Average Joe to Brewing Pro - My two years of brewing school.

Today marks the first day of my adventure in brewing school. It has been a dream of mine ever since I learned it was possible to make a living brewing beer. I will be chronicling my adventures here in this thread for all who are interested to read over the next two years, as well as for my own personal reference.

First, a bit about the program. I was lucky enough to be accepted to Canada's one and only Brewmaster and Brewery Operations school in Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario. 24 of us were accepted out of over 200 applicants (they say they accept a new "case" of students every year, har har har...). The application process involved providing some basic school marks as well as a portfolio that consisted of a couple of essays. More information on the program, for those who are interested, can be found at www.niagaracollege.ca/brew or at www.firstdraft.ca

A bit about myself; I am 22 years old and have had an interest in beer for longer than is legal in my home province (Quebec, Canada). Over the years my interest developed in to a true passion, and a real love of brewing and the brewing industry. I applied to the program fully not expecting to get in, as it is a very competitive program to get in to. Through some kind of luck I received an acceptance letter in April of this year and it turned my life upside down. I am fortunate to have a woman in my life who is so loving and supportive that she was willing to uproot her own life and move with me to St. Catharines, Ontario, just minutes away from my school.

I look forward to keeping this journal of my educational travels, as well as any events or brewing related stuff I get to participate in because of the program.


Cheers!
Eric

Congratulations and good luck. Keep us posted on your progress.

Day one:

Today was orientation day for all us first years at the school. I got to go in, meet my classmates, hear from teachers and staff and most importantly; taste the three main beers produced by the college (First Draft Ale, First Draft Lager, and Butler's 1812 Bitter). These beers, as well as several others, are all produced by the students in the production brewery at the school. They will soon be for sale in the provinces liquor stores, and are already available at several restaurants as well as from the retail store at the school.

Contrary to popular belief, brewing school consists of more than just technical brewing and tasting courses (although, there are those too, of course). The courses I am taking this semester are as follows:

The Mathematics of Finance
Computer Applications
Brewing Ingredients
Language and Communications
Sensory evaluation of Beer
Basic Practical Brewing
Introduction to Brewing

Today was a fun meet and greet, tomorrow the real work begins. I will be starting off in the brewery with Basic Practical Brewing. Although the class will be a short one tomorrow, I volunteered to stay after class and help bottle some batches that are ready for packaging.


Eric

Congrats and good luck

Eric -
Really cool to hear - sounds like a great path forward.

Good luck and welcome to the region - I'm just across the border from you. Although you'll be focused on beer - be sure to take some time to enjoy the world class wineries up there in Ontario.

-Weston

Good luck and have fun. Niagara-on-the-Lake is a great town.

Congrats! On both the awesome girlfriend and the brewing school!

westo2 said:

Eric -
Really cool to hear - sounds like a great path forward.

Good luck and welcome to the region - I'm just across the border from you. Although you'll be focused on beer - be sure to take some time to enjoy the world class wineries up there in Ontario.

-Weston

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Thanks Weston, I will be sure to check out the wineries as well, kind of hard not to!

Subscribed & Congrats!

I'm very curious to see what the Computer Applications course entails.

Today was my first official day of class, and I am lucky enough to have started off in the brewery. The 24 of us met at 8:30 outside of the teaching brewery in eager anticipation of the class to come. My class is a pretty diverse crowd, although mostly guys we do have four female classmates. A couple of the guys are from the US and one of the women is a student from Japan.

We were met by our teacher John Downing at about 8:45 and let in to the brewery. Here we were given our first assignment, which was to identify some pieces of equipment that were labeled 1-10. We were given about 15 minutes to get our guesses down before moving on, as the assignment is only due on Friday. Next, John talked to us about what we will be learning in the course, how the other brewing classes we are taking will tie in and what previous classes have done. The class was then split into three groups of eight, as this is who we will be brewing with throughout the semester. Due to size constraints in the brewery each group will only be brewing once every three weeks, but we will get a full day in the brewery instead of only a couple of hours. Sadly, I am in group C, so I will only be brewing three weeks from now. We will, however, have plenty of opportunity to volunteer in the brewery in the intermediate weeks, so we won’t go too long without putting in some work! All told this took about an hour and a half before we were free to go.

