Interview with a Beer Taster: This Woman Gets Paid to Taste Beer

This Lady Gets Paid to Taste Beer: An Interview With Cathy Haddock, Sensory Specialist for Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Q: Hi, Cathy. I want to ask about you and your job.

A: I am Sensory Specialist. I run the sensory lab here. It's part of the Quality Assurance Department. What the quality assurance department does is run all the analytical tests for the beer to make sure that it's staying within spec for BU's (Bitterness Units), color, alcohol...that's a huge one, because if you're out of spec or range of the alcohol level stated on the bottle, you could have a huge fine from the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco. Anyway, what we do here in sensory is, every day we set up for market release all the beers that were packaged and ready to go to market. We taste to make sure that they are of the quality we want them to be and know them to be; we taste the waters from various points around the brewery: hot liquor water, the water that is used for brewing, deoxygenated water (!) used to push the beer around, incoming city water, water they've used to rinse the bottles out with...

Q: Yum.

A: We also check the grain coming in to make sure there are no off aromas there, we check the fermenters, taste and smell the bright beer tanks back-pitched with yeast...I believe we do back-pitch all beer a small amount, even it it's not pale ale, because what that does is consume oxygen in the tank...as much as we monitor it there's going to be some to insure flavor stability.

Q: Kind of like a vacuum seal.

A: Right. Trying to take out as much oxygen as possible. Oxygen is the #1 enemy of beer.

Q: Yes. Don't want enemies!

A: Yes. Then another thing we do in sensory: since we're right next to R & D, we do a lot of R & D taste tests. We are trying to find a more cost efficient malt without compromising flavor. What we do is run a "Triangle test"; the goal of this difference test is to determine if the malt made a significant difference. We run a test with control (our old beer) either 2 tests & one control or 2 controls and 1 test. You're supposed to take out the one that's different. If enough people can tell the difference, the beer's been changed.

Q: And you don't want that!

A: No. Not from a quality assurance perspective. There are some times, though, that we're looking for a change. We are always trying to keep the beer fresh as long as possible, though, and if we find we can make this manipulation on the line and make a beer even lower in dissolved oxygen (which should keep the beer fresher) we would run that through a triangle test and see if there is a beer that was significantly different, and that difference was ...age...sometimes we're trying to make the beer more hoppy, too. Those are examples of when we would want a difference.

Q: What do you encounter of a microbial nature in your work?

A: Well, the lab tests for aerobic and anaerobic microbes, and also we run tests on the yeasts that we use to make sure it doesn't create any contamination; we want to make sure it's pure and doesn't contain any wild yeast to compete for the wort that it's pitched into.

Q: Does the wild yeast really like to hang out with the purebreds?

A: Well, you know, they're fine with it; they can hang.

Q: You have to get rid of them, though.

A: Yeah.

Q: Do you have to throw away whole batches of yeast? You can't exactly vacuum the wild ones out...

A: Basically, we have to be proactive to ensure it doesn't happen ...they sanitize the yeast brink and test to make sure it doesn't have any competing microoraganisms.

Q: What do you call it? A " Yeast Brink"? All the brewing words sound so...German. So, is this brink a container?

A: Yes! It's a storage vessel for the yeast.

A: Basically we harvest yeast off the bottom of our fermenter, and what we do with that is we use that yeast to pitch into a tank of wort (potential beer) and we also use that same yeast to pitch back into bright beer tanks. Bright beer is beer that is done fermenting, and is ready to be bottled, but we need to back-pitch yeast into the bright beer tank so we can bottle condition the beer. That is a unique aspect of our beer; that the pale ale is bottle conditioned, which means a little bit of yeast has been pitched back into the beer so that it can further condition out and create fruity esters and carbonation and alcohol.

Q: And it's BETTER!

A: And it's BETTER! It really is!

Q: I know! I was so impressed when I figured out that was going on.

A: Yeah it's pretty cool; we had some tests (years and years ago) where we tasted pale ale which was tank conditioned (not bottle conditioned); it hasn't received that back pitch of yeast to have the final conditioning process to promote those fruity esters, and we could really tell the difference.

