Oral history interview with Jo Doyle, 2019

Richard Cox: Okay. So, to start, can you please say and spell your name?

Jo Doyle: Sure. It's Jo Doyle. J-O D-O-Y-L-E.

Richard Cox: Okay, and today is Friday, March 1, 2019 and we're at White Labs in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm Richard Cox, talking today with Jo Doyle, Education and Engagement Curator, as part of the Well Crafted NC project.

Richard Cox: To start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jo Doyle: I've been here in Asheville about nine years. I came here from the DC metropolitan area. I have been in the food and beverage industry for about 30 years, and more recently in the beer industry about eight years.

Richard Cox: Okay. What were you doing in the food and beverage industry before-

Jo Doyle: Oh, everything.

Richard Cox: Yeah?

Jo Doyle: Yeah. I've been bartender, server, host, dishwasher, manager. You name it. I worked at a restaurant in DC called Food for Thought for a little over seven years. I started there when I was about 22 years old. This restaurant closed in 2000. They had a 30 year lease, 1970 to 2000. As you can imagine the rent hiked up significantly, so the restaurant closed at that time.

Jo Doyle: I worked for Whole Food for a number of years.

Richard Cox: Oh, cool.

Jo Doyle: That was a little departure from my food and beverage. I was actually the head of the floral department.

Richard Cox: Okay. Yeah.

Jo Doyle: I was a florist and I actually brought my team to be the number one floral department in the whole company for three years, while I was there. It was really cool.

Richard Cox: Yeah. That's awesome.

Jo Doyle: And that's kind of what brought me to Asheville, was being a florist.

Richard Cox: How about-

Jo Doyle: I was hired to do a wedding and I came down here and just fell in love with Asheville.

Richard Cox: Oh. That's a great story. Were you doing education during that period?

Jo Doyle: I was in a number of supervisory roles, so in a round about way, education, but more training, mentoring. That kind of thing.

Richard Cox: Sure. So moving into beer now, or yeast, how would you say yeast is fundamental to beer?

Jo Doyle: Well, yeast is fundamental to beer because it is what makes beer. Without yeast, you don't have beer. You have wort, which is like nice, sweet barley tea. The saying goes, "brewers make wort, yeast makes beer." So yeast is an organism that basically converts sugar to alcohol, ethanol and CO2. So without yeast you don't have, not just beer, you don't have wine, you don't have hard cider, you don't have spirits. You don't have all the booze.

Richard Cox: The fun stuff.

Jo Doyle: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So what would you say is the difference between, for example, beer 00:03:00yeast and, for example, bread yeast?

Jo Doyle: Actually, there is no difference. Beer yeast and bread yeast are from the same organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It's just different strains that have been domesticated for millions of years. Well, not millions, but lots of thousands of years.

Jo Doyle: The difference is - they're both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and they're different strains that have been basically, not genetically modified in any way like that, but kind of bred to ... So, your beer yeast can have a higher alcohol tolerance, where you can make bread with that same yeast, but it's going to take a very long time to rise. Whereas your bread yeast doesn't have a lot of alcohol tolerance. It will make beer. It's probably not going to taste very good and it probably won't have a high alcohol level. So that strain has been bred to, or selectively bred I should say, to create a lot of CO2. That's why we have the 00:04:00rising of the bread.

Richard Cox: So it's more like yeast is yeast, but they're specialized-

Jo Doyle: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Richard Cox: Perfect. What would you say is the process in working with yeast for beer?

Jo Doyle: Process of working with yeast for beer ... Well, it really depends on the yeast that you're starting with I think, and what you're trying to achieve. Here at White Labs we grow our yeast to a health and to a cell count that you can just pitch it. A brewer can just ... We have liquid yeast. We don't dehydrate our yeast. A brewer, and a home brewer as well, would just take their PurePitch package and let it warm up to room temperature.

Jo Doyle: I would recommend sterilizing your, well, putting on gloves ... So using aseptic technique, like what you would use in the lab, but use it at home. Put on some latex gloves, use isopropyl alcohol to clean everything. Cleaning 00:05:00your scissors that you're going to use to cut open the package. A lot of brewers will actually take the package and put it into a bucket of Saniclean, get the whole thing sanitized, snip it, pitch it.

Jo Doyle: If you're trying to make a higher gravity beer, you might want to consider making a starter. So making a small batch of beer, adding your yeast, and kind of growing the yeast to a higher concentration.

Richard Cox: Sort of building a test sort of situation, or just-

Jo Doyle: You're kind of making, you're just growing your yeast. It's basically you're propagating your yeast.

Richard Cox: Okay. Right.

Jo Doyle: Also, if you're making a lager, you might want to do that as well. Also, if you have yeast that's a little old, you might want to consider making a starter. It just really depends on what the style of beer you're trying to do and what you're starting out with. Like what fermentable sugars you have and what you're trying to achieve.

Richard Cox: Why did you mention lager specifically? The lager versus ale thing ...

Jo Doyle: Well, lagers tend to need a little bit ... Well, they need more time.

Richard Cox: More love. Yeah.

Jo Doyle: They do. And it just behooves a brewer to kind of start out with a little bit higher cell count.

Richard Cox: Okay. And so what are some of the types of yeast used in craft beer?

Jo Doyle: Oh, lots of different types of yeast. The main two ... Saccharomyces cerevisiae, they mention ale yeast. Saccharomyces pastorianus, lager yeast. So these are really kind of what I consider a family tree. The analogy sometimes you use is dogs. Great Danes and Chihuahuas look different, they act different, they want different things, they have different requirements, but they're all dogs. So yeah, different yeast strains like different things. They behave differently. Some yeast are highly flocculent. Flocculation is a behavior of yeast where they will click together, they clump together, these little pincher-like clips.

Richard Cox: Interesting.

Jo Doyle: They want to do this. Some are highly flocculent. They will clip 00:07:00together and form these kind of rafts and clump together very quickly. Some are less flocculent and may kind of just hang around each other for a while. Yeah, so hefeweizen, our WLP300, tends to be not very flocculent so you can actually see it's real hazy throughout the whole propagation process, where 007, dry English ale yeast, is clumping and dropping like a brick. So they just behave different. So it just depends on the style of beer you're trying to do.

