Dr. Mark Thomson, chem­istry pro­fes­sor at Ferris State University, has been brew­ing his own beer for the past 15 years.

Thomson, became inter­ested in brew­ing beer in grad­u­ate school. A mem­ber of his research group from Wisconsin was a home-brewer. He brought his beer to meet­ings and the deli­cious taste of the home­made beer sparked Thomson’s interest.

The main thing that pushed Thomson’s toward brew­ing was his wife. “I came home one day when we lived in New Orleans and she had bought all the stuff [brew­ing mate­ri­als] and it was just sit­ting out on the front room floor,” said Thomson. “I don’t know what made her decide to do that; I guess you would have to ask her. I’m really glad she did, though.”

The com­plex process of brew­ing beer can be bro­ken down into four main steps: mash, boil, fer­ment, then pack­age. First, Thomson begins with grain, usu­ally wheat or bar­ley. “Sometimes rice or corn is used, but mostly wheat or bar­ley because it’s the tra­di­tional ingre­di­ents,” said Thomson. “Grain is mostly starch, which is long chains of sugar molecules.”

The first step is to make malt; malt­ing is get­ting the enzymes. The sec­ond step is mash­ing, which makes those enzymes active. The third step is to boil­ing; this step makes sure every­thing is san­i­tized and that unwanted bac­te­ria is killed.

“Once you boil it, that’s where you get your fla­vor out of the hops,” said Thomson. “And then fer­ment­ing is where you put in the yeast, and the yeast con­verts the sugar into alcohol.”

His pas­sion for brew­ing beer has taken him all over the world. After his fresh­man year of col­lege, Thomson spent a year and a half in Peru. “South America and Puerto Rico have some inter­est­ing brew­ing tra­di­tions,” said Thomson.

“My goal is to even­tu­ally have a class [on brew­ing beer] that involves some study abroad,” said Thomson. In order for the study abroad to hap­pen, at least 16 stu­dents need to sign up. Thomson is try­ing to get a class to go abroad in the sum­mer of 2011.

“My inter­est is in Scotland, Ireland, and Belgium,” said Thomson. “It’s a mat­ter of try­ing to find an easy way to do it that makes it afford­able for stu­dents. One way or another, we’ll have some­thing in the sum­mer of 2011.”

The class will be offered this sum­mer on FSU’s cam­pus and will be called “Applied Fermentation Chemistry 290.” It will count as sci­en­tific under­stand­ing and will be worth four credits.

Thomson said he finds it dif­fi­cult to choose his sin­gu­lar favorite beer. “Choosing my per­sonal favorite beer is tough because it depends on so many other things: mood, tem­per­a­ture, and with or with­out a meal,” he said. His top three favorite inter­na­tional beers, in no par­tic­u­lar order, are Guinness (a stout from Ireland), Chimay (a Belgian beer), and Pilsner Urquell (a Bavarian beer).

“I’m a big fan of drink­ing locally,” said Thomson. He enjoys beer from Founder’s, which is located in Grand Rapids, and also any beer from New Holland, which is located in Holland, Mich. “I’ve never had a bad beer from either one of them,” said Thomson.

In terms of con­nect­ing his hobby to the class­room, Thomson said, “It gives me appli­ca­tion exam­ples that stu­dents pay atten­tion to. There are a lot of top­ics that we cover in gen­eral chem­istry that are beer top­ics: chem­i­cal reac­tions, the role of heat, solu­tions, and gas laws. I use beer exam­ples because it keeps stu­dents inter­ested and it’s what inter­ests me. I’m a teacher first and fore­most and brew­ing is sec­ondary, but it’s a chance for me to share a love of chem­istry and a love of education.”