It just didn't have all those fruity esters; because it lacked the fruit it tasted more hoppy. We didn't want to change the flavor profile of the pale ale. We were interested in seeing if we could make beer that was not bottle conditioned and how different would that be.

Q: 'Cause it would be a lot easier and cheaper to do it that way

A: Yes. It definitely takes extra handling to bottle condition, but we determined we just can't change; even though it would be easier to tank condition, it would change the beer.

Q: Too much of a compromise.

A: Yes.

Q: So you are testing these things every day.

A: Yes. They collect samples off all the fermenters, all the bright beer tanks, water samples. We have to make sure that all the different types of waters are free of contamination. We test all the bottled beers, keg and package. For every step of the process there is microbial testing.

Q: And you have your own water treatment. Is that also unique for a brewery?

A: Yes, as far as I know. I haven't heard of anybody else having that.

Q: What is the advantage to having that?

A: I think it saves Ken (Grossman, the owner of Sierra Nevada) a lot of money, because if he doesn't treat the water before it goes to sewage, he gets an extra charge on his bill, because the water has a huge BOD* level, what with all the things that go down the drain (could be beer)...

Q: So he would be polluting the main water supply, and he'd be paying for the extra.

A: Yes, he would overload the sewage plant with high BOD, so he takes that out of there. If you do overload the BOD they do charge you money. He saves money by doing that.

Q: He's such a clever boy.

A: He really is; he's always coming up with new ideas. You just never know.

Q: Where did you get your degree?

A: I got my degree at Chico State (California State University, Chico); I majored in biological sciences. I had several microbiology courses, but quite a bit more in botany. I liked it all!

Q: Yes! It's INTERESTING!

A: Yes! I fell in love with biology when I think I was in the 9^th grade and took my first look into a microscope. I went, "OH MY GOD; THAT'S SO AMAZING!" And that's when I fell in love with it.

Q: The study of life!

A: Yes! And to see it so close up. The microscope was a big, powerful promoter for me to get into the sciences.

Q: We are not alone.

A: No. We are not alone.

Q: And you didn't know then that you were going to do this, right?

A: No. In fact, I told myself I wasn't going to feel bad if I didn't get a job in science, that I was just doing it because I liked it; when I graduated I ended up being independent-was a housecleaner and started my own business and sold jewelry around the county, but of course it was unpredictable. Then I heard that Sierra Nevada was expanding their lab and was looking for 2 people. That was 13 years ago. They wanted to expand to the "west side" with more kettles and fermenters to make more beer; they needed to expand the lab for all the extra beer. I started in QC. Tested BU's, CO2 testing, microtesting, yeast brinks, packaged beer. At that time we weren't testing as much as we do now. Shortly after that we started testing yeast brinks, and the micro program really expanded to all points in the brewing process. Also, I was a package tech to make checks on it so there's no air in the headspace. You want to evacuate the air, because oxygen is the enemy of the beer. Our bottling line is evacuating as it is filling the bottle. Also testing for dissolved oxygen, and the right amount of yeast in the bottle for the bottle conditioning. We use a Coulter Counter to make sure it's in spec. I moved out of the lab completely about 5 or 6 years ago. I was doing both sensory and lab on Saturdays, but the brewery was growing by leaps and bounds.

Q: It's not even a microbrewery anymore.

A: No, technically it's called "regional"; not micro anymore, but still not with the big boys. I like it that way.

Q: What's the point furthest from here you've seen Sierra Nevada beer?

A: Well, it's in Europe (but I haven't seen it there); Hawaii, New Jersey. I just returned from New Jersey and hunted down some. It's all over the United States. We ship to the U.K. now.

Q: Has anything you tried ever made you sick?

A: Nothing in beer can make you sick. That's one big fallacy...people sometimes come up with "I had a Sierra Nevada beer and then I got sick and so I'm going to sue." But there's nothing in beer to make you sick.

Q: Except alcohol.