Jo Doyle: So if you're trying to make - obviously if you're trying to make a Belgian saison you're going to use saison yeast. If you're trying to make a barley wine you're going to use a strain that's highly attenuative, meaning it has the ability to convert the sugars in the alcohol robustly. They can kind of convert those long chain sugars a little bit easier than some. Some yeast can only kind of chew their way through the simpler sugars and once they hit longer chain sugars they get a little sluggish, where some strains are maltose, bring 00:08:00it on. I can eat that. And brettanomyces especially. So if the Saccharomyces are dogs, brettanomyces is a coyote.

Richard Cox: Let's talk about bretts, then. Tell us all about brett.

Jo Doyle: I don't know all about brett.

Richard Cox: Tell us about brett.

Jo Doyle: I know some things about brett. So, they're scavengers for sure and opportunists. So they can, like I said, really kind of come in and convert those long chain sugars no problem. They can live in an empty barrel. They can eat wood. So if a Saccharomyces strain would rather dine on a steak dinner whereas brettanomyces would rather eat out of the dumpster.

Richard Cox: Well, it's a wild yeast, right?

Jo Doyle: Yeah. But you know, there's so many different strains under that brettanomyces umbrella, and they're all different too. Some brett strains can give off a lot of real tropical notes of flavors, pineapple and papaya and these 00:09:00delicious tropical notes, and some are downright funky barnyard-y, wet hay and wet horse blanket and these kind, those kind of descriptors. I prefer the tropical ones myself.

Richard Cox: Sure. But to the horse blanket, really?

Jo Doyle: Yeah. Call me crazy.

Richard Cox: Brett's interesting just because it's a wild yeast and we compare it to what people are doing within controlled environments, and here comes brett along and people deciding they're going to do something with it and try to tame it.

Jo Doyle: Uh-uh [negative].

Richard Cox: You know what I mean? It's interesting.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. You want to keep it separate, so that's when you hear brewers talk about their clean program and their wild program. They're really separating those yeast chains physically.

Richard Cox: Physically I mean they want to sometimes not even have them in the same building.

Jo Doyle: Oh yeah. Sometimes they'll have them blocks away.

Richard Cox: I guess brett goes.

Jo Doyle: That's right. It'll eat anything at the end of the day.

Richard Cox: Do do you have, maybe a slightly wrong idea, but a favorite yeast or one that you found is the most interesting that you know about or work with?

Jo Doyle: Oh, well, see I-

Richard Cox: That little bugger's amazing.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, I'm surrounded my so many different strains of yeast here 00:10:00because of my job, and every one of them has really cool stories because they're all found all over the place and discovered all over the place. One we just came out with is called Maranon Canyon Cacao Ale Yeast. Yeah, I know. It's a mouthful.

Richard Cox: Yeah. I heard cacao too, so I'm interested.

Jo Doyle: So they thought this was an extinct strain of yeast. They found it in this Peruvian river basin growing on cacao pods, and they isolated it and found out that it produces a really delightful, almost saison farmhouse style beers, so we just released that. It's currently what we call in the vault, so it's a strain that we'll release from time to time. It's not part of our core lineup, but I think it's such a cool story.

Richard Cox: No, it's great.

Jo Doyle: I haven't personally had a beer made with it yet. I really like some of the blends that we do, where we're taking a couple different strains and 00:11:00blending them and they're making really nice hazy IPAs. We have 067, Coastal Haze, which is a blend of three strains that just really make this awesome, hazy, juicy IPA. It's really cool to me. And also just these new discoveries. Well, not new to us, I think, new to Western people. Like the Kveik. They're these Nordic strains that have been used for a long, long, long time that I think people are just starting to understand and get their hands on, and they're like, oh my gosh, this strain will actually ferment at like 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It can do really interesting things that we never thought could happen. There's just always new technology and new innovation coming along with these, so if I have to say I have a personal ...

Jo Doyle: I mean, 001 California Ale Yeast is a workhorse. I mean, it's going to make a variety of styles pretty well.

Richard Cox: Yeah. It's well understood compared to some of the other ones. Awesome. That's fascinating. It's like you're saying dogs. Once you start to get to know them, they have personalities.

Jo Doyle: Oh, they have personalities. So we tend to anthropomorphize a lot here, where we talk to the yeast. We're like, "Okay, little guys."

Richard Cox: They're alive.

Jo Doyle: They're alive and we respect that, and we care for them like we would care for anything, especially we care maybe even a little bit more because they're our babies until they become somebody else's baby. So yeah, we have some problem children. We have strains that can be a little pain.

Richard Cox: Yeah? What's that like?

Jo Doyle: Well, when it comes to the packaging portion of the program, a lot of like we talk about that flocculation. Some are highly flocculant and they're downright cheese-like. They're real clumpy and we have to really kind of,it sounds funny to say, "massage them," get them at a same consistency when it 00:13:00comes to the packaging part of the production.

Richard Cox: Fascinating. That's amazing.

Jo Doyle: It's cool.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it's really cool. I was talking about some of the types already, so let's talk about you role here. Your role here is as Education and Engagement Curator, right?

Jo Doyle: Yeah.

Richard Cox: What does that mean?

Jo Doyle: Yeah, it's a cool title. So, a lot of different things. Primarily I do internal education. Education has always been really important to Dr. Chris White for the company from the beginning, internal and external. Really, the goal of our company is to help people make the best beer possible, and so my job is primarily to do internal. So my counterpart out in San Diego, Eric Fowler, he kind of focuses on external education, so these classes that we offer for professional brewers and distillers and winemakers. I facilitate the classes for 00:14:00him here, so I assist him in the external education and then he assists me in the internal education.