I was fortunate enough to have been offered the chance to volunteer to do some work in the brewery today, so me and a few other guys stayed behind to be introduced to John’s right hand man, Elliot Herman. Elliot is a graduate of the program and current brewmaster over at Silversmith Brewing in Niagara on the Lake (www.silversmithbrewing.com). Let me just say, Elliot is a super friendly guy, and he sure as heck knows his stuff.

After being given a run down of what we would be doing for the day, Elliot showed us how a lot of the equipment worked, and we all made fools of ourselves trying to change tri-clamps and move hoses around. My first job was using the labeler, pictured here:



Each 660ml bottle is inserted one at a time and the front and back labels are placed automatically. It may sound like a lot of work, but once you get a good rhythm going it’s effortless.

Next, I cleaned and sanitized bottles and stacked them on the bottle tree to dry:



My kind of Christmas tree!

After doing this for about an hour I switched over to the bottle filling machine, where we would take four bottles at a time and, well, fill them. Also, there was a crowning machine to put the crowns on, one bottle at a time.The filler does not move at lightning speeds, so often there would be a large backlog of bottles waiting to be filled. This gave time to learn how to clean and shank a keg, which is a much more vigorous process than I had expected, involving a large machine and the hope that you didn’t attach the hose wrong or else you will be soaked to the bone in cleaning solutions.

All in all it was a great day, and I am glad I volunteered. I came home with my pants soaked through, my boots full of water and high spirits. I look forward to spending more time in the brewery in the near future.

Tomorrow I have one class, communications. It is at 12:30 and it lasts only an hour, which makes it a pain to drag myself in to the school for. Friday promises to be better though, with more brewing related classes.

Cheers!
Eric

Don't stress the tri-clamps, you'll get the hang of them but sometimes you just come up against one which refuses to submit. The trick is to be more stubborn than the stainless.

EricR said:

I was lucky enough to be accepted to Canada's one and only Brewmaster and Brewery Operations school in Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario.

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Olds college in alberta offers a 2 yr brewmaster as well

Goofynewfie said:

Olds college in alberta offers a 2 yr brewmaster as well

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Really? Did not know that, in fact my teachers have been saying that Niagara is the only course of its kind in Canada. I know the school was planning a partnership with a college out west, how long has Olds offered their course?

**EDIT**

Upon further inspection this course is indeed associated with my school, and it begins in September of 2013

http://www.oldscollege.ca/programs/Horticulture/brewmaster.htm

Definitely cool to see the program expanding, maybe by the time it starts I will get the opportunity to travel to Alberta and check it out!

LeBreton said:

Don't stress the tri-clamps, you'll get the hang of them but sometimes you just come up against one which refuses to submit. The trick is to be more stubborn than the stainless.

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I spent some of the down time playing around with the spare tri-clamps and some other fittings, starting to get the hang of it but it still takes me probably about 3X as long as it should. I refuse to be beaten by a lifeless hunk of metal, so I will persevere!

rhamilton said:

Subscribed & Congrats!

I'm very curious to see what the Computer Applications course entails.

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I am not getting my hopes up for this class, as it is not specifically part of the program. From the looks of the course outline I will be learning how to send e-mails, use Microsoft word, power point and excel. It will be a truly thrilling class, but at least I can do the majority of it online.

EricR said:

Really? Did not know that, in fact my teachers have been saying that Niagara is the only course of its kind in Canada. I know the school was planning a partnership with a college out west, how long has Olds offered their course?

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I think this is only the first or second year. Would be interesting to compare the curriculum
Edit
I thought the newspaper said it was already going but must have been mistaken

Also of you make it to alberta you might be interested in checking out sherbrooke liquor in edmonton, they stock over 1000 different beers

Glad to hear the courses are starting well for you Eric.
It is nice to hear the craft brewing interest developing in Niagara.
I had a chance to check out Silversmith Breweries recently and was impressed with there 50 amp version of the electric brewery.

Cheers;
Steve

I haven't had the opportunity to try any of their beers yet, but I hear they are quite tasty. The building where they are housed is beautiful as well.

