Brett Taubman | Culture and Chemistry: The Impact of Fermentation Science

On this episode of Appalachian Excellence, we explore the fascinating world of fermentation with Dr. Brett Taubman, professor and director of the Fermentation Sciences program at Appalachian State University. In his latest book, Southern Culture on the Fizz, An Effervescent Guide to Fermented Foods and Beverages from the American South, Taubman discusses the science behind fermentation, its historical and cultural significance in the American South and groundbreaking research on its applications—from improving food safety to addressing Alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne meat allergy. We also delve into the role of native Appalachian yeasts, innovative brewing techniques, and the future of fermentation in both academia and industry.

 

Show Notes

Contact:

taubmanbf@appstate.edu

 

Dr. Taubman's latest book from UNC Press:

Southern Culture on the Fizz, An Effervescent Guide to Fermented Foods and Beverages from the American South

 

Transcript:

Karen:

Welcome to Appalachian Excellence, a show where we feature Appalachian State University research, scholarship, and creative activity that creates solutions and inspires change. We're here to bring you stories of incredible work happening right here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I'm your host, Karen Fletcher, where my day job has me working in the Office of Research and Innovation here at App State, and I've got my producer in the studio with me. Hey, Dave.

Dave:

Hey, what's up Karen? How's it going?

Karen:

It's going pretty good.

Dave:

I was just about to turn on the light because I'm just sitting here in the dark, so you guys can't see me over here. But yeah, happy to be here again.

Karen:

Yeah, I'm excited with our guest today we-

Dave:

Me too.

Karen:

... have Dr. Brett Taubman. Dr. Taubman is a professor in the A.R. Smith Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Sciences at Appalachian State University. He earned Bachelor of Science degrees in finance and chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and Montana State University respectively, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Maryland in 2004. Following his graduate studies, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Pennsylvania State University before joining the faculty at App State in 2007. Dr. Taubman's research focuses on the chemistry of fermentation as it relates to beer filamentous fungi, also known as mold and the removal of anti-nutritional compounds in foods and beverages. He has successfully developed an instructional fermentation facility at Appalachian State University and serves as president of Ivory Tower Inc, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation with the mission of supporting research and education with fermentation sciences. Dr. Taubman helped to develop the four-year degree program in fermentation sciences at Appalachian State University for which he's currently the director. I'm really excited to talk to you about your work today. So hello, Brett.

Brett:

Hi, Karen. How are you?

Karen:

I'm doing great. I thought we'd start out today by laying the groundwork of what exactly is fermentation.

Brett:

You got to start with the hard question, don't you? And I wish I had an easy answer for that, and in fact, that's the way that I start my book is trying to answer that question, which you would think as a fermentation scientist and somebody who's been doing this for a long time would have an easy answer for that, but I don't. Typically, it's viewed as an anaerobic process, so in the absence of oxygen, and typically it's done by microbes, although not all the time for either of those, there are certainly aerobic fermentation processes. So in the presence of oxygen, like about those filamentous fungi as you mentioned, or molds, which is the lay term for them. And also you can extract the enzymes from the microbes to do the same processes without the microbes being present. So it doesn't have to have microbes present either.

But one thing that most people can agree on as far as what fermentation is, is breaking down larger biomolecules to smaller molecules that typically make them easier to consume by us, for example, although it doesn't need to be done on food sources either. So that's where it gets a little squirrely again, but it's not an easy process to define. But like I said, typically microbes typically in the absence of oxygen, but almost universally you're using those microbes or the enzymes in the microbes to degrade larger molecules to smaller molecules that are more useful for one purpose or another.

Karen:

So fermentation can be done in the lab, but is also something that naturally happens?

Brett:

Absolutely. And in fact, rotting as we call a lot of processes when foods break down or other organisms break down, those are fermentative processes. So it's microbes breaking down different organisms and the molecules in those organisms to smaller material that then other can work on like other fungi like mushrooms, for example.

Karen:

Okay. Yeah. And you said your book, so you have a new book coming out?

Brett:

I do.

Karen:

And it explains the fermentation process.

Brett:

It's new, it's the only book I've done so far, so it's also my only book so far, but it is new. It does explain the fermentation process. It's published by UNC Press, so the focus is on the south, and so it covers the history of fermentation in the Southern US but also the science behind fermentation and the different organisms that are involved and the different processes and the focus is on foods and beverages. So different parts of the book cover vegetable fermentations, meat fermentations, dairy fermentations, and of course fermented beverage fermentations as well. And then I kind of look at what the present landscape of fermentation looks like in the south and then have kind of a look to the future, kind of my prognostications of what may come, what lies ahead for fermentation in these different areas in the south. They're probably all wrong, but it was fun to kind of dream those up.

Karen:

That's for your next book.

Brett:

That's right. Exactly, how wrong I actually was. And then there are a bunch of recipes in there too, so people from the beginning fermenter to the more advanced fermenter, there's a recipe in there for everybody.

Karen:

That's really exciting. The name of the book is Southern Culture on the Fizz: How Fermentation Shapes-

Brett:

Dave likes that one.

Dave:

I love that.

Brett:

He gets the reference.

Dave:

I love that band, yeah.

Brett:

I'll probably get sued for it, but either that or they'll sell my books.