Jo Doyle: So what that looks like is new hire, somebody comes in on day one, they're going to spend a great portion of their first day with me. I'm going to show them every nook and cranny of the facility, I'm going to introduce them to every single person that's there and what they do. It can be a little overwhelming, and I try to keep it as accessible as possible and I tell people, "I'm throwing a lot at you. I don't expect you to remember everything, but come to me anytime." I sit down and we review every aspect of fermentation, so all of the industries that we serve, all of the -- where we are as far as the products and the services and the things that we offer, and even down to the process. This is the process, this is how we propagate use, and this is how we do our business.

Jo Doyle: I also this year started, I spearheaded a ... I'm a project manager 00:15:00for a job-specific training program. So we have SOPs obviously for every moment in the process, but not everybody learns by looking at a manual, and sometimes when you get trained by a person and you get shown a way, it's great, it's all well and good, but maybe three days later you might be like, "Oh, what was that part of that CIP process or that wort sterilization?" They can go. I'm doing computer-based training, so I'm taking photographs doing presentations that they can review, and then I'm also doing checklists so their trainer, their supervisor, they demonstrate the proficiency of doing that task and then they get a certificate. The certificate says, "I'm proficient in aseptic technique in the production clean room," for instance. That goes in their folder. When it comes time for their yearly review, they can say I have this certificate, I have that certificate, I have this certificate, and I just feel it's a really good way for the team members to just have that training more accessible anytime.

Jo Doyle: So that's a thing I'm doing. I also put on every month something called Bite Size Education, and that's again another internal project. What that is is we all meet here in the culture room and we have a snack and we learn about all kinds of stuff. So it's mostly the industries that we serve, but sometimes it's what do other people do. What is the day in the life of a customer service representative look like? What does a day in the life of someone in the analytical lab look like? So I pull in ... I don't have to do all the presentations myself. I can pull in people that are experts in their prospective roles here, and we toggle back and forth between Asheville and San Diego, so we do kind of a webinar thing. So we'll do a presentation in Asheville one month and then the next month somebody in San Diego will present a topic and we'll go back and forth.

Jo Doyle: So for instance, April. Rex Cooper is the head of our packaging 00:17:00department, who is a passionate and knowledgeable mead and cider maker. He's going to be presenting Exploring Mead and Cider. So it's really cool to work on these projects because I actually learn a lot along the way. So it's really cool. That's a fun thing that I do.

Jo Doyle: I also every six weeks or so I put on something called a fermented pairing series, and that's open to the public, and that's beer dinners or brunches. We've done one brunch and we'll do another brunch in April, but it's usually a dinner. So it's four courses, it's five beers, because at White Labs we make a beer, a base beer, and then we ferment it with four different strains of yeast, so you can see the difference, taste the difference, and smell the difference. So I do like to have one side by side with that dinner, and there's always some educational presentation, and I try to collaborate with local businesses that do anything fermented. I partnered with PennyCup Coffee Company 00:18:00and we did a coffee brunch. Everything was infused with their coffee, and we did a coffee beer actually made with their coffee. So it's really cool to partner with local companies that are aligned. They do something fermentation. So that's really successful. I see a lot of familiar faces at these things. People come to them every month and it's pretty fun.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I knew you also did the external classes, and I think that's what you're talking about there, or is that an additional?

Jo Doyle: So yeah, we do the two day classes, yeast essentials classes.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

Jo Doyle: We just added on a new one day class called lab practicum and that's literally all day in the hands on classroom that we have. Again, that's under Eric's realm, but I set it all up here, so I make sure everybody has breakfast, that the webinar's set up, that the happy hour's set up, and just take care of all of the guests during that.

Richard Cox: We've also been told multiple times about what you were saying about setting the four beers up with the different yeast but the same beer. I mean, people get a lot from that sort of thing.

Jo Doyle: They really do. And it's not just the appearance and the aroma and the flavor. It affects every aspect of the beer. It affects the ABV. It can boost or diminish alcohol. It could actually boost or diminish IBUs bitterness, which blew my mind when I first found that out. I was like, "Wait, it can do that too? That's cool." Yeah. So really, I think that's just a really easy and accessible, tangible way that people can say, "Wow, yeast really does matter."

Richard Cox: Yeah, and it's one of the first things you said with my first simple question, is yeast fundamental to beer, and it is beer, and it affects every single aspect of it, like you're saying. So yeah, it nicely pulls it back around there. So I was going to ask about the sorts of classes, workshops, and events you offer, but I think you've already touched on that with external classes.

Jo Doyle: I think so, yeah. We have the yeast essentials classes. It's usually a two day class. We did a sour beer essential class. We'll run that next week in 00:20:00San Diego in a webinar. We do that lab practicum and yeah. I mean really a lot of different other little things too. I also do the, internally again for our team, I lead a class that kind of gets everybody who was ever interested prepared to take their first level Cicerone Certified Beer Server. If they're interested, I'll do some Mondays after work. We'll do four weeks of exploring different beer styles. It's exploring the beer styles of Germany one week, Belgian the next week, Britain the next week, and just getting people who are interested to take that test a little bit more prepared. So that's another kind of fun activity that we do.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and it shows that your education program, for lack of a better word, is a lot more broader than some people might think when they think 00:21:00about broadly speaking what White Labs is. There's a lot broader education that you seem to provide to the .

Jo Doyle: Yeah, absolutely. And I run into home brewers and stuff all the time and they ask me questions and I may not have the answer, and I say, "Listen. You can call our customer service representatives anytime." You don't have to be a high dollar customer for them to take time and talk to you. Literally any question, it doesn't matter, we will take care of you.

Richard Cox: Great. That's awesome. So in addition to all that, you're also an adjunct instructor at A-B Tech.

Jo Doyle: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So can you tell us a little bit about the program you're involved with and the classes you teach? What do you do there?

Jo Doyle: Sure. I guess I just want to back it up a little bit.

Richard Cox: Please do.

