Interview with Grant Wood, BERO Brewmaster

Grant Wood is BERO's Chief Brewmaster, which means he’s the man to thank for our lineup of delicious beers. We sat down with Grant to learn about what it means to be a brewmaster, his history in the industry, and what his brewing process looks like.

 

 

So, what actually is a brewmaster?

 

“Well, the brewmaster title can cover a lot of ground. [Brewmasters] create beer formulas, taking the four primary ingredients — water, malt, hops yeast — and bringing those all together to make beer.

 

Being a brewmaster is sort of a mix of art and science. You have hops, which bring bitterness and a variety of other flavors from woody to citrus, to earthy, to sort of, a modern description of dank or even diesel. Then when you add the yeast to it and you create the alcohol, you’ll get almost 600 other flavor compounds that make beer, beer.

 

So there's this creative piece, and then the other piece of it is managerial. Depending upon the brewery that you're in and the equipment that you have, you have to understand flow rates and thermodynamics, the heating and cooling of liquids, pressure control, and sanitation. I actually shouldn't have buried that one because that's frankly one of the most important parts. It's the creation of a sanitary and clean environment for the yeast to do their job without any interference from contamination.”

 

 

How did you get into brewing beers?

 

“A lot of people get into brewing at home, right? They discover it, maybe from a friend, or a relative who says, ‘Hey, let's make some beer!’ and they kind of get into it and really love it.

 

I came from the other way, the professional way. I got a degree in food science from Texas A&M. And then I got married and needed a job, so I sent out a bunch of resumes when my wife and I moved to San Antonio. I was very fortunate and got an interview at Pearl Brewing Company for a position in the Quality Assurance lab, where I got the job and learned about the chemistry and the microbiology of beer.

 

Until I got the job in a brewery, beer to me was sort of like alcoholic soda pop. But when I got into the beer industry and got to look around to see how it was done, I kind of fell in love with it. I mean, the process of taking water out of the well, combining that with agricultural products and fermenting it to create a beverage that people love — it was just really romantic.”

 

 

How did you come to work with BERO?

 

“Well, skip ahead to a lot later in my career. I had come back to Texas after living in Boston and working for Samuel Adams, to start this brewery here called Revolver. It was successful beyond my wildest dreams — MillerCoors came along and purchased us.

 

But I felt like a little unfinished business. Back in 2018, I first saw non-alcoholic beers, and I thought, ‘these are going to be a thing.’ I wanted to take a crack at it.

 

I was kind of messing around with some guys here in the Fort Worth area. We did a couple trial brews, and they were okay, so I tried it again. MillerCoors decided they didn't want anything to do with it — they were too focused on seltzers.

 

I kind of let that go and was minding my own business when John Herman (BERO’s CEO) called me. It reignited this challenge to make these <0.5 alcoholic beers, utilizing my philosophy: keep it simple. From there, we started to execute.”

 

 

What does the process of creating non-alcoholic beer look like?

 

“There are a couple different ways you can make non-alcoholics and, like I said, I wanted the simplest one. My idea was by using a special yeast, what's called a maltose negative yeast, and making a less concentrated pre-beer, wort, we could create some really good products.

 

When you make beer, you take malt, these agricultural products, bring it into the brewhouse, crush the malt, put it in water, and allow it to steep at a 150 - 160 degree ranch. And what happens is enzymes inside of those malts break down starches into sugars.

 

Starches are complex carbohydrates — long chains, of glued together glucose molecules. When you cook this malt, there are enzymes inside that convert those starches into simple sugars. Yeast eat those, make alcohol, carbon dioxide, 600 other flavor compounds, and leave behind the other -oses — the larger chains that they can't eat.

 

If instead, we use what's called a maltose negative yeast, it’ll only eat the glucose. And that's just enough to make a little bit of alcohol and some other flavor compounds. But this is kind of the tricky part. Since you’re making a weaker wort with less alcohol (which gives the beer its flavor) you have to find this place in the formulation that gives more body to the beer. It has to allow these fermented flavors to come out, but it doesn’t go too far, so when you drink it, it’s not too sweet or worty (a weird cabbage-like flavor note).”

 

 

How is this different from a regular alcoholic beer?

 

“It looks almost exactly the same.  Actually, it's a little faster because you're not fermenting as much. You're not letting the yeast, eat all the sugar that's in there or it doesn't want to eat all the sugar. And so that usually takes instead of say 96 hours four days, it'll take a day and a half two days. And so, In 48 hours, fermentation is done. You let it sit for a little while to make sure that it is complete and that no off flavors are going to be left behind.

 

Then you chill it down, let it sit for a few more days and then you can clarify it and it's ready to go. So the process is faster, but it looks exactly the same and uses the same equipment.”

 

 

What is clarification like? Can you walk me through the rest of the process?

 

“Right, so at the end of the week after it’s fermented, we’ll chill it in a tank down to the low 30s. Then we run it through the centrifugal separator, Basically, it separates the solids from the liquids, the liquids pass, and go on into the tank.

 

In the case of the pilsner it goes through a second, filtration step. And so it gets finely filtered to remove any tiny or hazy-causing particles and so, it's bright and beautiful, very clear. If we're making the wheat or the haze, we only run that through the centrifuge. You don’t filter it so finely to get it to that bright, crystalline look when you put it in the glass.” 

 

 

Cheers to Grant, the man to thank for our signature three brews: Kingston Golden Pils, Edge Hill Hazy IPA, and Noon Wheat. Just take a sip, and you’ll be able to taste that blend of art and science he’s perfected in all of our beers. Nice one, Grant. Here’s to a life enriched!