Brewing Something Tasty at the U of A

Hardin Young: Welcome to Short Talks from the Hill, a podcast from the University of Arkansas. I’m Hardin Young, a research and economic development writer. Today I want to welcome Scott Lafontaine, an assistant professor in food chemistry. Generally, his research interests include understanding the important chemical drivers of aroma, taste and mouthfeel, which define food and beverage quality, and how different factors influence these analytes in value-added products like beer, wine, saki and other nonalcoholic drinks. Some of this research has taken the form of studying whether rice might be used to improve the quality and acceptance of nonalcoholic beer. Lafontaine is also a co-director of the UA Certificate of Proficiency in Brewing, which includes a nano-brewery housed at the U of A Beverage Development Facility. Scott Lafontaine, thanks for doing Short Talks.

Scott LaFontaine: It’s great to be here.

HY: Can you tell us a little bit about your research into using rice as a base ingredient for beer?

SL: I joined the university about a year and a half ago. But what brought me here, in terms of creating a program, was the rice industry. I have brewing science in my background. Technically, I’m an analytical chemist, and so what that means is I sort of break apart raw materials into their molecular components, and we use that data to either grow that raw material, breed that material, and leverage that material to make value-added products. And for me, I’ve worked with brewing. And so rice is a very important part to the economic, agricultural status of Arkansas. And so that’s what drew me to here. And rice is used in brewing, right? It has been used as a raw material brewing for a long time. What’s going on right now in the brewing industry is we see explosive growth in nonalcoholic beer. Consumers want healthier products. And so barley comes in with certain flavor characteristics that are sometimes negative. In the brewing industry we call that worty. W-O-R-T-Y. And so that characteristic is sort of like grainy. You can think of it, like you took your Cheerios and you put them in water and you drink that water. That’s kind of the characteristic, sort of. But it’s unfermented sugar grain. That’s typically how nonalcoholic beers were made.

And what we’re thinking is basically by substituting out some of that barley, we can add in rice. Rice has a more neutral character, or some rice varieties do. Some rice actually has, you know, quite aromatic flavor. But in this case we’re looking for that neutral characteristic of rice to bring in and tone down some of that worty characteristic. And we’re finding success with that. It’s a little bit more of an aromatic quality. And typically that unfermented beer would be very sweet. So we’re also working on, not necessarily just leveraging rice, but also certain techniques to improve nonalcoholic beer flavor, too.

So I have a PhD student that started in January and he’s leveraging different yeasts that don’t necessarily ferment maltose, which is the main disaccharide that’s produced in the mashing brewing process that yeast need to make alcohol. So there are certain yeasts that don’t ferment maltose. We call those maltose negative, as well as, another handful of yeasts that don’t assimilate certain sugars, or “non sach” or, you know, different organisms. And they can be used

to create fermentative flavors, but not alcohol. So we’re kind of looking at this at all approaches. So we’re leveraging rice, to dial back that worthy character, but we’re also looking at, you know, how can we leverage maybe different organisms or different process techniques to also create preferable, N.A.B. quality?

HY: Can you tell us a little bit about the Certificate of Proficiency in Brewing?

SL: The Certificate of Proficiency in Brewing, that was created sort of around COVID in 2020. And that program basically is a nine major credit core course. We have a theory course, which is brewing science. We have production course, which students are getting in and they’re using that theory to design different, grain-related products. It doesn’t have to necessarily be nonalcoholic, but it could. But it’s really them learning how to take raw material specifications, use those, design a beer from start to end, and then analyze that, as well, so they can become like maybe quality analysts. And then the last piece of that is an internship. So those are three credit hour courses. And then there’s six credit hours that the student has to have that are electives. And a lot of those electives cater to certain degree programs. So, for example, engineering, food science, chemistry, microbiology, a lot of those core courses that are taken in those degrees can supplement in for those electives.

HY: Yeah. I was curious if it was just food science students or more people were coming into that program.

SL: It is a collection. So, I’ve taught brewing science now for two years. And I would say about maybe a quarter of the students are food science, but the other proportions are engineering, micro[biology], chemistry. It’s this melting pot of students. And that’s really because brewing is leveraging all these different disciplines.

HY: What’s the capacity for this class?

SL: I would say at least the production class in the space that we have right now, we’re limited to about 20,

HY: And are you offering it each semester or is it like in the fall or the spring?

SL: The brewing science course is offered in the fall. That’s that theory course where we learn to build the recipes, and then the brewing production would be in the spring.

HY: Beer is not your only area of interest. So what’s another product that you’re working on?

SL: Yeah. So we have a major USDA grant with blackberries. So really, right, we’re leveraging that analytical chemistry to improve crops or value-added products. And so we’re working with Dr. Renee Threlfall and Dr. Margaret Worthington to analyze the aroma profiles of the advanced lines of blackberries that we have. And we’re linking that to consumer liking. And the goal is if we can tune the genetics to produce the type of chemistry we want in these berries, then we can

design berries quicker that have preferred flavors. These are our local, Arkansas blackberries. These are being grown right down in Clarksville.

