In the Lab With the #QualityQueen
My name is Kate Lowisz, and I’m the Quality Manager here at Sociable Cider Werks. I am your friendly neighborhood yeast whisperer, cider chemist, and Quality Queen. If you asked me five years ago where I would see myself today, it would not have been in the craft brewing industry. I studied chemistry at the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering, graduating in 2015. I was reluctant to enter the workforce, having it drilled into my head the last few years that the two options for CSE graduates were 1. More academia, or 2. Some corporate, repetitive lab job. Neither of these struck a chord in me, so I taught high school chemistry in Peace Corps Liberia for about ten months. I came back to the States earlier than expected, so I still didn’t have a plan for my career. I found myself working a temp job at a small environmental consulting firm in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. I worked with some wonderful, smart people, but I was unhappy and bored. Enter Fair State’s Lab Manager, Rose Picklo, who I met in college and has since become my very good friend.
After learning more and more about Rose’s job and the brewing industry as a whole, I decided it was time to start pursuing jobs in craft beer. With a recommendation from Rose (thank you), I started as a beertender on weekends and weeknights, and then started full time at Sociable in March of 2018. At the time, Sociable was undergoing renovation for the second taproom, offices, and the laboratory. In the meantime, I worked on the packaging team, learned about cider making, and started developing a quality program for the brewery.
As a one-woman show in the lab, my responsibilities encompass a trifecta of sciences: microbiology, chemistry, and sensory. Microbiology duties entail yeast management and handling, monitoring fermentations, and identifying microbes and measuring their concentrations to ensure microbial spoilage does not occur. Chemistry in the Sociable lab consists of monitoring nutrient levels in the juice and in-process cider, measuring pH and titratable acidity, as well as sulfite levels. As our lab grows and the brewery expands, I am creating analysis procedures based off scientific research and methods of analysis for beer and wine. Lastly, we have sensory analysis. For any brewery, this is the easiest part of a quality program to start, but the hardest part to be good at. Everyone has a palate, but sensory is subjective from person to person. It takes time and dedication to train brewery staff to become expert tasters. Regular sensory panels at Sociable range from descriptive analysis in-process and finished product to off-flavor detection training.
Beyond performing quality checks, a Quality Manager is also responsible for designing, developing, implementing, sustaining, and improving the quality management program in a brewery. We are risk advisors, troubleshooters, customer advocates, project managers, scientific scribes, and more. I am lucky to start my craft brewing career here at Sociable Cider Werks because our founders, Jim Watkins and Wade Thompson, understand the value of having a lab and the personnel required to run it. They have fostered an environment of ingenuity in which I feel empowered and challenged. For me, that is what it means to be Sociable. Stories like this are best shared with a friend. Prost!