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

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The best beer in down town Guelph is at the woolwich arrow. It's just around the corner, less than a 5 min walk. Not the best atmosphere, more of a restaurant than a bar. It's nice though and there is a bar to sit at. They always have a couple casks on which is sweet.
 
Thanks for posting up these updates. It's great to hear about what it's like to go through Brewing School. It's something that would interest me, but I will never have the opportunity to do. I'm pretty sure there's more than just me living through you in these posts.

When you talk about setting up a tasting panel and sensory evaluation, you're referring to a panel of the same beer with different off flavors?
 
Thanks for posting up these updates. It's great to hear about what it's like to go through Brewing School. It's something that would interest me, but I will never have the opportunity to do. I'm pretty sure there's more than just me living through you in these posts.

When you talk about setting up a tasting panel and sensory evaluation, you're referring to a panel of the same beer with different off flavors?

Right, that is part of it. We are actually waiting for the flavor "spikes" to come in, which is what we need to start doing exactly that. As of right now we have been learning more about the theory of setting up an effective panel, as well as doing blind tastings and being asked to identify which brand or what style of beer it is.

Basically the process for this is we sit down at our table, and we go through the beer selection with the whole class first. We evaluate clarity, aroma, mouthfeel, taste, retro-nasal effect and so on. Then we leave the class and the teacher re-arranged our glasses and when we come back in we are asked to list which beer is which. So far I have been doing well, 5/5 on both quizzes given, so I am pretty happy. The main focus of the class, however, will be on identifying off flavors and where they can occur in the brewing process. Just waiting on the spikes.

As for never having the opportunity to do it, you would be surprised by the range of classmates I have. Sure, there are quite a few people like me who are young and this will be most likely our first career, but there are plenty of others too. We have an ex-lawyer in our class, a guy who has been a glassblower and landscaper for over a decade and several others. Never say never, if you are truly passionate then you never know what may work out. In the meantime try and find some local beer related courses you can take! If you are interested send me a PM and I can refer you to an online beer course which although more focused on the tasting and serving of beer is quite a solid course.

Nice blog - thanks for sharing! What size batches are you brewing on the pilot system vs. the larger system in the brewery?

The pilot systems in the brewery make around 60L of beer at a time I believe, and we have so far been combining two brews in to one fermenter, as we are working on very specific recipes. As the class is split into 3 different brew groups we have been focusing each time on a variation of one ingredient. For example the first three brews we did were focused on hops. One week the group did year old hops, the next week did wet hops and my week did fresh hops, but not wet hops. Now we are focusing on water, and when we are done we will do malt.

The "large" system in the brewery does 5bbl at a time, but we have had a large demand for our beers and are in the process of building a much larger brewery off premises, I believe, as we currently have two of our "production" beers contract brewed by a great local Ontario brewery. The new brewery won't be ready any time while I'm in the school but it is exciting to see the program expanding so soon since its inception. I hope the future brewmaster students will get more days in the brewery as a result!

As always feel free to ask as many questions as you'd like. I really enjoy answering them, and, as we all are, am very passionate on the subject!

Cheers,
Eric
 
What beer style are you brewing when you look at modifying a recipe for each varable? (I guess another way to ask is, when you used the different hops and different water profiles, etc. were you brewing the same style beer?)
 
What beer style are you brewing when you look at modifying a recipe for each varable? (I guess another way to ask is, when you used the different hops and different water profiles, etc. were you brewing the same style beer?)

Good question! Yes, we brew essentially the same recipe each time. It is a very basic Pale Ale recipe, kept simple to profile the different changes made. All the beers get sold in the campus retail store, which is pretty neat.
 
Lumpy16 said:
Hey does the beer get sold at the lcbo at all? I would be interested to try it.

Saw it at Bloor/Royal York LCBO last week. Two different kinds. Hands were full of spearhead IPA so I did not try it.
 
I will share a small secret with you, the beer in the LCBO currently was not brewed by us. The demand for the beer outgrew our small breweries capabilities so we have had to brew it off-site while the new brewery is under construction (currently in the planning phase). If you make a trip out to the college you can try a whole variety of different beers all brewed by us students and available for sale in growlers.
 
Today was our first day back after Niagara College's first ever reading week. The week was mostly uneventful, as I spent most of it studying for exams and writing papers. Tomorrow is our midterm in Sensory Evaluation, and I have just about done as much reading on the subject as I can. We also found out today that our Brewing Ingredients midterm will be next Monday, and now has an expanded scope to include some barley physiology which we went over today. There is lots of studying to be done for that test, as well as a few assignments for Communications to work on, so until I get through those updates will remain small.

Today in Brewing Ingredients we went over how to calculate mineral additions to your brewing water using Molar Mass. It has been many, many years since I have had to look at a periodic table and to say I was a bit rusty would be an understatement. Heck, I never understood it when I learned it the first time. Fortunately, it wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be and we managed to avoid having to do specific calculations for the midterm - we only need to know the general steps. After Molar Mass we got to draw a diagram of a barley grain and then label it with the many components that make it up. Another thing to commit to memory. Oof.

On the plus side, due to scheduling conflicts we will no longer be having a second test in the course. Instead we will be given another assignment to do. I say on the plus side, but I'm not sure which I'd rather do.

