From Baxter:From the beginning of my tenure as Director of Brewing, it has been a priority of mine to facilitate a deeper working relationship between Baxter Brewing and Bates College. When our Founder, Luke, introduced me to Sam Boss, the Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Learning and Research at the Harward Center at Bates, I was excited to learn that Baxter’s vision of a partnership to promote scientific advancement in our brewing practices aligned perfectly with their mission to get students involved in real world learning. After several visits to our respective places of work and productive brainstorming sessions, we are kicking off our first project here in February: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Beer Brewing.
For the next six weeks, the students in Martin Montgomery’s Math 219 class will be charged with creating a mathematical model of the yeast populations in Baxter’s fermentations. To achieve this goal, we have partnered with Bates Biology professor, Lee Abrahamsen, to teach the students how to count yeast cell populations with a hemocytometer and microscope. Baxter will bring six different samples, taken at critical points of yeast metabolic phase changes, of one tank per week for the next six weeks. The seven teams in Martin’s class will independently calculate the cell density of each sample and begin to graphically map the exponential growth of the yeast colony. The goal for the students will be to create some understanding of the mathematical function in a differential equation that is intended to model population growth. For Baxter, we will use this data to form a baseline of yeast population densities in our fermentations from which we can look at potentially improving our processes.
This project has many small wins for both Baxter and Bates. The students are getting the opportunity to see real world applications of their mathematical studies. They are also getting a chance to work in an interdisciplinary fashion with the biology department and learn a new skill. For Baxter we are going to learn about our yeast colonies and continue to blend strong science into our art. For everyone, this is really about building bridges between the Bates campus and downtown Lewiston. It’s about forming friendships and memorable learning experiences. It’s about two awesome Lewiston institutions leveraging each other’s strengths to accomplish great (and fun) goals.
Look forward for a lot more to come out of this partnership in the months and years to come!
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