Jo Doyle: Because when I first realized that the floral industry wasn't really going to work out, Asheville was not like D.C. in that regard. It's a wedding town, it's not a floral town. It's a luxury item. You can't eat flowers. So 00:22:00then I started to look around and it was like, well, what is the industry? Tourism, hospitality, a burgeoning craft beer industry. At that time there was about five breweries in Asheville.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I was going to ask what year was this.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, this is right after I moved here, so 2010. There was Highland, of course. There was Green Man. There was Lexington Avenue Brewery was recently open. It was new. There was Craggie, who was relatively new, and that was pretty much it. But I saw it, and one of my very first friends that I ever met here in Asheville was a woman named ... Her name is Elizabeth Suttle, and she was a foodie, and we were just chatting. She was getting into homesteading. She wanted to build her own little tiny house and had chickens and goats and all this stuff. She handed me that A-B Tech adult continuing education guide, and she was like, "Look at all these classes you can take on homesteading and cheese making 00:23:00and beekeeping and all this," and I saw, oh, Business of Beer. I'm going to take that. I want to take that.

Jo Doyle: And it was right at the time that I met my now-fiance. We actually met at The Wedge. They were just open too. They were new. So I had been chatting. We were just friends at the time. I said, "Yeah, I think I'm going to take this home brewing class over at Hops and Vines. I'd like to learn how to home brew and get into the industry. I'm going to take this class at A-B Tech." And he says, "Well, I can teach you. I've been home brewing for like 20 years and I'll bring over all my equipment." So that kind of did it. He brought over his equipment, he taught me how to brew, and then I just right at the same time I said I'm going to take this Business of Beer class, and I just wanted to learn everything I could.

Jo Doyle: So I took the Business of Beer class. My instructors were a gentleman by the name of Matt McComish, so for the first three classes, which is the classroom portion, and the second three classes, which is the offsite visits, my 00:24:00instructor was my friend Cliff Mori. They really could see that I really was interested, and I was really just keen on doing this. So by the end of that, I think it was the second class, I came in with my first level Cicerone Certified Beer Server. I said, "Look what I got," and Matt was like, "Well, you got to keep going then. You got to keep going. You got to keep going." I was like, oh, I don't know. So, long story short, I now teach that class. I teach the Business of Beer. Yeah.

Jo Doyle: Cliff went on to start his own business, Brew Ed, so he does walking tours and education for restaurants and breweries. He also works for Cicerone.org. He proctors exams. After him came Chris Ivesdale. He works at Sierra Nevada. He was the instructor there. He said, "I just can't do this anymore. How would you feel about taking over for me?" And I said, "I don't know 00:25:00if I'm qualified to teach a college class." He said, "I think you are." So I met with Maurice DiMarino, the head of the Workforce Development Program, and Jeff Irvin at the two year program, the Craft Beverage Institute of the Southeast, and Jeff grilled me. He was like, "History of beer. Go. How do you make beer? Go." I had just ... halfway through he's like, "Okay, we're good."

Richard Cox: Excellent.

Jo Doyle: I really enjoy it. I consider some of the people that have gone through my classes as friends. We've actually made friendships, and I've seen them. One of my students and his son actually opened up the Casual Pint here in Asheville, so that was kind of cool to see that he did good.

Richard Cox: Yeah, absolutely.

Jo Doyle: And it's fun. The people want to be there. This is about personal enrichment and maybe getting a job, so it's not like people are unwillingly pulled into this class where I have to take this class. It's like, no, they want 00:26:00to be there, so it's super cool. So we basically cover everything about the three tier system, from brewery to distributor to retailer and all that. My takeaway that I want people to leave the class thinking "I want to work in the beer industry." That doesn't mean I want to be a brewer necessarily. Maybe you do, but you could be an accountant. You can be in marketing. You can be a taproom manager or you could be whatever, sales. So I leave you this big picture, and it's just really fun.

Richard Cox: Do you get any interesting reactions from people when you talk about the three tiered system? Because I imagine some people start hearing about some of the complications of that.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. Well, it is what it is. I mean, these are the laws and this is how the frame works that the breweries have to work in, and this is the business, and this is how it works. You know? I also teach the Sensory Analysis classes there. I took over from Anna Sauls. She's the Head of the Sensory 00:27:00Department at Highland. I took over those classes, and then I developed a new class for them called Craft Beverage Service Professional. We wanted to really explore a little bit more cider, cider making, especially with this area, and we're such a tourist-driven town, I wanted students to be able to walk away and talk about the stories of the breweries and get to know the history of these breweries and just speak to them in an educated way. Like, "Oh, you like this place, you should check out this place. This is their flagship beer." So I really break down all the local breweries and their story and their flagships and we try them, and I also touch on food and beer pairing. That could be a whole nother class.

Richard Cox: That could, at least.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. So one night. It's a three weeks class, so one night we'll do some basics of food and beer pairing, so that's a fun class.

Richard Cox: Those all sounds amazing. It also seems like when you talk about when you first started to the classes you're teaching now, started in the program, not teaching, to now, it's like that program has grown so much. Can you talk a little bit about how you've seen that happen - it expanded I guess with the industry.

Jo Doyle: I think it is the industry. It's a growing industry. It's a really cool industry, too. I mean, I think it's one of the few industries where you an just be as you are. You don't have to wear a suit and tie. You can have fun. It's a great camaraderie within the industry as well. It's competitive but it's in a friendly way. We're all, especially in Asheville, we're all in this together. Rising tide, it's all boats. You may have never heard of Zillicoah. You've heard of Asheville. So if you come to Asheville, you experience some places you're going to-

Richard Cox: Someone will mention Zillicoah.

Jo Doyle: They might go back home and be like, "Oh yeah, that place is really 00:29:00awesome." So it's not just like the industry or anything like that. It's personal enrichment. A lot of people want to feel. They go to a bar or a restaurant or any tasting room, and they can look at this draft list and be like, "I don't know what that is. I don't know what this stuff is. What is the difference between a lager and an ale?" Or maybe they don't even know there's a difference. And a lot of times people, like some of the people that I've had in the classes aren't interested in taking a job. They're there for just personal enrichment. They want to feel more confident when they go into a place. They want to feel educated.

