“The more you engage with research, the more you will realise it can help you.”

That’s the message Dr Dawn Maskell gave the audience at The Brewers Congress in London earlier this week.

Dr Dawn Maskell is professor and director of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

In her keynote address she focused on demystifying research and how to use it to your advantage.

She tackled the questions that many have been afraid to ask like what is research? How can I find it? and, how can I use it?

She outlined that research can be defined as a careful and systematic study to discover new facts, solve problems or gain a deeper understanding of a topic.

But she was direct in also saying what research is not.

“It is not information gathering, regurgitating facts, reorganising known information, relying on what you already know or routine testing and auditing,” she explained.

Her talk also gave brewers ideas around how to design research projects, how to get involved in existing research, as well as touching on applying for grant money and the avenues that exist for sharing your research with others.

Dr Maskell is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers and is Vice-President of the American Society of Brewing Chemists. She has a wide range of research interests from yeast and fermentation through to process and product improvement as well as sustainability.

Her teaching includes yeast and fermentation, maturation as well as topics around packaging and sustainability. Dawn’s research group currently includes projects around yeast, fermentation and co-fermentation, novel cereal grains for spirits, beer haze stability and feints recycling in whisky.