Consulting for the Brewing and Beverage Industry
Christopher and Nancy McGreger
TUM-Weihenstephan (MSc) Brewing Science and Beverage Technology
About McGreger Translations & Consulting
A Love of Beer and Brewing
Christopher and Nancy have shared a passion for beer and brewing since beginning as homebrewers in the late 1980s, during their undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the fields of the natural sciences and German literature/history.
From that time, they have zealously pursued their interests in beer production and brewing history in all of its fascinating technical, sensorial and historical detail. After having worked in several breweries in the burgeoning US craft brewing industry, in 1997, they moved to Germany, where both were able to gain valuable experience in the Bavarian brewing industry.
Christopher and Nancy both attended the Technische Universität München-Weihenstephan, first receiving degrees as Diplom Braumeister and then in Brewing Science and Beverage Technology (Diplom Ingenieur or MSc) and subsequently began work as brewing industry consultants. Though we travel the world, we are based in Bavaria.
What We Do
We have 20+ years of experience in the international brewing and beverage industry, working in the following capacities:
- Brewing industry consultants
- Authors
- Technical translators (German, English)
- Teachers/lecturers/tutors
McGreger Translations & Consulting
Technical Consulting
Technical Consulting
Technical Consulting
Christopher and Nancy generally work with smaller breweries to help them choose the best raw materials, optimize their production processes, improve quality assurance measures and gain an understanding of sensory analysis with the primary objectives of increasing quality and consistency while also reducing production costs so they can focus on brewing highly drinkable beers. Refer to our book The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries. It is also available as an e-book. (The site is in Flemish, but the book is in English!)
Authorship
Technical Consulting
Technical Consulting
Aside from writing numerous articles on historical and modern brewing techniques as well as on unique and exceptional beers, processes and raw materials, Christopher and Nancy have authored a well-received book in conjunction with the European Brewing Convention and Brewers of Europe on quality assurance in smaller breweries. This serves as a basis and reference for their consulting work.
Teaching and Instruction
Technical and Scientific Translations
Technical and Scientific Translations
Christopher provides technical instruction in historical and modern brewing techniques as well as specialized language instruction for brewers and maltsters, which stresses equipment, processes and quality assurance. He regularly teaches The Natural and Cultural History of Beer Brewing on various campuses in the US and International Beer Styles and Brewing Methods and Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters in Germany at the University of Applied Sciences at Weihenstephan and at Doemens Academy.
Technical and Scientific Translations
Technical and Scientific Translations
Technical and Scientific Translations
Through close cooperation with the Bavarian brewing industry and academic community as well as through their own intimate knowledge of historical and modern beer production practices and European brewing cultures in both English and German, Christopher and Nancy have translated seminal works on brewery raw materials, beer production and quality assurance originally published in German into highly readable and understandable English.
Teaching and instruction
Brewing Theory and Practice
Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters
A Natural and Cultural History of Brewing
Interested in learning how to brew any beer style under the sun or simple ways to improve quality control in your brewery?
McGreger Consulting offers classes and tutorials on the raw materials, equipment, processes and laboratory methods necessary to brew quality beer. Our instruction is designed to enlighten – not befuddle – brewers.
A Natural and Cultural History of Brewing
Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters
A Natural and Cultural History of Brewing
Take a fascinating journey starting at the Big Bang through time and space all the way down to the glass of beer in your hand — and learn lots of fun facts along the way!
Dive into the captivating world of beer brewing, exploring its remarkable past and unique cultural significance over the course of human history!
Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt's!
Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters
Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters
Technical English for Brewers and Maltsters
Non-native speakers of English wishing to master the daunting technical language of malting and brewing need look no further. (Even native English speakers unfamiliar with malting and brewing may benefit!)
McGreger Consulting offers classes, which make learning the complicated technical language of beer production, a piece of cake!
Selected Works
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
Christopher and Nancy wrote this reference book and feel it is one that every brewer – from the nascent beginner to the experienced brewmaster – can learn from and should have on their shelves. It is also available as an e-book. (The site is in Flemish, but the book is in English!)
In its broad scope, the book encompasses essential information on brewery raw materials and the entire production process, including storage, cleaning, dispensing, pumps, tanks, filters, barrels and other equipment.
The authors also offer valuable insights into professional brewing on a smaller scale and the best methods for maintaining quality and consistency – with excursions into unique and exceptional brewing techniques, such as decoction brewing and lambic fermentation.
The appendices offer useful brewing and sensory analyses as well as microbiological and analytical techniques, especially for those on a budget. A comprehensive list of the flavors/off-flavors encountered in beer is also provided.
Applied Malting and Brewing Science – A Weihenstephan Compendium
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
This treatise on malting and brewing science by Ludwig Narziss, Werner Back, Martina Gastl and Martin Zarnkow has been described as a landmark work (known as Abriss der Bierbrauerei in German).
This book is currently in its eighth edition and has hitherto only been available in German. However, after years of cooperating closely with Prof. Narziss, Christopher and Nancy were able to produce an unabridged and updated English edition of his seminal work entitled Applied Malting and Brewing Science, thanks to the generous support of Dan Carey, co-founder of New Glarus Brewing Co.
The book describes malt and beer production in great detail, and though this edition includes recent technical innovations, it also presents the knowledge amassed by Prof. Narziss over the many decades he conducted research while serving as Professor at the Chair for Brewing Technology I at the TUM-Weihenstephan.