On Fridays I have two courses; Math, starting at 8:30, and Introduction to Brewing which is from 9:30-12:30. This past Friday there was some kind of scheduling mix up resulting in our Math professor being in a completely different room than 95% of the class. We still got homework though,so there’s that…

After waiting around for the clock to run out on the math class it was finally off to intro to brewing, which due to scheduling conflicts was first changed to a room in the basement of the food and hospitality building, then moved back to its original room in the main building. For our first class we were given a presentation on safety when handling chemicals from our chemical supplier, Ecolabs. We were scheduled to have a two hour presentation but due to scheduling conflicts the person giving the presentation had to cut it short so the presentation lasted only an hour. I will admit that I had a hard time focusing on the presentation, as most of it was pretty straight forward. We were given a true or false quiz at the end of the class which was going to count towards our marks. It was an easy quiz and once it was done Jon, who is teaching this class as well as Practical Brewing, gave us a presentation on safety in the brewhouse.

All told, scheduling errors took up the majority of the day and by the time we were done in class I was ready for the weekend and a pint or two of quality brew. It has been an interesting first few days and for once in my life I am actually looking forward to classes on Monday.



Cheers,
Eric

Brewing Ingredients
Posted on September 11, 2012

Mondays are busy days for me, I start the morning at 8:30 with Math, and then I have computer applications from 10:30-12:30 followed by a two hour break. Fortunately, the scheduling errors were worked out and so we were in the same class as the teacher.

Prof. Nestor Komar is also the coordinator for the entire math department here at Niagara, and as such, is a very busy man. He is also, in my opinion, the best math teacher I’ve ever come across. Maybe it’s because I am older now, and actually see a point to taking math, but I actually enjoyed the lecture. Prof. Komar is a very dynamic teacher, and he gets the class involved. It seems to me that teaching comes naturally to him and I look forward to having more math classes (I may have just given my parents a heart attack with that last statement).

Next it was on to computer applications, which is a mandatory course here at the college. It is also a very easy (for most) and potentially boring (for all) class. Fortunately we were told that attendance is only mandatory on the days of the test, the rest of the time we can just do our work online. This is both good and bad for me. It is good because I don’t necessarily want to sit through a two hour class to do what will probably be 30 minutes of work, it is bad because it means that I now have a four hour break between math and brewing ingredients. That gives me a four hour break on Mondays as well as Tuesdays. I guess I should take advantage of the school gym, or do my homework. Likely I will visit the pub.

Brewing ingredients is being taught by Kevin Somerville, the former coordinator of the program. We were forewarned by students from other years that this would be one of the more difficult classes to take, due to the sheer amount of information we need to learn in a small amount of time. Kevin knows his stuff. He trained with the siebel/doemens academy before going on to work for a year as assistant brewer at Alley Kat out in Edmonton, Alberta. From there he went on to be head brewer at the Taps brewing company and helped start up the Indy Alehouse in Toronto. Currently, aside from teaching a number of classes, he is in the process of opening a brewery near the college, Oast House Brewers (an oast house is where hops are traditionally dried). All this to say, he is well qualified for the position. We were not lied to when we were told we would be cramming a lot of information into our think-holes. Foolishly, I had not printed out the slides for the class (mainly because I didn’t know they were there to print) and I paid for it dearly. For the first few weeks we are learning all about hops, and I do mean ALL about hops. I tried, unsuccessfully, to take notes as he lectured from the slides and had to give up before I gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome. I am not complaining, the class was super interesting, if a bit fast paced. Kevin is very personable, and he teaches well. Had I been better prepared for class, I would have nothing to complain about. We got to smell a variety of hops, both fresh and old (the old ones so we could smell the cheesy smell hops get when improperly stored over long periods of time). In the coming days I will be typing a summary of my notes from the first class, and I will share them here for anyone interested in knowing more information about hops, and the science behind selecting hops.

In the mean-time, as I don’t have school tomorrow, some class mates and I will be visiting the Merchant Ale House in St. Catharines for a few pints. I wonder what kind of damage a group of brewmaster students can do to the beer stock at the bar?

Cheers!
Eric

Tuesday, after my four hour break, it was finally time for the much anticipated Sensory Evaluation of Beer course. This year it is being taught by Laura Takata, a more than 25 year veteran of quality control for one of the biggest breweries in the world. We discussed what our expectations for the course were, and tried an experiment where we stuck our tongues in a small paper cup filled with soda to test our threshold for pain, I think? I’m not actually quite sure why we did that experiment.