Karen:

There you go.

Dave:

They're so cool. They won't sue you.

Brett:

I know. It's an homage to them.

Dave:

Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, sorry to interrupt.

Karen:

Okay. The full title is Southern Culture on the Fizz: How Fermentation Shapes Food Culture in the South.

Brett:

It's actually, no. So that was the older subtitle that we updated since then.

Karen:

Perfect.

Brett:

Maybe I didn't update you. So it's Southern Culture on the Fizz, and then the subtitle is, An Effervescent Guide to Fermented Foods and Beverages from the American South.

Karen:

I like it.

Brett:

Snappy.

Karen:

Say that five times [inaudible 00:06:19].

Brett:

I know, right? That's why it takes me a little bit to think about that one.

Dave:

I thought you would just jump in when she was like, and it's called... But you didn't.

Brett:

I know.

Dave:

I understand why.

Brett:

I was like, "She's got it." She's got it written down, so...

Karen:

I'll make sure I got it right.

Brett:

I have to look it up most of the time too, what it's called.

Karen:

Now I have to say the right words. So the recipes in the book, did you create these as you went through the process?

Brett:

I did. I did. Yeah. So many, many hours of sort of crafting these different recipes over the years that we've done with students in both classes for club and also for research purposes and just for fun too. I mean, right now we've got a beef tongue pastrami that were smoking, so that may be why I smell so delicious right now. So just all the crazy things we've come up with over the years. Some more traditional recipes and some kind of off-the-wall types of recipes too, and everything in between.

Karen:

Nice. So the fermentation process, one of your projects that I find I'm really excited to talk about to you is the fermentation process in meats that could help with people who have tick bites and are allergic to certain kinds of meats now. So this is something I learned recently that if you have a tick bite, one of the things that can happen is that you become allergic to eating certain types of meats.

Brett:

Absolutely, yeah.

Karen:

So the fermentation process may be an answer.

Brett:

I sure hope so. That is the topic of my proposal that in my grant application to the NC Biotech Center, so I sure hope it does. But yeah, so Alpha-gal syndrome is what it's referred to as. An alpha-gal is a sugar molecule. It's a disaccharide that is present in non-primate mammal meat. So all mammals other than primates like us and our ape friends and cousins. So if a tick feeds on say a deer, which is a common food source for them, it can pick up that alpha-gal molecule from their blood, and then if they feed on us after that deer, they can transmit that alpha-gal molecule to our bloodstream, and that can cause an immune cascade response because our body recognizes that as a foreign substance that needs to be dealt with, and it can cause an immune cascade and even as much as anaphylaxis.

So people can go into anaphylactic shock as a result of this. More commonly, you break out in hives and get sweaty and feverish potentially. I've got a friend who's actually gotten it twice now. He got it once, kind of kicked it, and then got another tick bite and got it again and has kicked it again. So it may last for a period of time, and then it may go away after a year or two, but some people can kind of have it indefinitely too. And because it's just a sugar molecule, the idea is, and it's a sugar molecule that is fermented by different microbes. There are several bacterial species that are known to ferment this sugar molecule as well as some filamentous fungi, that can do it.

So we're playing around with some different lactic acid bacteria, which are the common bacteria that are used in a lot of food fermentations, including meat fermentations, to either see if some of those bacteria may be able to metabolize that sugar molecule or if we could swap in the gene that will produce the enzyme to be able to metabolize that sugar molecule. We would prefer to do it naturally with naturally occurring microbes, so we don't have to genetically modify them just for a consumer acceptance perspective because this is the type of patentable research that we are interested in developing. Because if you can come up with a process to ferment out the alpha-gal from meat, then it would make it safe potentially for people with this syndrome to consume that meat.

Karen:

Which is huge.

Brett:

Yeah, it could be huge because it's a problem that's already large, and it's becoming a lot larger and more common nowadays. I mean, we didn't used to have a lot of these ticks up in the High Country for example. We didn't have Lyme disease up here. We didn't have Alpha-gal syndrome up here because originally alpha-gal was transmitted by the lone star tick, which comes from Texas, obviously, and that tick wasn't up here in the High Country. Well, now thanks to climate change, we've got that tick, and we've got a lot of Lyme disease carrying ticks.

So these types of issues are becoming much more common up here and all over the country. I mean, I was changing my clothes the other day in my house, and I wasn't even outside doing much. I was just in the yard puttering around, and I come in and I was changing my clothes and I see a tick climbing up my leg. I was like, "Good grief." And this is, I mean, late fall when you normally wouldn't expect them necessarily. So it's definitely a problem and it's becoming a bigger problem, and if we could do something to help solve that, I mean, I think it'd be really cool.

Karen:

Yeah, regionally, you're focusing a lot on the region too, that it really isn't getting as cold as it used to, which is what would freeze them, I guess, and put them into hibernation. I'm not quite sure how ticks work, but there should be a season, right?

Brett:

This is where I claim I'm a chemist, not a biologist, so I don't know.

Karen:

So it is becoming more, I can understand how there are more ticks year round that's become an issue. So this is a grant that you've submitted. So is this top secret, and we should not be publishing this?

Brett:

Probably not, especially since there is some IP potential with this, but.

Dave:

We'll just put a big beep over all of this part.

