RV-002: Measurements, Bias, and Their Impact on Beer Science and Community Building

Good Beer Hunting

This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the brewing and distilling industries.

For this year’s event, I moderated three discussions, and in this episode, you’ll hear me in conversation with three panelists talking about measurements, bias, and how these things impact the making of beer and how we bring people together for beer. Joining me are:

• Nicole Steinhilber, laboratory operations manager for Charleston, South Carolina’s Edmund’s Oast Brewing.

• April Dove, founder of Tha CommUNITY, a collaborative beer initiative that partners with breweries to offer a blueprint on how to attract Black drinkers to taprooms.

• Jen Currier, cellarmaster at Wicked Weed Brewing and head winemaker at its spin-off winery, Vidl Cellars.

The experience between all three of these industry pros gave us fodder to get nerdy about lab work, ingredients, and more, but it also allowed us to look at big picture challenges facing beer today, most notably how to better welcome new drinkers into the fold. After you listen to this episode, make sure to check out the other two, which includes a panel discussion about bias in sensory and a keynote conversation with my Good Beer Hunting colleague and friend, Jamaal Lemon.