Behind the Science of Brewing Flavorful Beers

A Balancing Act

Beer is famously made from four simple ingredients: water, malt, hops and yeast. Yet from those fundamental components, brewers craft a staggering variety of beer styles, each with its own color, flavor and aroma.

“The spectrum is vast,” says Pete Steffes of Derive Brewing in Columbus. 

“It’s incredible how using just those four ingredients, you can drastically change the flavor of beer.” By adjusting water chemistry, adding specialty malts, blending various hop varieties and pitching specific yeast strains, brewers can zero in on practically any flavor profile. 

But why stop there? When it comes to flavoring beer, there are myriad techniques and additions that brewers can rely on, from aging in wood to adding adjuncts like cocoa, fruit or spices.

“Wood has been almost a given for such a long time because beer used to be aged in wooden casks before the innovation of stainless-steel fermenters,” Steffes says. As a food scientist, he likes to work backward when formulating a new recipe, starting with a desired result then charting a course to get there.

“You have an end product in mind, and you know what levers you can pull on to get to that point,” he explains. For example, to create Derive’s popular Thunderkiss Morning Froth — which blends elements like bourbon-soaked coffee beans, Mexican vanilla and cinnamon — Steffes needs to pull more than a few levers to keep things from going sideways.

“Coffee is a very acidic product, so you have to know that you’re going to get a drop in pH,” he continues. “There are oils that come from the coffee beans, so head retention is going to be affected. And Mexican vanilla has acidic fruit, so you try to elevate the inherent sweetness of the beer itself.”

Tap Into Tradition

In 2016, lagering tunnels were discovered deep beneath Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. Dating back to the mid-1800s, portions of the old Linck Brewery had been virtually untouched for 150 years, including an ancient wooden fermenter.

“The nice thing with yeast is that it can live up to an inch deep in wood,” explains Bret Kollmann Baker of Urban Artifact. “We took samples from where preserved yeast might still be and, lo and behold, we found brewing yeast: the Missing Linck Yeast.” 

That particular strain of saccharomyces cerevisiae, aka brewer’s yeast, was revived in 2019 to brew a golden ale with notes of honey and black peppercorn — the dawn of a new day for the very old yeast. 

Now, the first Saturday in June is reserved for the Missing Linck Festival, when brewers are invited to brew their own beers using that immortal yeast. Last year, 16 breweries participated including West Side Brewing, Bocce Brewing Company and Fifty West Brewing Company.

Time-honored techniques have a place, too. The classic Oktoberfest at Great Lakes Brewing Company, for instance, uses decoction mashing, where a portion of mash is extracted, boiled separately to develop rich, malty flavors and color, then reintroduced to the main batch.

Noble Beast Brewing Co.’s 2024 Great American Beer Festival gold medal-winning Eau Rouge Flemish red ale is a Solera-style brew, made using a fractional blending and aging process to develop mature notes of ripe raspberry, tart cherry, vanilla and oak.

Unpacking Adjuncts

When it comes to the wide world of beer flavors, it’s easy to feel like a kid in a candy store. Shelves are lined with cans and bottles starring supplemental adjuncts like bourbon, pickles, oysters, breakfast foods and, yes, even candy.

“We’ve been doing this from the beginning,” John Haggerty says of Warped Wing Brewing’s annual collaboration with Esther Price Candies. Each year, the brewery selects a candy from the 100-year-old Dayton confectionary to build a beer around. Last year’s was Sweetheart Peppermint Porter, a rich and creamy creation evoking melt-in-your-mouth dark chocolate mints.

Masthead Brewing Co. uses spicy adjuncts like fresh hot peppers to give a potent kick to its Jalapeno IPA, a 2024 World Beer Cup silver medalist. But the sky is the limit, really: brewers have been known to amp up recipes with everything from sweet syrups and fruits to earthy botanicals, herbs and spices to coffee, donuts and cereal. 

Ohio On Tap is for Ohio beer lovers and is produced in partnership with the Ohio Craft Brewers Association. View a digital version of Ohio On Tap 2025.