Brett:

That's right. No, I think I included it in my book too. It's out there already or will be when the book comes out.

Karen:

Okay.

Dave:

When does it come out? Did we say that?

Brett:

May is when it's supposed to come out. So it's currently in the publication phase right now, so I should get the print copy in a couple weeks, and then I have a month to turn around the proofreading, and also I have to create the index.

Dave:

So that should be fun.

Karen:

Over the holiday break?

Brett:

Yeah, I know. There goes my winter break.

Dave:

Where'd Brett go? He's just been locked in this room.

Karen:

Talk a little bit more about the Fermentation Sciences facility on campus and what you do there, because it is, or it was one of the first... I have this written down.

Brett:

It was the first standalone fermentation sciences program in the country.

Karen:

Yeah, that's amazing. Congratulations, because you were part of making that happen.

Brett:

Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dave:

How long has it been going on, Brett?

Brett:

So I got here in 2007, and there was sort of a nascent program then that existed in chemistry, that was the Enology Viticulture and Natural Products Program.

Karen:

Oh, that's a mouthful.

Brett:

That is a mouthful, yeah.

Dave:

What's the first word?

Brett:

Enology.

Dave:

Enology.

Brett:

Yeah, that's wine science.

Dave:

Okay. All right.

Brett:

Wine making.

Dave:

Cool.

Brett:

Yeah, it's the fancy Roman or Greek name for that. I should know that. But yeah, that never got taken to the state level though for it to become a degree-granting program. And the faculty who started that program left. And so I worked with the Dean of Arts and Sciences at that time, Tony Calamai, and he and I brought in another faculty member to sort of lead the charge in developing the Fermentation Sciences program. So he and I worked together to make what is now the Fermentation Sciences program and develop that curriculum. And in 2012, we took that to the state to get approval. And so it became a degree-granting program in 2012. And for the next six years, we were a standalone degree-granting program in the College of Arts and Sciences. There were a few of those in the college. Environmental science was another one, and there was a couple others, but not many.

And the university, I think realized that these programs needed home departments, and we thought that we were going to become our own department. And then kind of at the end there, they said, "No, never mind. You need to choose a home department." And since I was chemistry faculty, and that was already kind of our umbrella department, we chose to join chemistry, and that's when we became the Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Sciences in 2018. And that's when I took over as director too, because that's when I went up for full also and became a full professor. And I figured, "Okay, that's the time." Now I can step into more of an administrative role too. And that's around the time that we moved into our current facility too. Originally, we were in the old Broyhill Inn and Conference Center-

Dave:

I remember that.

Brett:

... up the top of Bodenheimer, which is now a construction zone, and what will become the innovation district up there. We were up there in the bottom floor of that until they were about to tear it down. And so obviously they had to move us out, and they had a few places for us to consider, but our current facility is really the only location that made sense. And so we're in Mountain Laurel Hall, which is the old hotel. It's actually technically just off campus, so it's not really on campus, but...

Karen:

It's a small town.

Brett:

Yeah, it's a small town and it is walkable from campus. It's at the intersection of 321 and 105 extension.

Karen:

Also known as the Wendy's Light.

Brett:

That's right. The Wendy's Light. Yep. The only two-story Wendy's in the country.

Dave:

I call it the world-famous double-decker Wendy's. I'm not sure if that's what it's supposed to be called but-

Brett:

Well, everybody knows that. It used to be Appalachian Panhellenic Hall when they had the sororities housed in there, but then they move the sororities out and it's now transfer student housing. So we always have to tell people, "Okay, when you come to our facility, if you're facing the main entrance, go around to the right of the building." And we're sort of around the right side of the building where the old industrial kitchen used to in the hotel, because it used to be an old hotel. And so that kitchen space and some of the conference room space was converted into our facility because they already had the drains in there and the power that we needed in the ventilation. So that made the most sense. It was also the closest location to campus that they offered us. It works, certainly, and we got to spec it out as we needed. It certainly does the job. We outgrew it immediately, of course, so they're renovating some new space for us, or will hopefully start on that by the end of the spring semester, I think.

Karen:

Nice.

Brett:

Yeah.

Karen:

Yeah, there's been a lot of interest in the program. And so you do more than just, there's a beer and then there's the foods, like you said, you've got something smoking over there.

Brett:

Absolutely.

Karen:

So it's really an experiment in all different kinds of things that you can ferment.

Brett:

Absolutely. And most Americans that you talk to, a lot of them don't even know what fermented foods are. And you can say the obvious ones, oh, well, yogurt and bread. But then you get into even very common ones that people aren't aware of. Like coffee, for example, is a fermented product. Soy sauce is a fermented product. Fully one third of all of the foods that we consume have fermented products in them, and that's only getting more and more common nowadays too, especially in the west. In the east, they've been consuming fermented foods as a large portion of their diets for a very long time.

Dave:

Yeah, it's ancient, right?

Brett:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, fermentation, and this is a much longer discussion that we could have another time, but fermentation is probably a large reason for first of all, being modern humans and secondly, for having civilization as we know it today. So there is a new hypothesis that was published just this year, the external fermentation hypothesis that states that it was fermented foods that allowed early hominids, that had brains that were three times smaller than modern humans and guts that were a third larger than modern humans. Fermented foods allowed for our guts to shrink by a third, and that energy to be redirected to our big brains.

