Engaging Students Using the Chemistry of Alcoholic Beverages

Fermentation is an inherently interdisciplinary and attractive subject for students from many backgrounds and skill levels. Authentic, hands-on projects engage students and develop their technical and soft skills. In this chapter, I describe my experiences utilizing fermentation-based projects in both general education and chemistry courses at Saint Francis University. Additionally, I provide a brief overview of resources available for instructors working with alcohol, namely beer, and reflect on legal, as well as other, considerations that should be taken as one builds a fermentation course or program.

After it is opened and exposed to oxygen, a bottle of wine will eventually spoil, due to oxidation of the ethanol and polyphenols therein. The storage conditions of the opened wine affect the rate of this process, which can take place in a matter of days to weeks. Students in the Integrated Chemistry Laboratory course at Rocky Mountain College were prompted to develop and carry out experiments to study how two separate variables of their choosing affect the rate of this oxidative spoilage. The students chose to use both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and made measurements and observations over the course of several weeks. This chapter describes the learning objectives of the project, the experiments the students carried out, as well as how the project may be tailored to suit laboratory courses at other institutions.

This chapter draws on nearly two decades of experience to introduce a method for fermenting sugar and presents concepts of simple and fractional distillation in an undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory class. A brief literature search regarding the use of fermentation in other chemistry classes, the application of this experiment in an undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory, observations gained from teaching this experiment, and the complete two-part experiment are included. The protocol given is written for an undergraduate to understand the background basics of fermentation, methods of distillation, and some characterization of the ethanol product. Images of the glassware used, student tables, and follow-up questions are also incorporated. This experiment is written from the perspective of the class as a whole completing the experiment. Throughout the experiment, students are assigned different tasks to complete. Within the debriefing meetings, students share information with their peers about what happened in their part of the experiment.

Brewing beer offers a highly customizable and engaging platform for students to develop synthetic and analytical chemistry skills in the undergraduate teaching laboratory. This chapter describes the practical adaptations made to the beer-making process at James Madison University for our brewing-based General Chemistry II course. These changes allow beer production within the constraints of the standard 3-hour lab period. Several significant modifications were made to traditional homebrewing methods, equipment, and scale. Practical considerations, including safety protocols and institutional compliance, are addressed to support adoption across diverse academic settings. This work can serve as a roadmap for instructors seeking to incorporate brewing beer into their teaching labs, whether for analytical exploration or as a vehicle for student-driven, inquiry-based experimentation.

For the past five years, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has been promoting the relevance of chemistry to everyday lives by teaching a course on the Chemistry of Food. Open to all students who have completed an introductory chemistry course, the course has been extremely popular among students at every level and from every major. Recently, the course was expanded to include an international component. With minor adjustments to the course technical content, “The Chemistry of Food and Drink in Japan” was offered the spring quarter of 2023. After learning fundamentals of food chemistry alongside fundamentals of Japanese food and culture, fourteen students travelled with two faculty to Japan for a two-week excursion. As an interesting side-benefit to this trip, two students not enrolled in the course were happy to be able to travel with the class to Kanazawa to participate in undergraduate research for the summer at Kanazawa Institute of Technology. The course was offered a second time in spring quarter of 2024. Demonstrating the flexibility of the course structure, ‘The Chemistry of Food and drink in Greece’ was offered spring of 2025. In addition, plans are underway to take the course to Italy in the spring of 2026. This chapter will present the structure of the course and student response to the experience.

Undergraduate science is traditionally both taught and learned through disciplinary lenses. Often, students compartmentalize knowledge in courses and have difficulty making connections between disciplines and to new applications. This chapter describes a course designed to encourage students to apply the scientific process to a topic outside traditional course and lab work: brewing beer. As the brewing of beer encompasses the sciences of biology and chemistry, has a rich history and significant economic presence, and is associated with a robust community of homebrewers and hobbyists, brewing represents an excellent opportunity to engage students in a truly interdisciplinary context. The authors have developed and team-taught an undergraduate course on the science of fermentation, focusing most directly on the brewing of beer. The course has been taught three times during Transylvania University’s May term wherein students take one intensive course for 4 weeks. The course explored the scientific principles of fermentation and heavily emphasized experiential learning, structured around a lab activity with students brewing standard beer from malt extract. The course also covered the major characteristics of beer, the role of brewing ingredients and processes and how they affect the final product, and involved student measurements of various chemical and microbiological aspects of beer in the laboratory. Pre- and post-tests and attitudinal survey data from the students suggest that the course aided students to see the interconnectedness of biology and chemistry as they apply to brewing and provided the opportunity to apply existing scientific knowledge to a system novel to the students. At the end of the course students reported greater confidence in their ability to brew beer, increased understanding of brewing in scientific terms, the ability to identify beer styles, and an ability to predict the effects of changes to ingredients or process on finished beer.

The chemistry of beer, wine, and bourbon is a topic of interest to many college students. The course described in this chapter leverages this interest to introduce students to Primary Scientific Literature and communication of science. Through course assignments students are introduced to methods to read the literature and given the opportunity to practice those methods. Students also prepare and deliver short scientific talks to emerging (peer) scientists. Public communication of science to an authentic non-science audience is practiced through infographic design. This chapter discusses the design and implementation of the class, several pedagogical techniques employed to facilitate learning, and student observations about the course.

The Fermentation Sciences Program at Appalachian State University became an official degree granting program in 2012. It all started as a single brewing science course that was developed as a means of conveying difficult chemical concepts to chemistry majors. Since then it has grown into the first stand-alone fermentation science program in the country, which initially focused primarily on brewing science and enology. Over time, it evolved into more of a holistic fermentation science program focused on fermented foods and beverages. The program hs endured the craft beer boom and bust, decreasing consumer demand for alcoholic beverages, and an increasing demand for fermented foods and alternative proteins. This chapter highlights the trials and tribulations of the entire process and lessons learned along the way. A look to the future for what can be expected from continually evolving consumer preferences, industry needs, general changes in the academy, and the looming cliff that is the decrease in college aged students in the coming years is also discussed.

This chapter details the motivation, design, and evolution of the undergraduate Fermentation Science program, launched in the Fall of 2016 within the Chemistry Department at Eastern Michigan University. Developed in response to the rapid growth of Michigan’s craft beverage industry and a recognized need for scientifically trained quality assurance professionals, the program was atypically positioned within a comprehensive university rather than a traditional college of agriculture. The primary goal was to provide integrated and practical scientific training with specific applications to the production and analysis of fermented goods. The curriculum design combines a rigorous foundation in the natural sciences—including chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics—with a novel suite of specialized Fermentation Science (FERM) courses. This chapter provides a detailed overview of these core courses, emphasizing the deliberate integration of chemical principles into a hands-on, experiential learning framework. Over its first decade, the program has successfully placed graduates in industry and graduate programs, earned national accolades in student competitions, and fostered impactful community and research partnerships. However, we also present a candid discussion of challenges, most notably lower-than-anticipated enrollment in the major, attributed to the program’s demanding credit load and broader university enrollment trends. In response, we outline strategic curricular revisions currently in development, including creating a less science-intensive pathway and establishing a graduate certificate program.