First Draft
UNC's new brewing science program serves up chemistry and beer with an innovative, interdisciplinary approach.
By Joshua Zaffos, Photography by Woody Myers
Chelsea Lawler starts her workday with a hot cup of coffee and a warm flask of beer. A chemistry technician at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, 劳勒每天早上从精酿啤酒厂的水箱中收集样本，通过气相色谱仪进行分析. Lawler measures the concentration of diacetyl, a chemical compound produced during fermentation that can sometimes give a funky, off-flavor to beers. When the numbers look right, she signs off on moving batches from primary to secondary fermentation tanks, a critical step on the way to producing beer.
“Beer can change batch by batch,” says Lawler, speaking inside New Belgium’s analytical laboratory, 在那里，摆满昂贵精密设备和化学试剂盒的长椅更像环境测试中心或大学博士生的研究空间，而不是啤酒厂的一部分. 但是，保持质量控制和保证是酿造和装瓶美味和味道一致的啤酒的一个重要部分——如果被忽视的话. Temperatures, alcohol content, IBUs (a measure of bitterness), hop aroma, color and specific gravity can all fluctuate, Lawler explains, 她的工作是确保新比利时肥胎——从化学家的角度来看——是一个肥胎.
劳勒去年在新比利时实习后找到了这份工作，并完成了北科罗拉多大学新的酿造实验室科学项目的课程. While brewing may be an emerging trend for academic programs, 皇冠app官方版下载的课程是独一无二的:它为化学专业的学生和其他专业的学生准备在啤酒厂从事质量控制和保证工作. No other university program offers a similar curriculum in brewing science, says Michael Mosher, 皇冠app官方版下载化学和生物化学系的主席和教授，他和同事一起创建了这个项目.
“Many of the programs in the country happen to produce people who are master brewers. 我们想走一条不同的路，而是创造一种利基，培养能够在实验室和质量控制部门担任技术人员的人才,” Mosher says. “It is a great way to not only attract more students to the university, but also help out the microbreweries, 手工酿酒厂，甚至更大的酿酒厂通过培养有资格在这些地方工作的学生.”
Drafting an Innovative Approach
在注意到科罗拉多州大大小小的啤酒厂的激增后，莫舍在皇冠app官方版下载开发了酿造实验室科学项目. He realized many startups and even established companies lacked qualified lab personnel. 这意味着他们只能在工作中培训员工，可能只做基本的质量控制.
With a Ph.D in organic chemistry and experience as a homebrewer since the late 1980s, 莫舍尔意识到，他可以将这些元素结合起来，并融入其他学科，创造出一门新的课程.
“This seemed like the logical next step,” he says. “这是一个很有吸引力的学科，我喜欢酿造的多学科性质. It’s not just chemistry and biology; there’s so much history and physiology and botany and different fields woven into this big subject. I think the students pick up on the excitement and they can find something they like.”
莫舍在化学系开设了两门酿造实验室科学课程，为期两年, starting in fall 2013. The first class attracted about 15 students without much advertisement. That was a promising sign. In spring 2014, 莫舍与其他院系的教授和工作人员合作，向Innovation@UNC推荐了一个酿造实验室科学项目, an initiative to fund and develop novel teaching approaches on campus. 该组织提议设立新的大学证书和辅修课程，并在校园内建立酿酒系统. I@UNC funded the program, 包括购买酿造设备和一些小的实验室设备，专门用于啤酒酿造. The chemistry department chipped in additional support. The brewing operation, located in Parsons Hall, is under construction and acquiring necessary licenses.
The certificate program also officially started this fall. 它要求学生完成三门酿造实验室科学课程，每门课的成绩都达到B或更高. Students’ first serving is Chemistry 370, 一个以讲座为基础的啤酒和酿造技术方面的入门课程，向所有学生开放. For those pursuing the certificate, two additional courses, Chemistry 470 and 479, will be offered during the summer. (No beer-tasting occurs in the intro course, but the following classes do involve sampling batches, so students must be 21. They must also take a Breathalyzer test and return a 0.04 or less blood alcohol content before leaving class each day.)
高级课程让学生进入实验室分析啤酒——有或没有昂贵的精密设备. “We talk about analysis methods, because if you’re working at a small startup brewery, they’re not going to have $10,000 or $100,000 instruments to do analysis,” Mosher says. “If you know the work the machines are doing, 然后你知道了一些可以得到相同或相似结果的替代方法，以及它们的含义. That’s the purpose of the [advanced-level] courses we teach.” Students also learn quality-control and quality-assurance processes, including American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) analysis methods, commonly used by many breweries.
劳勒是在试点阶段报名参加该项目首批课程的学生之一. As a senior, and already a chemistry major, Lawler enrolled in Chemistry 370. “A lot of pre-med friends were in that class,” she laughs. “我对酿造啤酒的化学成分了解不多，但我觉得这会很有趣.”
Lawler enjoyed the intro course and then enrolled in 470. Meanwhile, Mosher began nudging her to apply for an internship with New Belgium. 她得到了这个职位，很快就开始学习如何使用啤酒厂的实验室设备，并在技术人员工作时跟随他们. “I was taking classes and started working here, and I thought, ‘This could be a job?’” recalls Lawler. She had gotten over any pre-med plans.
Lawler says the brewing lab science program “helped me a lot,” especially learning laboratory protocol and ASBC methods. “I was able to learn about the different tools and what they do, and the things I’d need to know in the lab.” Standing in front of New Belgium’s foam stability tester, which provides an important measure of beer quality and “foam collapse” in just minutes, Lawler says, “In class, we had to do that [calculation] by hand, and it could take four to five times that or longer to run one sample.”
去年5月，劳勒毕业后，新比利时为她提供了一份全职工作，她的课程学习和实习工作得到了回报. “I think that’s great to have on your r?sum?,她说的是课程和酿造实验室科学证书，跟随她的道路的学生将获得.
Dana Sedin, New Belgium lab manager and Lawler’s supervisor, agrees. Sedin has a Ph.D in chemistry, 但他只是在库尔斯(Coors)的职位上熟悉了酿酒科学的细节, now, New Belgium. What the UNC curriculum is teaching students, “I had to learn on the job,” Sedin says. “There’s a lot of value in the program.”
From Molecules to Marketing
Mosher, 谁去年获得了著名的酿造和蒸馏研究所的酿造文凭考试, based in the United Kingdom, 预计当证书课程开始时，将有大约15名学生参加酿造科学课程. He anticipates numbers could eventually double. Next, the interdisciplinary minor will begin in spring 2016, which will incorporate the certificate course load and additional classes from recreation, tourism and hospitality; nutrition; and marketing; and also work with campus Dining Services.
The program will also get a boost when the brewing operation opens, slated for next year. 莫舍尔与内布拉斯加州的阿尔法酿造公司合作，购买了一个七桶设备系统，让学生们可以酿造啤酒, analyze and eventually, according to plans, offer and market their beers on campus for football games and other events.
与此同时，莫舍尔专注于在校园内和地区啤酒厂中推广该项目. Companies that have supported the program, taken on interns, or hired UNC students so far include Breckenridge Brewery, Loveland’s Verboten Brewery, Greeley’s Crabtree Brewing, New Belgium, and Coors in Golden.
“The amount of support for the program is incredible. 我四处找了一下，还没有找到任何其他专门针对酿造实验室科学的项目,” Mosher says, 提到德克萨斯州的一所大学已经在模仿皇冠app官方版下载早期的努力.
“每个人似乎都觉得这是一个非常有用的项目，并希望确保我们在这方面取得成功.” With the program ready to be fully tapped and students already finding employment, Mosher can drink to that. UNC
