- I started to really get exposed to all
the different kinds of beer,
and so from that I learned
that there was kind of what
you would call a beer major,
but once I got in it I realized
it was so much more than just brewing.
It was like, fermentation can be food
or other alcohols or
lots of different things.
Don't think it's just about drinking beer,
cause it's not. It's more than that.
There's like a food safety aspect,
so you could go into the FDA
or some kind of food safety.
Brewing industry obviously is a big one,
I think the wine industry.
You can also do the quality aspect;
you can go into food
fermentation and make sauerkraut
or yogurt or do the dairy route.
Which, I mean, they're all big industries
so you can have any job you want really,
it just depends on what interests you.
I really like the quality control aspect,
and just kinda how you can
do something the same way
every time with like a living organism,
cause they're kind of unpredictable,
but if you control things correctly
I find that really
interesting that you can.
We learn a lot of the
Microbiology because you know
the yeast are what's
actually doing the work.
But you kind of have to set up for that,
so you learn really specifically
about the ingredients,
so you learn like what
part of the barley kernel
is used for brewing and why, and how,
and what's important about that.
Then you look into the Biochemistry
and you calculate how to manipulate things
and so there's math
involved, which was not
fun for me at first, but I
figured it out. (laughing)
Um, and there's a little engineering
I mean it's Science and Technologies.
For my independent study
I worked with Katie,
the lab manager here in the brew lab,
and we are trying to create an additional
lab class to fermentation biochemistry.
I basically genetically
engineered some bacteria
and some yeast using Crisper technology.
I inserted a gene into it that
would make it fluorescent,
and then I inserted a antibiotic-resistant
gene into a strain of E. Coli.
I kind of thought it was gonna
be like yay, beer. (giggles)
You know like let's learn how to make beer
and I was drawn to it
because I thought it was
both Science and Art, which
were my two backgrounds kind of.
And it is Science and Art and it's
kinda interesting how its those two.
But I didn't, I kind of underestimated
how much Science was really behind it.
Which is cool, I feel so much smarter now,
you know, that I did that. It's great.
I'm Rachel McKinney.
I'm a Fermentation Science
and Technology major.
(soft music)