Richard Cox: Well, and that's another aspect too. The industry broadly is the consumer. Actually this has come up a few times. The consumer, especially when you compare it to some other industries, is educated and getting more so, and they have to be in a lot of ways. Otherwise, it becomes a lot more difficult if you don't have someone well trained behind the bar, for example.

Jo Doyle: Correct.

Richard Cox: So you kind of have that going both ways, and it sort of puts some 00:30:00of the stuff you're doing right in the middle of it on both ends. Which is interesting.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. I really have to say for A-B Tech I ... it sounds cliché, but I feel like taking that class really was a very good investment in myself, and I want to share that with other people. I want other people to be like, "Man, my whole world is open now. I can feel more confident and more educated about all of it."

Richard Cox: That's great. That's amazing. And you mentioned already that you hold your Cicerone certification, and you're a certified judge. Is that right?

Jo Doyle: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes.

Richard Cox: You have your judge certification program. Tell us a little bit about all that.

Jo Doyle: So I studied for both of those at the same time. This is again right after - so right when I was taking the Business of Beer. I walked away with that certificate from A-B Tech and my first level. So I just decided, I listened to 00:31:00Matt and I listened to Cliff, and I listened to my Dean, and they were all champions of me. They're like, "You got this. You can do this. You want it, you got it."

Richard Cox: So before you go further, for people who don't know, tell us about what the Cicerone program is.

Jo Doyle: Okay. The Cicerone program was started by Ray Daniels. He was a veteran of the craft beer industry for about 25 years. I don't know exactly when he started Cicerone.org, but it's basically a certification program that kind of has these benchmarks of what somebody who's behind the bar should know. His story is he traveled around the country and he was just getting really frustrated with the lack of education and the lack of quality service. He would see people pouring beer with the faucet in the beer and he's cringing. He's like, "Oh, that's gross. Don't do that." But there was no program that was an education program that could show people what to do or how to keep and store beer, all the beer styles, and how to make, all the nuances and everything. So 00:32:00he started the Cicerone program as more of, like I said, a certification program.

Jo Doyle: So there's four levels. There's the Cicerone Certified Beer Server first level, of which there's thousands of people. And then there's the Certified Cicerone, and there's hundreds of those. Then there's the Advanced Cicerone, there's dozens of those. Then there's the Master Cicerone, there's a handful of those.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I think the last number I heard was like 25.

Jo Doyle: Oh wow. When I first started out there was seven Master Cicerones. My friend Cliff Mori that I studied under, he became western North Carolina's first advanced Cicerone. I'm thinking about taking mine. I'm thinking about doing that. I would be the first woman in western North Carolina if I got it. I actually just met a woman yesterday, Shelley, who's the R&D person for Boston Beer Company, and we gave her a tour and we sat down and had lunch together and chatted, and it turns out she's an advanced Cicerone and I was like, "Oh, what 00:33:00was that like?"

Richard Cox: Oh yeah, tell me more.

Jo Doyle: She gave me some lowdown on it, and she said that if I were really interested, just let her know and she'd help me, she'd give as much advice and guidance as she could. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it.

Richard Cox: You look excited.

Jo Doyle: It sounds like a lot. It's a lot. It's several days and there's an oral exam. There's several essays. The tasting portion is definitely more advanced than the Certified Cicerone one. We'll see. It's kind of addictive when you get these, when you keep learning more and you keep getting these certifications and you're just like, "God, this is great."

Richard Cox: Well, yeah, and to a lot of extent it's something you love so you're also going in deeper into not only something that's career-related but also something that's almost, hobby might be underplaying it, but something you're passionate about, so you're just piling on this information on something you care about.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, there's always something to learn.

Richard Cox: There totally is.

Jo Doyle: No one's ever going to know it all. It doesn't matter if you're a Master Cicerone or if you're a head brewer and you've been a head brewer for ... You're never going to know it all. Things are changing all the time, and a lot of innovation and stuff or just different techniques and stuff.

Jo Doyle: In contrast, the Certified Cicerone program, or the Cicerone program is different a little bit from the Beer Judge Certification program in that the Beer Judge Certification program is all volunteer run. Nobody gets paid to be a beer judge. It's more process heavy and it's more style heavy, so it's not so much serving and keeping beer or food and beer pairings, which in Cicerone is definitely more about the service portion, whereas the Beer Judge Certification program is more about the beer and helping brewers and home brewers, commercial and hobbyists, hone their skill. So that's where those, when you're judging 00:35:00competitions, you're trying to give very good accurate feedback to the brewers.

Richard Cox: Yeah. What is the style. Understanding what is a specific style of beer versus another one.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. If you're judging a beer that's labeled a porter, is it a porter?

Richard Cox: Yeah, is an IPA labeled a porter, for example, or something weird like that.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. Like I said, it's all volunteer run, and these people submit their beers, and they pay to submit their beers for these competitions, and we try to be nice. We try to be nice, you know? These people put their heart and soul and created this beer, and we're not going to just, if it's got flaws, it's got flaws, but we're still going to try to soften the blow.

Richard Cox: It's an educational process like everything else you talked about.

Jo Doyle: It is, exactly. And, it's again, another cool camaraderie. The beer judges, when we get together for these competitions it's almost like this reunion because people do travel around to do competitions, because you have to stay current. So when I took the exam, I achieved the level of certified, but I 00:36:00didn't have enough judging points. I needed five more points to get to certified, so I was still a recognized judge. Once I judged five more competitions, I automatically got that.

Richard Cox: A competition's a point.

Jo Doyle: Exactly. So I had to travel a little bit. I had to go to Knoxville and Charlotte to get those five points. So now I can sit down for my tasting again if I want to advance my level to say maybe a national or something like that.

Richard Cox: So what was it like judging?

Jo Doyle: It's pretty serious. There isn't a lot of chatter or talking. You usually co-judge, so they will partner two people up together.

Richard Cox: Like across?

Jo Doyle: Yeah, usually across. And it's usually a more advanced judge with maybe a novice judge. They're not going to put two novices together and they're not going to put two advanced judges together. They usually try to pair people together so they complement each other.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and education and learning, yeah.