Dave:

Because it made it so much more effective in your gut?

Brett:

So the theory has been that it was fire, our mastery of fire and cooking of foods that allowed us to access a lot more nutrition and to make it easier for us to then digest a lot of the foods that are not as digestible to our omnivorous guts. But there was always a question of, "Well, how did those early hominids master fire if our very intelligent primate cousins have not done it," who also use tools and have been doing so for a long time. And this external fermentation hypothesis kind of fills in that gap and says, before we mastered fire, we were collecting, we were gathering and storing food. And that stored food often naturally starts to ferment. It's a natural process that occurs. There are microbes everywhere. I mean, they're all over us right now. Every surface that we're looking at and cover and touching right now covered in microbes and in our guts, inside of us, we have more non-human cells than we have human cells in us.

So it's even a question of what really makes us human. But again, this is a much larger discussion that we should probably have over several fermented beverages, but when that food that these early hominids stored, if it started to ferment, those microbes do a lot of the digesting of that material for us. So that allowed us to better digest and access the nutritional content of that food. And so our guts didn't have to work as hard so our guts could shrink and that energy could then be redirected to growing our brains.

Dave:

Wow. Prometheus didn't have to go to all that trouble.

Brett:

Right? I know. Where's the Greek myth about... Well, I guess that's Dionysus.

Dave:

Good call.

Brett:

And then there is a theory that early sort of versions of beer, because we always talk about the Fertile Crescent, and that's where sort of civilization was born. And the whitewashed version of that is that, oh, there was these amber waves of grain and the Fertile Crescent. If you've ever been to the Fertile Crescent, it doesn't really appear that fertile.

Dave:

It's got it right in the name so I mean...

Brett:

It does, but it's one of those Iceland versus Greenland.

Dave:

Greenland.

Brett:

Greenland, yeah. It's kind of a marketing, more of a marketing thing than anything. But the grain was actually very sparsely growing there. And if they had tried to rely on that as a staple of their diets to make bread, nice, wholesome bread, they wouldn't have survived very long. Rather, what the archaeological evidence is really showing is that people were making beer, early versions of beer from that grain. And there is a hypothesis, another hypothesis that states that it was that sort of loosening of those barriers. I mean, beer is called the social lubricant for a reason because it really does lower inhibitions. And to become a civilization, a society, you need to sort of loosen some of those barriers to socialization because you really need to come together as a species to be able to form a functioning society. And the theory is that beer was that social lubricant that allowed us to form early civilization.

Karen:

This is the interdisciplinary history lesson here.

Dave:

Yeah, it's really colliding.

Brett:

It's super cool.

Dave:

Yeah, man.

Karen:

Which I'm going to bring right back to interdisciplinary. For the program there's a lot of... As the program has grown, there's been a lot of different disciplines who have worked with the program, and I guess that has increased the diversity of what you have studied.

Brett:

It certainly has, and we try and look at it from more of a holistic perspective. And our students, our majors have to take several business courses as part of the major, because a lot of our students that come through the program are very entrepreneurially minded already and think about starting their own companies, whether it's a brewery or winery or a food company on their own. And so we want to give them at least that baseline, that background in business courses to be able to at least have somewhat of an understanding of that realm as well. But fermentation itself is so interdisciplinary. I mean, I'm a chemist. We have a microbiologist in our program. We have another chemist, we have a mycologist who is our lab manager. Mycology and molecular biology are his backgrounds. We have an enologist, if you will.

Dave:

Oh, I'm familiar with that.

Brett:

There you go. Dave goes way back with enology. So it is very interdisciplinary by nature because it involves chemical processes, biological processes, microbiological processes, physics, and engineering, as well as if you're starting a company, obviously you need the business background too. So it's interdisciplinary by nature, and so it's not a stretch to be as interdisciplinary as possible in our research and in our teaching and everything that we do, it just kind of comes naturally honestly.

Karen:

Following that line of the kind of research that you guys are doing over there, you also have a project with a certain kind of yeast from this region?

Brett:

So we do a lot of bioprospecting, and what that involves is looking for native microbes, these microbes that are native to your particular locale, because again, there're just microbes everywhere. And if you look in the right places, you can find the right types of microbes. So for example, looking for yeast, you would want to look at fruiting bodies and also the bark on different trees. That's where you typically find different yeast species, especially the ones that are more fermentative. So yeah, that's something that we've been doing for a very long time, but we've kind of refocused on that recently to look for, and I think a lot of it that kicked it off was the new interest in low alcohol and no alcohol beers. People are drinking less alcohol in general now, especially younger generations. And so that's a much larger interest in the industry as well as from the consumer's perspective. And the problem is in the brewing industry is that we have been relying on two yeast species for pretty much the history of brewing.

Karen:

Wow.