Class was cut short this week, as our books still have not arrived in the campus book store, and the online information for this course has not yet been set up either. I like prof. Takata though, she’s funny and to the point. I think it will be a good class, and I look forward to it next week.

After class it was off to the Merchant Ale House in St Catharines with a bunch of my classmates for a few pints and a bite to eat. My next class is Friday morning, Math with prof. Komar. I better get started on the homework!

Cheers,
Eric

All about hops

Yesterday started off with math, just like every Monday. We learned how to calculate trade discounts, cash discounts and how to find the true value of multiple discounts (the old take an extra 20% off the already discounted price, for today only!!! gimmick). Turns out the formula for doing this is fairly simple:

N=Lx(1-d1)x(1-d2)x(1-d3) and so on

N= net price L=list price and d=Discount.

After that we learned how to calculate and credit partial payments within a credit period. Although this stuff may seem boring to most (lord knows I thought it would be, as I've always disliked math) it turns out to be pretty interesting once you realize how relevant it can be to running a business.For instance, we did an example that showed that taking advantage of even a 2% credit by paying in an allotted time in your credit terms can pay for two workers salaries for a day. It may seem like small potatoes, but when you are running a craft brewery the margins can be tight and every little bit you can save will help you stay competitive with your pricing.

After math is was on to computer applications where I fiddled around with power point for awhile, before going on a 3 hour break.

Finally, it was time for brewing ingredients. Today we learned more about hops, and hop products. Who knew that there was so much to know about a hop. We still have a few more weeks of hop centered learning to go. We were given an assignment, in pairs, to do a paper on an assigned hop product. Next, Kevin whipped out some big bags of hops and we got to do a hop rub. A hop rub is where you take a handful of hops and, well, rub it. The aim of a hop rub is to really get a good sense of the aromas that the variety will produce. Rubbing the handful of hops back and forth vigorously warms up the oils and releases the scents. I started my rub with Fuggles, and boy did they smell good. In fact, I can still smell them now, as hop rubbing is a sticky business and it is really, really hard to get the bits of leaf off your hands afterwards. Although there were three varieties for us to try, after my first rub I could only smell Fuggles. Not that I'm complaining.

Cheers,
Eric

subbed, look forward to the updates and seeing you progress. Thank you for staying committed to the thread!

Subscribed. This is awesome! congrats.

Thanks guys, I am glad you are following along. If at any point you have questions you want answered about stuff I'm learning, or the schooling process in general, please ask! I am always happy to have a discussion on any topic related to beer. I may even be able to contribute something worthwhile now!

The past week has been busy for me, as homework and tests are starting to become a real thing now. It's been awhile since I took school seriously and so I don't want to start slacking now. Here is a brief overview of things I did in beer school over the pat couple of days:

• Learned about sensory panels, and the biases that can affect them.
• Had our first tasting session (Bud light, Bud, Bud Shot, Guinness, Newcastle Brown) in order to learn proper procedure.
• Learned more about hops.
• Had a presentation about water quality and water solutions.
• Started a discussion about brewing and barrel aging a graduation beer.
• Received an assignment to write a paper on a hop product.
• Got invited to a kegger tonight. Woohoo weekend!

Next week I have a test in Math as well as Brewing Ingredients. Friday after the math test we have a field trip to the Sleeman brewery in Guelph, as well as the F&M brewery. It will be neat to get a tour of both facilities and see what differences/similarities there are between them. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Cheers,
Eric

First test

Yesterday we had our first test in Brewing Ingredients. I was not sure what to expect, as I had heard several conflicting stories from different people. I was a little surprised to find the test was 99% short answer questions,which made me really happy I had been reviewing my notes since day one, and didn’t just cram last minute. This still didn’t stop me from screwing up on a few questions, but hey, I never said I was perfect.

After the test we had a guest speaker come in for the duration of the class. Mike Driscoll is a local hop farmer who is doing lots of work to promote locally grown hops in Ontario. He is the farmer who had the harvest hop event at the beginning of the semester where some students were lucky enough to participate and pick some hops, have some pints, and meet people from the industry. Although his presentation covered much of what has already been covered by Jon and Kevin, the Q & A session at the end was quite interesting. After speaking to Mike and Kevin I have decided to try and grow some hops indoors, just to see if I can.