Jo Doyle: Exactly. Even the more advanced judge will learn. Yeah. It's a learning opportunity for everybody really. Say you and I were judging the same beer. We would sit. We would have our score sheet, so we would evaluate the appearance, the aroma, the flavor, the mouthfeel, the overall impression. Ding it for any kind of off flavors. Ultimately, we want to try to find at least 26 descriptors.

Richard Cox: 26.

Jo Doyle: We want to be very descriptive.

Richard Cox: Makes sense.

Jo Doyle: As descriptive as possible. We want to fill in all of the blanks. We don't want to just have one sentence. Like I said, these people went through a long time to brew the beer and put their heart into it and they send it to us and we're going to judge it. Let's give them our all as well. We're going to probably do that silently, so after it's done we'll look and there's a number point system attached to each of those sections too. You look at the overall numbers and we want to get close. We want to be close, so we might debate a 00:38:00little bit. "Oh yeah, so I see you put down a 1 for the appearance. It's not that bad." "Okay, you're right. I'll bump up my score a little bit there." So we want to kind of come to a consensus. We're going to judge silently and you don't want to make faces or sounds, because that is already putting out a preconceived notion. So really you want to suspend all that. You don't want to make faces or make noises or, "Oh, this is delightful." No, don't do that. Just keep it to yourself and then we're going to talk about it.

Jo Doyle: Then the highest scoring beers from that round are going to go on to a mini best of show, so more advanced judges are going to sit at a table and they're going to whittle it down to best of show.

Richard Cox: So is it sort of ... I'm trying to put together an overall picture. Is it sort of like, and I know I'm probably going to get this wrong so I'm sorry, you're doing ... Are you only judging stouts, for example, and then 00:39:00there's a decision on that, and then it's competing in best in show with an IPA or a porter?

Jo Doyle: It could, yeah.

Richard Cox: Is that how it works overall?

Jo Doyle: Yeah. So one cool thing is you can request ... when I sign up to judge a competition, I can say I prefer to judge these styles, I do not want to judge these styles. I mean, these things start at 8:00 in the morning. I do not want to judge a triple or an English barley wine or a Belgian. I just don't.

Richard Cox: You'll be finished by lunch.

Jo Doyle: Right? I don't want to do that. So I actually prefer fruit beers, and I got this idea from a grand, I think a grand national judge, I think that's her title, but Julie Jones. She said to me, "Here's a little tip. Judge fruit beers. A lot of the guys don't want to judge it. They hear the word fruit beer and they're turned off by it." She said, "I've had some world class beers. You're judging them base style of the beer and how well the fruit has been employed." We're having anything from raspberry doppelbock to pineapple basil Wits, so good 00:40:00stuff, really good stuff. So I prefer fruit beers, but I don't mind judging porters or English browns or, you know, 5% ABVs.

Richard Cox: Sure. Sessionable kind of.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, because there's two sessions. There's the morning session, there's a break, and then there's the afternoon session. I don't mind tasting something a little bit later in the afternoon that's going to be a little bit higher alcohol, but not in the morning.

Richard Cox: No, not in the morning. It seems like barley wine in the afternoon would kind of slide in nice with some of the fruit beers. So, okay, so then you all are choosing what style you prefer too, and once all of that's finished then it moves to where the different styles compete against one another, as opposed to competing stouts or competing-

Jo Doyle: It's true. Yeah, so a pilsner might win, and it's just because it was just out of this world.

Richard Cox: It's great, yeah. Exactly. So I understand how that works. This 00:41:00might be an insanely difficult question. Is there any in your judging, you ever had any beers that really just stood out that you remember? Which might be difficult, because I can only imagine how much you judge. If you can't, that's fine.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. I gotta say, I mentioned that raspberry doppelbock. That was-

Richard Cox: Yeah, that was interesting.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, that was amazing. I've had a lot of really good beers. Don't get me wrong, I've had some really terrible beers too. It's just the nature of the game.

Richard Cox: Well we'll talk about raspberry doppelbocks instead.

Jo Doyle: I've had some really, really, really good beers. I've had some world class beers doing the competitions.

Richard Cox: And probably a real range and variety, again, with fruit especially.

Jo Doyle: And there's everybody's interpretation. You get the gamut.

Richard Cox: That's great. It sounds fun.

Jo Doyle: It is cool, but it's serious too.

Richard Cox: Oh, absolutely. It has to be. And again, it's the education flowing through all the things that you do. It's really great. Talking about the brewing industry for a little while, how do you think the brewing scene has changed 00:42:00since you first got into the business?

Jo Doyle: Oh, well, here in Asheville it's grown. Yeah, we have 74 breweries in western North Carolina now. That's probably an old number. We probably have 78 now since I've last checked. 30 I think in the Asheville proper area. So growth, big time. I've seen that. I've seen, we have the Asheville Brewers Alliance here, so it's a membership organization that breweries belong to here in Asheville that really do support each other. I'm on the Asheville Beer Week Committee with that. So the end of May, May 25th to June 2nd, is just one event after the other. One cool - you know, breweries really get excited and they get really creative and they come up with these really fun events, and people are coming from Atlanta, Charleston. Now we have direct flights to Asheville from D.C. and Florida. I guarantee you Beer Week this year is going to be a lot of 00:43:00visitors coming in from out of town checking out our scene. So there's that, for sure.

Richard Cox: How's it like organizing that? I can only imagine.

Jo Doyle: There's a handful. There's about six or seven of us, and they're all powerhouses in the local beer scene. It's not like we're reinventing the wheel each time. We build on ... This is only the second year that I've been invited to be on the committee, so we're kind of just building on past successes and going, you know, we don't really need glassware this year. Everybody's glasswared out. Let's do hats. How about let's do hats. Hats was a great success last year. We just had our first meeting a couple weeks ago. This worked for us last year. Let's do that again. Or we had these new breweries, let's reach out to them and get them involved. Yeah, it's just a lot of moving parts but it's mostly just organizing the breweries and saying how can I help. Oh, you don't 00:44:00have an event? Maybe I can help you figure out an event. That kind of thing.