Brett:

So saccharomyces cerevisiae which is ale yeast and saccharomyces pastorianus, which is lager yeast, but there are thousands of different yeast species that are out there that are perfectly fermentative and ones that could produce alcohol, ones that may not produce alcohol, that may produce more acid, some that may produce more gas. So we're looking for different species, some that may be able to make alcoholic beers that have different interesting unique flavor profiles, some that will ferment the sugary solution, the wort that is pre-beer into something that's interesting and has that fermented quality that you look for in a fermented beverage, but just doesn't have any alcohol in it. And then some that may be useful for food applications too. What about a bread yeast that can also produce acid as well as gas, and so it produces the gas to make the bread rise, but also produces lactic acid, for example, that would sour the bread. And so you could have a sourdough that's just made with yeast with one species instead of having the yeast and the lactic acid bacteria that you need currently to make sourdough bread.

Karen:

We're going to take a break and when we come back, we'll talk about some of the other projects Brett is doing with his students.

Dave:

Fermentation Sciences student, Stephen Moxley, graduates this spring with a BS in Fermentation Sciences and minors in chemistry and biology. The research project Stephen's been a part of focuses on isolating and identifying wild species of yeast from the native Appalachian region and judging their potential for use and the craft beer industry. What led Stephen to study fermentation sciences at App State? Simply his love of beer.

Stephen:

Hi, my name is Stephen Moxley. I'm from Northern Virginia and I am studying Fermentation Science at App State University because I love beer. Our research project focuses on isolating and identifying wild yeast species out of the native Appalachian region and judging their potential for their use in the craft beer industry. So a common day, a field research day for this project would be driving out to the parkway or one of the other local parks. Basically I was cutting pieces of bark collecting samples of soil, and then I was also doing some swabs of fruits, flowers, and I even had a couple of insect swabs in there. And through all of those natural environments, we're hoping that we'll find a yeast from one of those places that is super useful. So far, we have 66 strains that we've isolated, and we're right now in the process of going through those, doing the DNA extractions, and run a PCR on them so that we can sort them into groups.

And after that, we'll start characterizing them based on what kind of sugars they can use and make alcohol or if they make gas or if they make acid. And then from there, we'll start making some beer with them. I think in general, the beer industry at large uses a very limited set of yeast species and strains, and there's thousands of wild species out there that we haven't isolated yet or might not be identified that could have the potential for some really good flavors and really good outcomes in the beer making process. I got interested in this research through that angle, was just wanting to get out there and see what I could isolate out of the environment and see if they make good beer. One of the surprising things was just how much research is kind of figuring it out as you go along, which makes sense.

That's what all research is at the end of the day. But even for this project, we had to figure out what DNA extraction methods worked for our samples. We had to out what kind of media works best for just kind of a broad spectrum. I want to collect any possible yeasts out of the environment. And there was some research out there that had answers for some of those things, but for the other things, we just kind had to figure out what works and that's what we're doing. Yeah, this is my first major research project. I had a little bit of lab experience, but this is my first research project that I've worked on. I have definitely come to realize that I love the research side. Going out there and finding the potential new things that might be lurking in the woods is really cool to me.

Each trip I get a lot of samples and from the things that I collect, a lot of samples, didn't grow any yeast of interest, but it was funny. It's a pretty common place to hike. So I would see a lot of hikers, and I've got my gloves on and I've got my tools and vials and stuff and my notebook, and I'm just crouching next to the side of the trail, and I'd always try to explain what I was doing, and every person that I explained it, they thought it was the coolest thing ever. It was like, "Oh yeah, here's a fermentation science student looking for yeast in the woods," and they thought it was just wild that that was even a thing that could happen. But I was out there doing it. The project is headed by Oguntoyinbo who is also a professor in the Fermentation Science Department, but Dr. Taubman and I were collaborating on some of the procedures, and every time I see him, he's just got another idea for another project.

He's like, "What if we did this? What if we did this?" So it's very cool to be having conversations with somebody who can conceptualize those niches where some research could really make some difference in the world or difference in the scientific literature. So that's been really cool. He's a very passionate guy. When I first was deciding to come to App State and I got to meet him at the transfer student tour day, his passion was right there. I could tell that he was so invested in the program and was just trying to make it the best he could. So that's definitely helped me choose App State. There's definitely a lot of great opportunities to research, especially in the fermentation science department at App, but also at App at large.

I am familiar with other projects that are going on in the chemistry department, which the fermentation science department is part of. I would say the first thing to do is just to be talking to professors and just figure out what they're doing, what they're interested in, because a lot of the times, the things that students might be interested in overlap pretty broadly with some of the research that's going on. At least it did for me in the fermentation science department. Once you get an idea of what research is going on, you can figure out how your interests can add to that and how you can contribute. But yeah, definitely be talking to professors and just be willing to jump in on a project that might not seem like it does align to their interests. Projects grow and evolve as they go. That's one big thing I've learned during this project.

I think the big benefit for App is how much undergrad research goes on. That is not the case at a lot of the other big universities. If you want to be involved at that level or at the level that I'm involved in, in my project, you generally have to be a grad student. And at App, if you're getting your chemistry degree, your biology degree, and you have a big research project that you really contributed to on your resume, that's a huge benefit for you going into grad school or into the industry after. If you're considering coming to App for research in the fermentation sciences, I would definitely consider this university because there's so much opportunity for undergrads to get involved, and you can get here and within maybe two or three semesters, once you get your feet under, you can be jumping in and starting on projects. And that's so awesome.

Dave:

Thanks very much to Stephen for taking time out of the lab, out of the field, and sharing some information about his major. For more information on Fermentation Sciences at Appalachian State, go online to appstate.edu, click academics, then search from the list of degree programs. Now let's go back in studio with Brett Taubman.