Brewing Techniques in Practice
The Beer Brewing Guide – EBC Quality Handbook for Small Breweries
Brewing Techniques in Practice
This engaging work by Werner Back, Martina Gastl, Martin Krottenthaler, Ludwig Narziss and Martin Zarnkow, translated by Christopher and Nancy, provides detailed and well-conceived descriptions of special aspects of brewing theory and practice, and in many ways complements Applied Malting and Brewing Science, though it serves as a stand-alone work as well.
The book contains a comprehensive overview of the raw materials and modern methods in process engineering utilized to brew Bavarian beer styles, including their unique quality characteristics. Flavor stability, troubleshooting, sensory analysis and microbiology are discussed as well as health considerations.
Fundamental aspects of biochemical and technological interrelationships are depicted in clearly arranged tables and illustrations. Each topic in the text is detailed from raw materials to the finished beer, so that the thread of the discussion is never lost among other facets of production or process engineering.
Hops – Their Cultivation, Composition and Usage
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
M. Biendl, B. Engelhard, A. Forster, A. Gahr, A Lutz, W. Mitter, R. Schmidt and C. Schönberger, the world's leading hop experts, wrote this impressive volume on hops, and thus no other work can be considered as authoritative or as comprehensive in its scope on this topic.
The book is also composed in a concise and understandable manner so that it is accessible to anyone interested in these unusual plants which are utilized almost exclusively by the brewing industry to preserve and flavor beer.
Christopher and Nancy translated it in close collaboration with the authors. This text discusses how these unique plants are cultivated and provides details of their composition, especially of the cones themselves, how hop products are created and how these products are, in turn, used in various industries, primarily in brewing beer. The effects of the compounds derived from hops at the various stages of production on the finished beer are also described in detail.
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
This tome was originally written in Czech by Gabriela Basařová, Jan Šavel, Peter Basař, Pavlina Basařová and Tomas Lejsek. Christopher and Nancy extensively edited the translated work and through intense discussions with the authors created this seminal work on Czech brewing practices in English.
Prof. Basařová was head of the Department for Fermentation Chemistry and Bioengineering at the VŠCHT Praha and served as the lead author of this work. She collaborated with her son, Peter Basař and his wife, Pavlina Basařová, as well as Dr. Jan Šavel, who has served as lecturer and head of the Research and Development Center at Budějovický Budvar in České Budějovice (the state-owned brewery in Budvar/Budweis) and Tomas Lejsek, executive director of Žatecký pivovar in Žatec and lecturer at VŠCHT Praha.
For anyone wanting detailed information on Czech brewing practices, this book will certainly not disappoint.
MEBAK – Malting and Brewing Analyses and Guidelines
The Comprehensive Guide to Brewing – From Raw Materials to Packaging
Brewing and Malting Dictionary Czech-German-English-Russian
The Mitteleuropäischen Brautechnischen Analysenkommission e. V. (MEBAK) offers the widest collection of malting, brewing and beverage analyses in the world.
The primary objectives of this organization are to develop analytical precepts and practical methods for investigating the raw materials, intermediate and finished products as well as the by-products primarily involved in or derived from beer and beverage production, including the industries that serve as suppliers to these producers. This also encompasses any additives, technical processing aids, beverage containers or packaging materials.
Christopher and Nancy have translated the numerous publications of this organization into English, which are now available online and include Raw Materials; Wort, Beer and Beer-based Beverages; Sensory Analysis; Microbreweries; Guideline for Brewhouse Evaluation; Guideline for Membrane Filtration; Water, Wastewater, Boiler Feed Water.
Brewing and Malting Dictionary Czech-German-English-Russian
Brewing and Malting Dictionary Czech-German-English-Russian
Brewing and Malting Dictionary Czech-German-English-Russian
Christopher and Nancy worked with Czech author Peter Basař and Jan Tolar, the director of operations at Budějovický Budvar until 2009, on a Czech-German-English-Russian dictionary for malting and brewing. They performed proof-reading and, in part, generated the English and German terminology for the dictionary.
The dictionary covers a wide range of terms from malting and brewing in each language. Due to the antiquity of beer production, malting and brewing terms are not like other fields of biotechnology, which are mainly derived from Greek and Latin scientific nomenclature. Beer brewing is deeply rooted in the cultures of Europe and thus are often distinctive to the brewing culture whence they come. Therefore, a lexicon of terms is a useful tool for those, like Christopher and Nancy, who move between them regularly.
Fachverlag Hans Carl Publishers
Brewing and Malting Dictionary Czech-German-English-Russian
Fachverlag Hans Carl Publishers
Christopher and Nancy have worked closely for many years with the Fachverlag Hans Carl, a family-owned publisher in its sixth generation, not only to produce high quality English-language books on malting and brewing but also to translate technical articles for the magazine published by Hans Carl, Brauwelt International. Christopher and Nancy often contribute articles of their own as well.
The Fachverlag Hans Carl began by publishing the Allgemeine Bayerische Hopfenzeitung in 1861. This has evolved over the past century and a half into BRAUWELT. The publisher's origins ultimately go back to the regional hop market of 19th century Nuremberg, one of Germany's most important trading centers for hops given its proximity to the hop-growing regions of Hersbruck and Spalt. The founder, Johann Carl, was also a co-founder of the Deutsche Brauerbund (German Association of Brewers) in 1871.
The brewing industry has continued to become increasingly international and digital, and thus BRAUWELT International was launched in English in the 1980s and subsequently online.