds are added in this doser, we can then purge that whole rig. So the hops themselves are getting purged and the rig itself is getting purged before we drop it into the tank. So again, no, no, hopefully pickup of oxygen. And if you really want, you can, you can try using some metabisulfite during the dry hop too, which will also help kind of scavenge oxygen a little bit.

And for homebrewers, that won't take much, probably something like 0.5 grams or something like that. Yeah, I know sulfites are very commonly used in winemaking, mead making, cider making, but not in beer. And yet they're great for absorbing oxygen, right?

Yeah, it's just, it's another one of those things you can do to, you know, I keep calling these all insurance, but I think that's kind of what it is. And, you know, you're not adding enough to have taste implications or, you know, you stay under, I forget what that amount is legally where you have to say contains sulfites. So, you know, we're well under those, but just adding a little bit, especially as homebrewers where I think it's even harder to

not get oxygen in your beer on those you just have a smaller volume of of liquid and so any oxygen getting in could have a greater impact and you know and equipment can vary you know some of the expensive great blickman stuff to someone just using a bucket so oxygen is is probably even harder for homebrewers to contain and so that's where some of this um probably is is all worth you know trying

Remind us why oxygen is bad. I know we've probably discussed this topic before, but for folks who are listening. Yeah, I'm sure, you know, I used to, this used to be the most frustrating thing for me as someone brewing hazy IPAs back at home as a home brewer. I'd have something that I'd ferment, dry hop with, taste the dry hop. After the dry hop is bright, fresh, tropical, depending on the hops,

beer. And then after my transfer, I don't know if I would do multiple things wrong, I'm sure during, during the transfer and, um, you know, one or two days after being in a keg, it's already started to lose that, that brightness, the oxygen is, is, could lead to like a, a murkier brown color right away. Um, you know, again, maybe, you know, it might have a lot to do with just the iron content in there, um, that could, you know,

interact with the react to the oxygen and cause that like stale cardboard sherry um aroma that just really distracts from what the beer was intended to be um you know it could still be could still be drinkable but a little bit of that sherry thing could mask the the hot character you're after or

If it's a slightly maltier beer, that could take away from that fresh, bready character or whatever you're after. So it's just best to avoid it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I know you guys make a lot of big barrel-aged beers. Are there other techniques you're using to try and improve the stability of those? Because those are aged for a long time in barrels, which are porous and so on. How do you control the oxygen and improve the stability of those kinds of beers?

Yeah, no, this is actually an area where I think it was easier for me to convince Mike that we should be trying something like pomegranate extract, because a lot of these things, science is kind of weird, and you should be a little skeptical of it. And I think he...

We both agree, but in these darker beers that are going to have more chances to be oxidized, I think that's where trying to keep that metal concentration as low as possible is maybe even more useful. So obviously, hoppy beers can go downhill quick, but dark beers that are going to

probably go into a barrel for eight months you know you have to transfer into that barrel hopefully you're purging the barrel beforehand and whatever you're using to transfer it with but you could pick up oxygen that way you could pick up oxygen leaving the barrel you pick up oxygen going into um your uh final packaging tank um you know and if you're

hot pasteurizing them that, that could kind of force age things and cause issues too. So I, I think those, those darker beers and beers, even mixed room beers for us that are going to sit for a year, two years, three years. Um, if we can do just a little bit to, to try to keep, um,

to improve the shelf life of those just by having a better environment for it early on. For a few grams of pomegranate extract doesn't seem crazy. I should say we're still young into this. I have a handful of beers I want to send in and get tested compared to some of our older, similar beers. They're not exact side-by-sides, but a lot of our

We'll have a lot of recipes that don't vary widely in terms of the malt use. And so some of those had mash hopping. Some of those had the pomegranate. Some of those didn't have either. And so, you know, hopefully I can find those and send them out to see, you know, just what those metal concentrations are and then do some tasting and see if the numbers carry through. But more importantly, does the sensory, because I think that's probably always where

That should always take priority over the figures and signs of figuring out what to do with brewing. And, of course, in the barrels, it literally evaporates, right? There's something called the angel's share, right, which is the parts that's gone. How do you deal with something like that? You know, it's a lot more than you would think. You know, gallons will disappear over the course of, you know, 8 to 12 months. It's amazing.

So for some of our mixed fermentation beers where, you know, say we want it to be part of a three-year blend. And so we know a beer is going to be sitting for a long time. After about the first six to, you know, 12 months, we could keg off some of that base beer from the day we brewed it. And then after about six to 12 months, we could shoot some of that base beer back into the

the barrel just to top it up. And again, it's difficult to do that without a little oxygen exposure too. So you're going to be opening up your bung, you're transferring things in, the risk of splashing and all that. So any chance you have of oxygen reacting with, and to stay on theme here with the metals, particularly iron, I think those are the beers that are probably

maybe would benefit the most. How do some of these techniques carry over to homebrewing? You know, I think you could try, you know, using the little metabisulfite when you're mash hopping, again, that's, or when you're dry hopping, which is, you know, not a lot, you know, 0.5 grams or something like that. Experimenting with, you know, one gram or so of

pomegranate extract start of the mash or looking out for new products that are probably going to be hitting the market on this kinds of thing. You know, I mentioned manganese earlier. That is, you know, one of the metals that you can find in higher amounts in certain hops. I think it was in the book. There was a chart of manganese and

which hops had the most and which ones had fewer. But dry hopping cold, I think, has a lot of benefits. I've talked a lot about that. But in particular, the colder the dry hop, we'll have less manganese pickup, which is another one that could cause issues with oxygen down the road. So