Stephen is awesome.

Dave:

Okay.

Brett:

Stephen is the student that comes around every so often that you just love to have, because he's an older student, he's an atypical student. He already has a degree from Virginia Tech, so he's mature. He's actually worked in a brewery too, so that makes him super helpful in our facility. But he's just mature. He gets it. He's really smart, he's super helpful. He's the type of student too who just lives in our facility. I mean, he's there all day every day, pretty much-

Dave:

Committed.

Brett:

... as long as we are. And yeah, we always get a handful of students like that. And you love those students because they're the ones that not only do the best work, but the ones that you can really rely on and trust, and you can get them to start mentoring the other students as well and use those students as kind of role models for those other students. Because we're an undergraduate only department, so we rely on these sort of more mature undergrad students to serve in those role model type of situations for the other students.

Karen:

I'm really excited to get your book.

Dave:

You m ean Southern Culture on the Fizz: An Effervescent Guide to Fermented Foods and Beverages in the American South?

Brett:

I love it. I love it.

Karen:

That's the one.

Dave:

Oh, I said in, I messed it up. I mean From the American South.

Brett:

That's right. That's right.

Dave:

In your book, do you actually point out fermented things that are specific to the South?

Brett:

I do.

Dave:

What's like the big go-to?

Brett:

So how about this one were you all aware that Boone was the Sauerkraut Capital of the East Coast?

Dave:

I did know that. I did.

Karen:

Oh, you did?

Dave:

Yeah, because Boone Creek was called Kraut Creek.

Brett:

Exactly.

Dave:

Yeah. Because they would dump the kraut stuff into the creek.

Brett:

The effluent would go directly into Boone Creek.

Dave:

Times have changed.

Brett:

And so it smelled like sauerkraut.

Karen:

Oh my God.

Brett:

And so old timers around here still refer to it as Kraut Creek. So that's one reference that I make talking about the history of the Watauga Kraut factory. But Chow Chow is another example of a very southern classic fermented product. So I talk about the history of that and whether it came from Nova Scotia or maybe the Chinese immigrants who were working on the railroads here in the south. So country ham is another example that was a highly prized commodity for 200 years. One of the more prized commodities, prized exports coming out of the south that they were exporting to Europe at the time.

Dave:

Digital Watauga, which is a Facebook group, they have some really good examples of the old packaged stuff from the factory. It's pretty neat.

Karen:

When did the factory close?

Brett:

Early '80s.

Dave:

It started in '23, and then...

Brett:

It's like '87 maybe.

Brett:

Somewhere around there.

Dave:

Well into the '80s. Yeah. It says it remained active.

Brett:

And some other classic southern fermented products we could throw in bourbon.

Dave:

That was the first one that came to my mind.

Brett:

Right. Tennessee Whiskey, Moonshine, of course. And then those are distilled products, but you have to start with fermentation before you can distill them.

Dave:

Right. I didn't mean to derail from your questioning, Karen, but I was curious.

Brett:

No, that was a great question.

Dave:

Yeah, I was like, what is the go-to?

Brett:

Yeah. And that's one of my main hypotheses in the book, and it's a general reader book. It's a general science book.

Karen:

Perfect.

Brett:

It's certainly not a textbook of any sort, but there is a good bit of science in there too. And I try and make it as approachable as possible for general readership. But what were you just talking about?

Karen:

I was talking about the book.

Brett:

That's right. Oh, one of my major hypotheses in the book is that the southern US has the only truly unique and truly American culinary culture in the country. Because if you think about it, think about the other regions of the US. I mean, you've got the Northeast, I mean the West Coast, that doesn't count because they weren't even there until more recently. But their food cultures are all more directly translated from Europe or like on the West Coast, the Asian food culture is great, but those are just direct sort of translations of those food cultures.

The southern culinary culture was forced to be different. I mean, first of all, we were a melting pot of different cultures from Europeans to the enslaved peoples of West Africa to the Native Americans. The Algonquins and Iroquois played a huge role in food preparation and learning how to deal with food that we weren't familiar with here. But the south in particular, the climate is different than Europe. It's a lot warmer and wetter here in the south. We couldn't grow a lot of the traditional crops that were grown in Europe. So take barley for example, which is the base grain for most beer. Barley is a northern crop, and so it did not grow well at all in the south. And so what did they do? They turned to the native cereal grain of North America, corn. That's how we got bourbon, for example. We didn't raise cattle in the south either.

It was too expensive and required too much land. So we raised hogs here in the south instead, which was very different than Europe and other parts of the country. And sweet potatoes for example, also didn't grow well in Europe because that's more of a warm crop. And now North Carolina, for example, is the sweet potato capital of the country. So all these different crops and different livestock that we had to grow in the south that were different from our European counterparts, it forced us along with all these different cultures that influence these different crops to make truly unique food. I mean, if you think about the foods of the south, everything from barbecue to fried chicken to blackened anything, shrimp and grits, low country boils. These are all uniquely southern dishes that you don't find anywhere else in the country. I mean now you do, people have weak interpretations of them, but it really is a unique culinary culture, and the only truly American one is what I would argue with anybody because it was kind of forced. I mean, fermented meats, for example, this is how we got country ham because the English tradition of fermenting meat and curing meat was pickling. It was using a wet cure. Well, that wet cure did not work well at all in the southern heat and humidity. That meat would just mold and get gross.