This morning when I checked Facebook I was greeted by several notifications from my programs group. As it turns out we have been recognized by The Bar Towel with a Golden Taps Award for outstanding achievements in beer.



Also, we have been recognized by our local MPP for our medal wins at the U.S. Open Beer Championships. Pretty neat!



Today I have tasting class, and tomorrow is my first real day in the brewery. Wish me luck!



Cheers,
Eric

Congratulations! I'm very happy to have found this thread for it is my dream, too, to attend your school! I actually just submitted my application as an international student (I'm from the U.S.). I'm curious, how many international students are in the program?

I've been enjoying reading your posts. Thanks for the updates.

dudius said:

Congratulations! I'm very happy to have found this thread for it is my dream, too, to attend your school! I actually just submitted my application as an international student (I'm from the U.S.). I'm curious, how many international students are in the program?

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Thanks for the kind words, I am glad to hear you have applied. There are a few international students, a couple from the new york state / buffalo area. How did you find the application process? Have you had to submit your portfolio yet? If you have specific questions about the program or how my application process went shoot me a private message.

IXVolt said:

I've been enjoying reading your posts. Thanks for the updates.

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Thanks for reading!

Solid updates - keep 'em coming!

First brew day

I am falling behind on my updates, for that I am sorry. It has been quite a busy and exciting week for me, with my first day in the brewery getting to use the pilot system. The day started off at 8:30 with the eight of us in my group meeting outside the brewery. Soon we were told that we would be the first group from our year that gets to do a brew on the craft system. This means that everyone in the group gets a chance to brew, and we were all very excited about that.

First things first, we went to the barn behind the brewery to grab the malt we needed, as well as several cases of bottles as there would be bottling work to do as well. Once we acquired the necessary materials we returned to the brewery to be split up into our groups for the day. The way it worked was four people would get to brew on the larger craft system, while two groups of two would get to brew on the pilot systems. As I was near the top of the list I got assigned to one of the pilot systems along with three of my classmates. Some people may think that this is disappointing, not getting to use the larger system, but in reality the pilot system is where we will be doing most of our brewing throughout our time at the school and it is the only system we will be tested on later in the year.

For our brew we were making a basic pale ale to be hopped with bertwell hops harvested from this years hop harvest and dried out. The previous groups to brew (week 1 and 2) used different hops (fresh hops from the harvest on week one, and hops harvested last year for group two). We will be doing a side by side comparison of the beers in sensory evaluation to see the effect different hops can have on a recipe. Although our recipe was basic enough, learning the pilot system proved to be quite the challenge. There are lots of valves and switches and hoses, as well as all the dreaded (but necessary) tri-clamps to go along with them. With Jon’s supervision we managed to mash in okay, and I got a heck of an arm workout stirring the mash. Although not a large system, there was certainly enough grain for me to break a sweat. My group had a little trouble maintaining the proper mash temp (would have helped if we opened the steam valve, like we were supposed to) so we ended up doing a small addition of hot liquor to keep us around the required levels. After the mash comes the vorlauf, which is the process of running the wort over the grain bed in order to clarify it. The process took us about 15 minutes as we were doing it at a bit of a reduced flow rate. I had never done a vorlauf in my home brewing, so this was a new experience for me. It was interesting to see the difference in clarity from the start to the end of the process.

After the vorlauf comes the lauter, where we drained the wort from the mash tun into the kettle and sparged the grain bed to remove any of the remaining sugars. This took another 20 minutes or so. There is downtime during the brew process, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to do. There is ALWAYS cleaning to do. Always. Once we were sure all our sweet wort was in the kettle it was time to start the boil. Following our recipe, we were to boil for 45 minutes with a hop pellet addition at the beginning of the boil, and whole hops to be soaked at 0 minutes and let to sit for 10 minutes in the wort.

Luckily our teaching brewery has a heat exchanger so cooling the wort down to fermentable temperatures was quick and easy, and we were able to do a quick transfer from kettle to fermenter by rigging up a very elaborate system of hoses. Now that we were done with the brew it was time to clean, and sanitize, and clean, and sanitize and clean some more. Once we were assured our system was spotless we moved on to cleaning kegs for the rest of the day.