A: Yes, they say, "I had two six packs of your beer...". C'mon, dude!! Yeast in the bottle might make you flatulent. I know someone who tried a sample of Bigfoot barleywine from the bottom of the tank and didn't feel very good afterward. Lots of yeast, lots of protein. I told him, "You'd better not do that anymore!"

Q: So, you like your job!

A: I do!

Q: What's the hardest part?

A: Trying to schedule in / coordinate 3 panels we work with, when there's so much going on...it takes a lot of communication.

Q: What is most interesting?

A: The whole aspect of beer flavors, and how they are derived, all the different possibilities of how they could be derived. I think it's really interesting when you work with a group of people and agree that this certain quality or another certain quality is in the beer...another challenge is training. My job is to make sure that all of the people we use for market release and descriptive are well-trained experts in tasting beer and that they are correctly identifying the attributes we are interested in (in the beer) and those that are off flavors.

Q: Everyone wants to be a beer taster.

A: Yes. Everyone does want to be a beer taster. And we look for the ones that are good beer tasters. Everyone comes to the table with their own talents and skills and sensitivities and non-sensitivities and we have people that are really good at picking up certain aspects of the beer and others who don't get that. For example, there is a diacetyl contamination which comes into the beer by way of the pediococcus microbe which could give you a diacetyl type of note, a buttery movie popcorn note. You can get it through contamination, but it's also a natural byproduct of the yeast fermentation. As the yeast is eating the sugars in the beer and producing alcohol and CO2, it also excretes diacetyl. Then all the sugars go down and they don't have anything to eat...but sometimes the yeast will turn around and eat that diacetyl, and take the diacetyl and break that down for energy. So you could have, if you are not monitoring your compound and allowing your beer to have a diacetyl rest, you could have this in your beer. It's really bad to have it in your lager beers, but you could potentially have it, and it could be a positive thing, in your porters and your stouts.

Q: Because it's a more complex sort of flavor.

A: Yeah, it just adds to the whole marriage of flavors, and it also adds to mouthfeel, gives it sort of a creamy mouthfeel.

Q: So is that big in, say, chardonnay?

A: Exactly. The malolactic fermentation is the same compound.

Q: Mmm...I like diacetyl.

A: I do, too! Back in the '80's, the chardonnays were huge, buttery wines. And, at the time, hmmm! That was fine.

Q: Just put a little on your bread...

A: Yes! That and a little cheese & you're good to go.

Q: You've gotten to travel with this job, haven't you? Where have you been, or is there too much to say?

A: Well, I just got back from New Jersey; I took a sensory statistics course I've been wanting to go to for quite some time. There's a company out there called Sensory Spectrum, and they give coursework in sensory, and they're very good at it. Before that, I was in Honolulu, Hawaii for the World Brewing Congress, and what that is, is every four years people from breweries from all over the world will gather for four or five days and learn about what's the latest happenings in the industry. People present the data from the tests they've done, and there's a networking type of situation/conference where you learn all the latest technologies that are occurring within the world of brewing, and meet up with people, and whatnot. I've gone to conferences in Texas, and San Diego...there are a lot of brewing groups!

Q: Wow, you're an expert!

A: Well, I'm always trying to get better at it.

Q: So you'd like to stay here?

A: Well, for now I'd stay here...how many people get paid to taste beer?

Q: Just one, that I know!

A: It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Q: I know.

* Microorganisms such as bacteria are responsible for decomposing organic waste. When organic matter such as dead plants, leaves, grass clippings, manure, sewage, or even food waste is present in a water supply, the bacteria will begin the process of breaking down this waste. When this happens, much of the available dissolved oxygen is consumed by aerobic bacteria, robbing other aquatic organisms of the oxygen they need to live.

Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) is a measure of the oxygen used by microorganisms to decompose this waste. If there is a large quantity of organic waste in the water supply, there will also be a lot of bacteria present working to decompose this waste. In this case, the demand for oxygen will be high (due to all the bacteria) so the BOD level will be high. As the waste is consumed or dispersed through the water, BOD levels will begin to decline. (source: ciese.org)