Karen:

Oh, gosh.

Brett:

So they leaned on the Algonquin tradition of smoking meat to dry it out. And then the Afro-Caribbean influence as well, that was taken from the West Africans to the Caribbean Islands and then translated to the south, that also influenced that smoking of meat. And so you got this cold smoking technique that was used to dry the meat and also protect it microbially because that smoke lays down a layer of organic compounds on the meat that protects it from yeasts and molds growing on there that you don't want on there. And so that's how we got country ham.

Karen:

Wow.

Dave:

What do you all smoking over there right now?

Brett:

Beef tongue pastrami.

Dave:

That sounded weird. Wait, yeah, so beef. Okay. So right now you said you're doing beef tongue pastrami, which is like that's not very southern.

Brett:

No, definitely not. And I would like to say that maybe that comes from some of my Jewish upbringing.

Dave:

Oh, yeah. 10-4!

Brett:

So yeah, the only people in this country generally that are most familiar with beef tongue I feel like are Jews and Mexicans.

Dave:

Okay.

Brett:

Jews, we would eat it as deli meat. I grew up eating beef tongue and I thought that was just normal until broader society, people are like, "Beef tongue. Like What? You eat that?"

Dave:

Well, can't you get it in Asian restaurants as well? Aren't there like a Thai restaurant? Don't they have beef tongue or something?

Brett:

Probably.

Dave:

You know more than I do, Brett.

Brett:

Probably. But I think of it more like in Mexican culture, like Mexican food culture. Lengua. Lengua is tongue in Spanish. So lengua tacos are very common and I love it. I mean, it's these cuts of meat. And that's the other thing, like southern culinary culture, for example, the enslaved peoples were not given choice cuts of meat and they were given the awful or the less than savory cuts of meat. And so they had to make the most of it. And that's where we get things like soul food, for example.

Dave:

Where next? Where are we headed next?

Karen:

Well, one of the things that you mentioned, it has to be grown here, the pawpaw fruit is something that you are working on, and that is something that is native to North Carolina. Correct?

Brett:

It's actually native to a huge part of the Eastern US. So everywhere from up to almost the Great Lakes down to east of the Mississippi, up to the Great Lakes and to North Florida. So yeah, pawpaws are native. It is the largest indigenous tree fruit to North America. And if you've never had a pawpaw, you definitely need to try one.

Karen:

Where can you get pawpaw fruit?

Brett:

So I'll give a plug to my friend Susan Preston Owen, who I refer to as the Pawpaw Lady. So she has, I believe, the largest orchard in North Carolina, which is, I mean, it is a decent sized orchard, but it's not that large on the grand scheme of things. I mean, not compared to a lot of apple orchards you would see, but that's just because pawpaw orchards are not that common. I think Kentucky is one of the bigger pawpaw producing states. Kentucky State University has a pawpaw institute even so they do the vast majority of research into pawpaws, but it's a really interesting fruit. It looks kind of like a smallish papaya. And in fact, in other countries, they refer to the papaya as the pawpaw. They're in Jungle Book, in the Disney film.

Dave:

When you pick the prickly pear, the pawpaw.

Brett:

They're in that song, whatever the bare...

Dave:

Bare Necessities.

Brett:

He mentions pawpaw and they're in the jungle. So there's no pawpaw growing there, but it's probably papaya that he's referring to in that song. But it very much reminds me of a tropical fruit, even though it's native to North America and even the northern part of North America. The texture is almost custardy when it's ripe. And it's almost like if a banana and a mango had a love affair, this would be the bastard love child of that torrid love affair. That's what the flavor and even the texture reminds me of it. Have you all had pawpaw?

Dave:

I never have.

Brett:

You've never had pawpaw.

Dave:

It's shameful.

Brett:

You're missing out.

Dave:

I know.

Brett:

So the one issue with pawpaw, so it is delicious, but it is part of the soursop family and all soursop fruits and the trees that grow them and the leaves produce a neurotoxin.

Dave:

Sign me up! That sounds great.

Brett:

So it is a potent neurotoxin where if you consume these fruit on a regular basis for an extended period of time, you could end up developing atypical Parkinson's symptoms. That's if you make a steady diet of it for like years.

Dave:

I've heard somebody say, "Well, potatoes are poisonous if you eat enough potatoes." I'm not sure if that's true. Don't quote me on that. But yeah, how much would you have to eat? This would be an incredible amount.

Brett:

I mean I think if you ate a pawpaw a day type of thing for several years, that might not be the best thing for you.

Dave:

I mean, I eat tuna. It's got mercury in it.

Brett:

Yeah.

Dave:

You just gotta watch it.

Brett:

There's all kinds of foods that we definitely roll the dice with. But I mean, you can definitely enjoy a pawpaw here and there. They are delicious and certainly worth it. But speaking of that neurotoxin, we are playing around with, again, it's similar to the Alpha-gal project, and one of my research areas, as you mentioned, was looking at using fermentation to remove these anti-nutritional compounds, a euphemism for things that may be poisonous to us. And a classic example is like cassava. So casaba is a tuber that is native to Asia and South America, I think it's native, Africa. That is a staple part of the diets of a lot of people in Asia and South America and Africa. But native casaba produces cyanide compounds that are poisonous.