HY: You were also working towards the establishment of a Center for Brewing Innovation. So can you kind of tell us about where you are with that and where do you want to be?

SL: Yeah, I’m really excited about this. And I think there’s huge potential in this area to become a leader in beverage technology from a research and education perspective. And where we want to be – right? So we’ve got some exciting news. We’re moving forward with a brand-new food science building. And the funds are allotted for that. And the goal is to have this building move-in ready by summer 2026. The vision is to have a center for beverage innovation housed within that building, as well. And the goal would be to have a production facility, which would be a state-of-the-art production facility, that could be used to design a number of different products, right? The goal was beverages here and beverages that are important to Arkansas. So that could be non-alcoholic beer. That could be saki or other different, rice-based beverages. Maybe even rice milk. Then we would have a flavor characterization lab and then a consumer, data-driven tasting area where we could get consumer feedback, let’s say, on our own R&D projects or like our commercial partners’ products in real time. That, right now, we’re sort of in the funding generation stage.

And so we have ideas about what we want in these spaces, but we’re still trying to build that out. And why I think this area is because innovation is important to — at least from what I’ve seen so far — in Arkansas we’re innovators. And so we’re really leveraging our commercial, industry partners, as well as the success at the University of Arkansas to be leaders in that space on a global perspective.

HY: So, you mentioned there were three components to the center and flavor characterization was one of them. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of goes into the science of flavor characterization?

SL: Yeah, I think in terms of research that is where I find, you know, I’m a little chemist, so it’s really important for us to sort of lead by research. And really that molecular-level understanding of raw materials and the value-add in what drives their quality from a flavor perspective — that really allows us to be a leader in this space. And what we’re doing in there is we have instrumentation, sort of like a gas chromatograph or we’re using gas chromatography or liquid chromatography. Gas chromatography is like your nose and liquid chromatography would be, you know, sort of like your tongue. And so we have these instruments that can measure different analytes and characterize the qualities that we’re looking for — the drive, taste and aroma.

HY: So are these flavors arrived at through, like, breeding, like, if we’re talking about blackberries or is it through, like, interbreeding or breeding different types of blackberries or are they arrived at through, I guess, more artificial means.

SL: Back in that yeast project, we can just go out and we can collect yeast, right? And there’s a professor here that has a yeast data bank. And we can just look at yeast that exist. But there are companies that are using to take, let’s say, the basal genome and put it in a yeast and that yeast now produces sort of a hoppy-like character. And so we can leverage this technology to really understand what flavors we want. And now as we get better technology, we can make this process go quicker. So it takes about, you know, ten years to get a BlackBerry variety. And so if we can work to understand what the characteristics we want in those varieties, we can help to speed up that process and define the traits that we’re looking for in blackberries or rice. The other piece of this, too, is it also depends on how you grow that material. And so how long that material ripens. When to pick it. Depending on whether or not you have the ability as a farmer to adjust those parameters based upon the size of your farm. This type of instrumentation can be leveraged to help with that understanding, as well.

And then finally, you know, we get in the brewery that processing equipment. You can also, by understanding the molecular composition, change how you process that material. And so I’ve worked with all three of those. The way in which you attack the problem can be at each of those directions. And it’s really about having great collaborators, which at the University of Arkansas, there’s been a number of great people to work with.

HY: The nature of what you’re trying to accomplish, you will be looking for corporate partners that you can work with projects on to make sure that maybe you can assist them with improving their products or working with them, develop new products. Would that be part of the plan and what you’re trying to do?

SL: Without a doubt. So, we have this research component, right? We have an education component and we have a little bit of a service component. The USDA supported an equipment grant. And so one of the equipment is our gas chromatograph. It’s, I would say, a fairly unique instrument for the area. There’s probably not something like it within a 250-mile radius. And so from an instrumentation perspective, it’s a very high-level instrument. It allows us to do some pretty sophisticated work. And we are already leveraging that to do some service projects and, you know, in collaboration research projects with industry. That also sort of opens us up to — we’re working on pet food. We’re working on other products that, from a flavor perspective, the molecules can kind of be the same as you go between different things, but the concentrations vary. The instrumentation is very flexible because it can be used in a number of different approaches. And I’ve been finding it quite nice because, you know, I’m new to the area, so I’m learning sort of the products that are important and the spaces that need help.

HY: And we should be on our radar after rice and blackberries. Anything else?

SL: I think pet food, for sure. In terms of what’s coming up, we have a large collaborative project that we’ll hear about funding soon. And that would be muscadine. Muscadines are really interesting from a flavor perspective. Again, I grew up on the East Coast, and so the first muscadine I had was about a half a year ago. The variation in flavor that you can get from that fruit is quite amazing. I would say that would be the next big target.

HY: Thanks. That sounds great. Scott Lafontaine, thank you for coming in today.

SL: It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Matt McGowan: Short Talks from the Hill is now available wherever you get your podcast. For more information and additional podcasts, visit Arkansas Research.dot.UARK.dot.edu, the home of research and economic development news at the University of Arkansas. Music for Short Talks from the Hill was written and performed by local musician Ben Harris.