All in all it was an awesome day, I learned a lot, but had a bit of information overload so I’m sure I’ll forget half of it by the next time I’m in there (three weeks and counting!). I guess I should try and volunteer this upcoming week, to get some more time in the brewery under my belt. Until then, I will continue to study the brewing process and work on some assigned projects.



Cheers,
Eric

Monday I received a slew of test results, and I must say I am quite happy with them. In math of finance I got 97.77% and my professor requested that I become a peer tutor. Anyone who knows me and my history of schooling is now probably laughing so hard that they are out of breath. In brewing ingredients I scored 78% on our first major test. Not bad, but I look forward to doing better in the future.

Today my class brewed what is going to be our graduation beer. We decided to make a Russian Imperial Stout and it will age in a bourbon barrel from now until we graduate in 2014. It will be interesting to compare the beers we can make then with this one we made now, which is essentially our first ever brew. For anyone who is in the area, an un-aged version will shortly be available in the school's retail store.

No other major developments at this time, lots of assignments to get started on however, so I will be keeping busy.

Cheers,
Eric

Well, it’s been some time since I had much to say about whats been going on at the school, as we settle in to a routine it becomes a bit more difficult to find exciting stuff to write about. Perhaps all the coursework has made me reluctant to take free time to sit in front of a computer screen, but I feel it is time to get back in to it, so here it goes!

This week we were supposed to have our first midterm, in Brewing Ingredients. There is a ton of stuff to review as the test is cumulative of everything from day one up until now. I spent a good chunk of the weekend typing up notes, reviewing, studying, reviewing and typing up notes (get the idea?). Sunday night rolls around and we get an email from our professor saying that the midterm has been pushed back. This is both good, and bad news. I am happy that I didn’t have to write it yesterday, as I don’t think I would have done as well as I would have liked, but now we have no set date for the midterm. It would have been nice to have it done before our reading week break, which is coming up next week. I guess it will be just one more thing to work on over the week.

Today we are going to be doing some review in Sensory Evaluation for our midterm which will be the Tuesday after the break. As we have yet to receive our flavor standards the test will be solely on the theory we have learned so far. How to set up a tasting panel, the different kinds of biases, and perhaps the proper process to evaluating a beer, as taught to us by our teacher.

We have several papers due this week as well. One for sensory evaluation, where we were given a case study of a brewery and some complaints they were receiving about their beer. We were each assigned a complaint to investigate and tasked with finding out the source of the problem and identifying how to fix it. The problem I was given was that some customers were wondering if its normal for the beer to smell like Parmesan cheese. As this beer was not, indeed, a Parmesan cheese beer, this was certainly a problem. A little bit of investigation proved that the brewery was not storing their hops properly, allowing them to age and oxidize, which allows Isovaleric acid to do its thing and create the cheesy aromas. The solution? Proper storage and monitoring of the hops. The brewery was not storing their in a cold room which was speeding up the process. Next, I finished up an essay for workplace communications, and started work on two other midterm papers due this week.

The upside of this crazy hectic week is that it is once again my turn in the brewery, which is good, because one of the midterm papers I have to write is on how to properly use the pilot system in the teaching brewery. Although I did get a chance to use it three weeks ago I am in dire need of a refresher on the subject. This week is also special because we have been invited to attend the Ontario Craft Brewers Conference this Friday in Markham, Ontario. The OCB was kind enough to invite us and give us free admission, and I am really looking forward to attending the conference and meeting some people in the industry, as well as taking notes during the lectures. Yes I will be taking notes, no I am not ashamed!

Over the reading week I have two major assignments to work on, once of which, on hop products, will be due as soon as we get back to school, so no slacking off for me.

This has been a large general update on the goings on at Niagara College, but I will soon be doing some course related updates for those interested in the day to day teachings. Stay tuned for more!

Cheers,
Eric

Good luck on the mid terms!

I'm in mid terms right now at uoguelph. **** I just want to brew

Lumpy16 said:

I'm in mid terms right now at uoguelph. **** I just want to brew

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You going to the hip show in feb?