Cold dry hopping, I'm a big fan of. We're dry hopping everything about 34 degrees at the brewery. There's a handful of different reasons why we do that, but this Maganese one just happens to be one more in the case for cold dry hopping in that it's taking one less, it's lowering one less compound in your beer that could cause oxidation issues. So there's a lot of this stuff, the purging of tanks, purging your hoses. I think

If I were homebrewing today, if I was spending money, I would be investing on cold side products, you know, tanks that, you know, I could purge. I could maybe set up some sort of rig to dry hop without opening them lately. A lot of the newer stainless steel ones, you can actually apply some pressure to them. So you can do things like pressurized transfers, kind of similar to what you're doing.

Yeah, I think that's totally worth the money, especially if you're really trying to nail in your hop forward beers and keeping those as bright as possible for as long as possible. So that would be where I would consider putting some investment. I know I struggled with that big time as a home brewer and I was trying to

take kegs and repurpose them for different things and it was it was always a battle and nerve-wracking i think now the products are just so much better for there's just a lot more out there for options for homebrewers um than than especially when i was deep into it so um that that's also something spending more money doesn't always help but it's some cases i think i think it can anything about barrel aging folks that might be barrel aging at home advice um you know it's i i

So I had a 30-gallon barrel that I did mixed fermentation beers with at home, and I think that's about as big as I would go. I think you're better off having multiple smaller barrels than putting all your eggs in one basket with one big barrel where you're brewing beer.

three weeks straight or whatever to fill that sucker and you know really relying on hopefully it turns out well um you know multiple smaller barrels is good for you know if you can blend or come up with you know if you're doing mixed firm blending is great that way and stouts actually too you know having sweeter darker beers versus a little drier beers and blend together but you know it's

It's just tough because the smaller you go on those barrels, the more exposure you could have to oxygen just having, you know, it's a volume game. And, you know, it's a space thing, too. It's not really practical to have a bunch of barrels, I realize, at home. So, you know, I think if you're going to— Yeah, I guess the smaller barrels have more surface area, right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if you're going to be doing a bunch of small barrels, I think a lot of the stuff that we talked about to, you know, keep—

The role of oxygen in ruining that beer, I think the smaller barrels and any barrel aging, I think it's probably worth considering all trying if not incorporating a lot of what we talked about. Barrel aging is fun. There's something to those beers, but it's also a commitment. It's a time commitment. It's a financial commitment.

And sometimes you have to be prepared to be let down on some of those and start over. You know, it's a mixed firm barrel and it's really not giving you good beers. Just say it's time to say goodbye to that barrel and start over with a different culture and a new barrel. You kind of have to just roll with it. But they do make some of my favorite beers. Well, Scott, I want to get your closing thoughts on mash hopping pomegranate and improving your beer stability overall.

Yeah, it's kind of a lot of weird stuff. I think hopefully we'll probably be seeing more of it from, I think other brewers are probably going to start trying it. And I'd love to have other breweries try it and send some samples in to get tested and do their own sensory to see how worthwhile it is. But it's just been one of those things for me that sometimes the science and the literature and the brewing is so...

convincing that it doesn't seem until there's like a side benefit or something that it might be taking away from. Um, you know, for example, when we're using pomegranate extract, I'm not seeing a different difference in like the color of the beer. Um, we're not seeing any sort of like flavor implications. Um, and so if the science is just overwhelming on

on, you know, reducing the metal concentration, then, you know, we're going to try it and do some of our own tests. So with everything, when it comes to brewing and literature, I tend to use it as more of something that inspires us to

continue to tweak our process, do it for a while, run some tests, and then see if it's something that's going to stick forever. But for now, that's how we're approaching mash hopping and more unique stuff like the pomegranate. And I think so far so good, but I'm curious to see what some numbers are. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about some of the new things going on. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule.

Absolutely. I think I mentioned it before the call. My last Skype call was with you in 2023. So it's been a while and I appreciate you having me back on. It's a pleasure. Today, my guest was Scott Janisch. He's author of the book, The New IPA. He's also co-founder at Sapwood Cellars in Columbia, Maryland. Thank you again, Scott. Thank you. Cheers.

A big thank you to Scott Janisch for joining me this week. Thanks also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They've recently launched an all-new experience called Craft Spirits and Distilling. If you make or love spirits, check out spiritsanddistilling.com for recipes, how-to videos, their Spirits and Distilling podcast, and much more. Again, that new site is spiritsanddistilling.com.

and also Beersmith Web, the online version of Beersmith Brewing Software. Beersmith for the Web lets you design great beer recipes for any browser, including your tablet or phone. Edit recipes on the go with access to the same full suite of recipe building tools as our desktop version. Try Beersmith Web today by creating a free account at beersmithrecipes.com.

And finally, a reminder to click that like and subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you're listening on. Clicking those buttons is a great way to support the show. I'd like to thank you for listening, and I hope you have a great brewing week.