Richard Cox: Great.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, it's fun.

Richard Cox: Yeah, so there's been a lot of growth.

Jo Doyle: Yes.

Richard Cox: Did you see and think of any particular trends? This might be sort of also going into your judging a little bit maybe, but any particular trends today that you like or dislike, either in the industry or with styles?

Jo Doyle: Local or just national or any?

Richard Cox: However you prefer.

Jo Doyle: Well, yeah, brewed IPA definitely a trend. I'm starting to see it everywhere. That's a bone dry IPA. Brewers are using an enzyme to help cleave those long chain sugars to make them more accessible to the yeast to consume. That's really drying it out. I'm seeing those, and I could see that kind of waning as it gets ... saturated is the wrong word, but I'm starting to see them in Ingles now. I'm seeing brewed IPA, brewed IPA, whereas last summer if you were to ask me, "So, how many brewed IPAs have you had?" I don't even know what 00:45:00that is. So that definitely I think is a current trend. The hazy IPA has had its moment. It's still there.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it seems to be wedged in.

Jo Doyle: I like them. I know there's haters out there. I like them. I like juicy IPAs.

Richard Cox: Well, it's interesting in comparison to the brew, right? Those two right there, they're almost like the antithesis of each other.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, totally. So there's those. I think I mentioned, I might be mangling it, Kveik. It's that Norwegian. So it's not a style. It's a yeast and it's got really cool ways of ... it can ferment at really ridiculously hot temperatures and do some really interesting flavors and stuff. So maybe we'll see some things with that. I'm calling CBD beers this year, 2020. I see it's an industry that's booming, and I know. I read a lot of articles where-

Richard Cox: And what is that?

Jo Doyle: CBD? It comes from the cannabis plant. It's the non-psychoactive compound, or one of the non-psychoactive compounds, in the cannabis plant. I'm seeing I can't do it in North Carolina yet. I'm reading articles and I'm seeing that there are breweries making these beers, so I'm seeing that could be something.

Jo Doyle: I'm seeing low. We've seen session IPAs and I love session IPAs, so that's been a trend for a while, but I'm seeing, I think a trend towards nonalcoholic or zero proof beers too.

Richard Cox: Near beers.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. Well, better than near beer.

Richard Cox: Better than that.

Jo Doyle: Craft nonalcoholic beers I think. Gluten reduced beers are probably going to get refined, and people are moving away from sorghum. They're like, "Don't like sorghum, but I want a low gluten or gluten-free beer, so let's look at millet." So I see these kind of people being really experimental. I really 00:47:00feel that the trend for consumers is new. Their favorite beer is the new beer.

Richard Cox: That they haven't even had yet.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. That's their favorite beer. And you're always going to get people that are like, "This is what I drink, and this is what I drink, and that's all I drink. I like light American lager." There's nothing wrong with that.

Richard Cox: Right. I think we talked a lot about this, but through your role here at White Labs, what role do you see playing in the Asheville and North Carolina brewing community? Is that heavy education, I assume?

Jo Doyle: You mean White Labs specific, or just in general?

Richard Cox: White Labs specific.

Jo Doyle: Yeah so, cultivating community is one of our bylines, so we're really always interested in collaborating and just doing all the things we can to be in the community and doing good things in the community and fun things. So for 00:48:00Asheville Beer Week, for instance, we're going to be putting on a fermentation festival, a small fermentation festival.

Richard Cox: That sounds very cool.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. I've been wanting to do it for a couple of years now, and it just seems like this is right. The general manager of our kitchen and tap is very excited about it. It's kind of like my idea and I passed it along to him. Now it's his baby.

Richard Cox: There you go.

Jo Doyle: So I'm going to be working with the vendors and we're going to be doing demonstrations up here in the culture room all day long. So that is just another piece of reaching out to the community and really having a family friendly event during Asheville Beer Week, because there really aren't very many.

Richard Cox: Right, sure.

Jo Doyle: They're all tap takeovers, pint nights, dinners, so this will be a family friendly fermentation festival that really gets us a little bit more out in the community. But we're always involved and we're always doing something in the Asheville beer scene.

Richard Cox: And tying in to the previous question now. With trends, if you had 00:49:00a crystal ball, which is so hard with this industry, where would you see the brewing industry going in the next three to five years?

Jo Doyle: Well, like I said, I really do think that the beer industry is going to latch on to the hemp industry. It's a billion dollar industry already and it's not even nationwide. So I forecast that. As far as ... You know what's funny, because I looked at recently the Brewers Association numbers, and it looks like overall beer is down where craft beer isn't, so I think craft beer is always going to be rising. People really love going to their local establishment. It's so awesome to be able to walk down the street to the brewery that's in your neighborhood.

Richard Cox: It's like the English pub.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, exactly. So I do see these ... I see that maybe, is these more local breweries that people are really patronizing just regularly. I do it. 00:50:00Yeah, I do it. I mean, I got my haunts that I go to regularly on my way home, you know.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Jo Doyle: That's a trend that I think that is just going to grow. I think you're going to see more smaller little guys. Not to say that smaller guys aren't going to grow and then maybe be in that market and that market and that market as well. Everybody has their own business model and their own business plan in what they want to do. I think it just depends on what the brewery wants to do.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and that variety is why you can have 30-some breweries in Asheville, for example.

Jo Doyle: Exactly.

Richard Cox: Is there anything that you see as unique about North Carolina beer, or Southern beer more broadly?

Jo Doyle: Again, I think it's more that keeping it local or keeping it regional. I think it's the same if you were to go up to Minnesota. You would have this scene. What's Minnesota beer, what's Southern beer? I think it's the community. 00:51:00We have the North Carolina Guild and again, I think it's just more of that community feeling, that all the breweries kind of have the same goal. North Carolina now, I think we have over 200 breweries now.

Richard Cox: Or 300.

