Students in Dr. Mark Jensen’s course paired up with Drekker Brewing Co. to develop projects that helped the brewery analyze its craft beers.
The course is designed to prepare students for the kind of work a graduate could pursue with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Students primarily determine how much of something is in a substance. For example, students in the past have identified trace minerals in water samples.
Sebastian Gardner ’15 took the class a year ago. After graduation, he was the quality control department at Drekker. One of his responsibilities was developing standard operating procedures so every batch of beer tastes exactly the same.
When Gardner took Jensen’s class, he tested caffeine content in light-, medium- and dark-roasted coffees.
The skills learned were valuable. “But I felt a lack of excitement about the project because I knew my results didn’t really matter to anyone,” he says.
Gardner reached out to Jensen and suggested that students could help the fledgling brewery. The small brewery doesn’t have a lab and can’t afford expensive analytical equipment. In exchange, the students could have a meaningful experience.
“Craft beer is about quality and there’s good science behind that,” Jensen says. “The project prepares them better for what they would encounter in a work environment.”
Luke Lillehaugen ’19 and lab partner Hunter Huff Towle ’17 measured concentrations of trace metals in the beer varieties.
“It was extremely valuable to work on a problem that was actually important,” Lillehaugen says. "Working alongside Drekker gave us the opportunity to interact with the people manufacturing the products we were analyzing."