Dave:

Wow.

Brett:

But the fermentation process breaks down those cyanide compounds and it makes the casaba safe to eat. And so they've been doing this for thousands of years, fermenting casaba and using that as a staple starch in their diets. So that's kind of the basis or an example of what we're trying to do with some different food products using fermentation. So we want to see if there are any organisms that could potentially ferment that neurotoxin. We also distill in our facility, so we teach distillation technology and we love distilled products as well. And we also like to encourage the different producers around the state. So to use more native products, and I know I'm digressing here, but in North Carolina there was a push for many years to try and grow a lot of the more traditional vitis vinifera grapes, which are the classic wine grapes, your Merlots and Cabs and Sauvignon Blancs, and those are all vitis vinifera grapes. We have a native grape in North America, and that's the muscadine and scuppernong.

They're vitis rotundifolia, and there's a couple other species, but they're different than vitis vinifera, which is native to Europe. And actually American rootstock saved vitis vinifera grapes too. I cover that in my book too because phylloxera are like little aphid like bugs that are native to North America. But because they evolved in North America with our native grape species, our native grape species are resistant to these phylloxera, so they don't affect them. Well, a British winemaker visited North America and then brought some American rootstock back with him to London to the botanical garden there, I think, and brought with it phylloxera. And so then that spread everywhere around Europe from there. And it would've destroyed vitis vinifera would've destroyed the wine industry.

But then they realized that if they take American root stock and graft the vitis vinifera onto that rootstock. So you've got vitis vinifera, the canopy is vitis vinifera, but the roots are the American rootstock that's resistant to phylloxera. And so pretty much every grapevine around the world, there's only a few very specific regions around the world that don't have phylloxera currently and can use vitis vinifera rootstock. The rest are all American rootstock with the vitis vinifera grafted onto those.

Dave:

Wow.

Karen:

That's amazing.

Brett:

So we are trying to encourage a lot of the winemakers. They were trying to make vitis vinifera grapes in North Carolina, and a lot still do, and some do it very successfully, but it's not the ideal region for growing these grapes. So we're trying to encourage, if you're using those grapes, maybe think about making sparkling wine because that does a lot better with how those grapes grow here, where you've got more acidity and less sugar in the grapes, for example, that makes great sparkling wine. Or what about using muscadine wine to make a more traditional wine instead of the sweet wine that you normally get? Or even better, take that muscadine wine and distill it and make muscadine brandy, which is delicious because I'm native to the south, technically. I grew up in Maryland, that's the south. So I claim to be a Southerner, and I've been in North Carolina for a long time now, but I do not like muscadine grapes or muscadine wine because they have that sort of burnt rubber character that I just can't get past.

That shows up in the wine too. But when you distill it, that compound is not distill over with it. And so because I love the fruit character of a muscadine grape, it's just that compound or compounds that give it that weird flavor that I can't get over. But when you distill it, that's removed and it makes a delicious brandy. Apple brandy, that should be a big product in North Carolina. We're a huge apple-growing state. Pawpaw brandy. So we want to see if when we distill the fermented pawpaw, will that neurotoxin carry over with the distillate or will it be left behind? So could the brandy be safer? I mean, as safe as brandy is to drink, right? Do it in moderation, certainly. But as safe as that would be to consume, otherwise it might be concentrated in the brandy and then it would not be very safe.

Karen:

Right. That's what we're trying to avoid.

Dave:

Yeah. That would not be the way.

Brett:

No, but that's something that we try and do as part of the program too, is encourage current and future business owners in the state who are in the food and beverage industries to use our native products to North Carolina. We have some incredible products here, and we really should be leaning on those and highlighting those instead of trying to imitate other areas that do things differently. And that's kind of my argument about southern culinary culture in general. We took something or a lot of different things and combine them together to make something that is truly unique to the south and to this country, rather just trying to recreate something that had been done in the past.

Dave:

Yeah, it's like a unique selling proposition. Yeah. We're not just doing a mediocre version of something else. We're doing something completely different. That's all ours.

Brett:

Yeah, and you have a really genuine marketing angle too.

Dave:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. See, marketing sometimes does good things, sometimes.

Karen:

Well, we have to wrap up, but I want to say thank you to you Dr. Brett Taubman, for your time today and for sharing this exciting work taking place in our very own Blue Ridge Mountains.

Brett:

It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Karen:

If you liked what you heard and are interested in learning more about the work being done at App State, subscribe on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. This is Karen and Dave saying thank you for listening to Appalachian Excellence, featuring Appalachian research, scholarship and creative activity creating solutions inspiring change.

Dave:

Thanks, Karen. Thanks, Brett.

Brett:

You bet. Thank you all so much.

Karen:

I learned so many cool tidbits.

Brett:

Good. I don't even think I cussed once.

Karen:

Although when you throw out those chemistry terms, I don't know. I was like, "What does he say? What is that? Is that appropriate?"

Brett:

Is he cussing in science?

Karen:

I'm glad I didn't have to say those words. We'd still be here.