Jo Doyle: 300? Okay. 300, and-

Richard Cox: Ever growing. Proves the point.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. Just growing, growing, growing, growing. Again, breweries like Hi-Wire opening up in other North Carolina markets too. I don't know if I can forecast Southern beer trends or what I see. I think it's the same as Asheville beer. You're still going to see that ... We're rabid locavores here in Asheville, and I think that's how people are too in North Carolina. They're like, "I know Highland. I've been there. I know Hi-Wire." They can go and say, and I do the same thing. I'm going to purchase a North Carolina beer before I purchase a California beer. I know the guys that made it.

Richard Cox: Exactly. That makes it so much harder for you, then. What is your favorite beer from a North Carolina brewery?

Jo Doyle: Oh. Well, at the moment.

Richard Cox: No, it's always at the moment.

Jo Doyle: It really depends, definitely. I hate to say it. I'm a little bit of a seasonal drinker. When the weather is cooler I tend to drink more maltier beers. I love Highland's Oatmeal Porter. I drink that a lot, and the mocha style when it's cold. I prefer the session IPAs when it's summertime. I love Hi-Wire's Lo-Pitch. Oh, I went to Archetype the other day and they have an amazing session IPA called Commitmentphobia, and it was so tropically and delicious, and it was low alcohol, and I thought, "Wow, this is really great." So, what's my favorite beer?

Richard Cox: It depends on the day.

Jo Doyle: It depends on the day.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, it depends on the day. I'll drink some saisons once they start coming out. I'm like, oh, saison season's coming around. Let me try some saisons.

Richard Cox: Spring beers.

Jo Doyle: Yeah, totally.

Richard Cox: This one's normally a brewery-related question, but you don't have a brewery. What would you say is White Lab's flagship or signature beer or yeast?

Jo Doyle: Oh yeah, 001 California Ale Yeast. Like I said, that's our workhorse. Chris jokes that that's the strain that built White Labs Asheville. It's the first strain that we did, so definitely.

Richard Cox: That's definitely a flagship then, absolutely.

Jo Doyle: Oh yeah. And we do our Tabberer IPA with that, and we do it with the 008, the East Coast, and it's like a stark difference, so it's really cool that you can see that. Yeah, I would say that's definitely our flagship. But we do these handsome wheat ales as well, and we do those with the hefeweizen, the 300, and then we'll do it with maybe the wit strain, and that's always a crowd pleaser if you don't like IPAs. So that's another kind of customer favorite.

Richard Cox: What about you? Do you have a favorite collaboration beer that's been done with White Labs?

Jo Doyle: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Oh, here we go.

Jo Doyle: I do. I was at the North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference. So our friends from Riverbend Malt House were there. My friend Beau Crosby, who lives here in Asheville but he's the rep for ... I'm sorry, Beau Evers is his name, and he works for Crosby Hop Farms. So we were just having beers at a VIP party and went, "Hey, we should get together and have a collaboration. We should do this, we should do this." We got back to Asheville and a phone call. "So when are we going to do this collaboration?" I said, "Oh, this is real? Okay."

Richard Cox: We're on it. Okay.

Jo Doyle: So they came over, they came here. We're in the kitchen and tap. Riverbend brought some different grains for us to chew. Beau brought all these different varieties of hops. We invited Eurisko because they're right down the street here. We like to brew on their system. We literally sat down, tried the malts, smelled the hops, formulated a recipe right then and there, and we made a 00:55:00beer, a dubbel, with our Bastogne ale abbey yeast. It's a Belgian style yeast, not ... nice fig, plume, plummy kind of flavors. The idea was it was going to be kind of a winter warmer style. So we all collaborated and brewed it over there. It was on tap here and it was on tap at Eurisko. So it was really, really cool to see that we did this from the ground up.

Richard Cox: Entirely local.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. So we were drinking it. What do we call this, what do we call this, and we had all these different names. We're like, "How about four friends, because we're all friends." We just called it what it was. It was the Bastogne Abbey Ale.

Richard Cox: There you are. To the point.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. So our chefs in the kitchen and tap had been using some of that and kind of using it for different sauces and stuff like that, so that's kind of cool that we can play around even further.

Richard Cox: That's great. So that's all I have. Is there anything else you'd 00:56:00like to add?

Jo Doyle: Well, I wouldn't mind talking about tomorrow's Biere de Femme Festival and the Pink Boots Society.

Richard Cox: Please. Let's talk all about Pink Boots.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. The Pink Boots Society was formed I believe in 2007 and Teri Fahrendorf was a brewer, and she went on this big road trip to like 70 breweries, and she made 33 different brew dates, and I think the story goes that she met all these women brewers and they were like, wow, they thought they were alone. They thought they were the only lady brewers out there. So they started the Pink Boots Society, and it's a really cool organization that raises money to help women in the beer industry further their career through education and all kinds of scholarship programs and networking opportunities and just really cool organization.

Jo Doyle: Tomorrow, the North Carolina chapter of the Pink Boots Society is having our third annual Biere de Femme Festival. We have a really great lineup with tons of different breweries. Some of them have made beer specifically for 00:57:00this event, which is outstanding. We're going to have educational opportunities there as well. White Labs will be there, Riverbend Malt House will be there, the Craft Beverage Museum that's in the planning stages is going to be there. A-B Tech will be there, so there's all kinds of different educational opportunities but it's going to be a fun beer festival, for sure.

Richard Cox: Oh, absolutely. All the beer at Biere de Femme is brewed by women in the industry who may not even necessarily be brewers. They just-

Jo Doyle: Correct. Yeah, they could be an accountant.

Richard Cox: Again, they're coming - yeah.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. They get together and collaborate and come up with a recipe and make the beer, and present it at this festival, and it's just really awesome.

Richard Cox: It is awesome. And talk about Pink Boots. I mean, Pink Boots North Carolina is actually really active, even broken up into, I guess you'd call it regional chapters.

Jo Doyle: Chapters, yeah.

Richard Cox: Which is unique and exciting.

Jo Doyle: Yeah. I'm really excited to get together tomorrow and kind of see my 00:58:00girls. Yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it's going to be awesome.

Jo Doyle: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Thank you.

Jo Doyle: You're welcome.