I forgot to mention that we started the day with our math midterm, which went pretty well. I made one mistake that I know of, as for some reason my mind shut itself off and I blanked out on how to calculate the break even point in sales based analysis (set the price to 1$, if anyone was interested).

Anyhow, I will work on typing up some notes and drawing out a diagram or two to share with anyone who wants more specific information. Also, expect a post on Hop Calculations as it will be on my midterm and it is fairly interesting (arguably one of the most useful things we have learned so far).

Cheers,
Eric
 
...as for some reason my mind shut itself off and I blanked out on how to calculate the break even point in sales based analysis (set the price to 1$, if anyone was interested)...

Are you sure about that? Doesn't seem right to me (but I only took Economics/Account at high school level). I would of thought you would set you profit to $0
 
profit = 0 but the price of the item being sold gets set to 1$. In a sales based analysis you are only given the sales figures, the variable costs and the fixed costs. The variable costs to sales are a fixed ratio and can be represented by VC/S. In order to find break even, you need to know the price of the item, but since it is not specified we are told to set the value of the item to 1$ and then proceed with the calculations. I very well could be wrong about this, but I think that's how we were supposed to do it.
 
I'll have to try to stop in at the store next time I'm in the area. Do you know what styles of beer they usually have for sale?
 
profit = 0 but the price of the item being sold gets set to 1$. In a sales based analysis you are only given the sales figures, the variable costs and the fixed costs. The variable costs to sales are a fixed ratio and can be represented by VC/S. In order to find break even, you need to know the price of the item, but since it is not specified we are told to set the value of the item to 1$ and then proceed with the calculations. I very well could be wrong about this, but I think that's how we were supposed to do it.

I think I just clicked, this is for multiple products right?
 
I'll have to try to stop in at the store next time I'm in the area. Do you know what styles of beer they usually have for sale?
It is hard to tell, as we can brew whatever we want on certain days, providing there is fermentor space, and it all has to be sold in the store. I know the project for the second year students this semester is to brew a bitter, a stout and a hefe, so there is a good chance at least one variation of those will be on tap as well as our NC Ale, Lager, and Bitter. There is normally at least one other beer on there as well, but I couldn't predict it. If you tell me when you are planning on coming down I'll let you know whats on tap. You do of course get to sample the beer before committing to a purchase ;)

I think I just clicked, this is for multiple products right?

This specific question was just for one product. I will try and dig up an example of the question so you can see what I mean. Check back tomorrow and I'll have that for you.
 
Wow that's awesome, get to brew what you want and sell it. That's great. Sounds like I'll have to make the trip, maybe over Christmas break.
 
This specific question was just for one product. I will try and dig up an example of the question so you can see what I mean. Check back tomorrow and I'll have that for you.

Thanks, good luck with you studies! Sounds like the University I wish I had gone to, damn engineering school! One day... one day...
 
Serious question: How many people would actually be interested in more technical posts, involving calculations and whatnot? I would not mind sharing some of my notes, if there is an interest.

Boy o boy have I been busy, now that our major tests are finished I have some time to sit back, relax and go over all that has happened in the previous weeks. When I last sat down to write, it was just after the week-long break. Since then I've had a major midterm (brewing ingredients), a challenge test in sensory evaluation (finally), been given new assignments and worked on old ones, and brewed in the teaching brewery (today!). Where to begin?

The midterm for brewing ingredients was wildly different than I had expected. Perhaps through a misunderstanding we were lead to believe that the midterm would be all inclusive, from day one up until the date of the test. As such, I spent a lot of time studying the many different lectures as well as various readings. I was, therefore, surprised to see that the test was mostly on hops. I was expecting there to be hops on the test, but was not expecting it to be a majority shareholder in the venture. Needless to say, I was not the only one who wasn't expecting this. I did review hops but maybe not as thoroughly as I should have. We were given a few charts with different hop breakdowns and asked what they would contribute to the finished beer in different situations. I should have brushed up on what all the different hop oils do to a beer, as I found myself at a bit of a loss. I managed to come up with answers but it will be interesting to see how I did when I get my test back next week.

The flavor standards arrived at the college, finally! We are now able to actually physically taste the defects we have been talking about for so many weeks, and put our sensory training to use. We had the joy of tasting defects such as Metallic (think iron, or the taste you get when you accidentally bite your cheek) which I found to be more of a strong aroma than flavor. If you think your beer may be tainted with Metallic properties, there is a trick to identifying it: dip your fingers in the beer and rub it on the back of your palm, then smell. It will smell like pennies if your beer has been tainted. Another thing we tasted was earthiness. DO NOT LET YOUR BEER GET THIS CONTIMINANT. This was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever smelt coming from a beer. Think of digging in the earth after a rainstorm. This is what the beer smells like. It does not have much effect on the taste, but the aroma is severely off-putting. Some other taints we tasted were DMS (cooked vegetable smell), Diacetyl (movie theater popcorn) and a few others that I can't recall at the moment. We were then tested on our ability to identify these flavors in a blind tasting. Somehow I managed to get a perfect score, which although impressive sounding doesn't mean much as most of my classmates were able to do the same (I suppose it just means we are an awesome group of future brewers and all defects should fear us). This week class was cancelled and I need to get started on my presentation. Two classmates and myself will be doing a 20 minute presentation on the IPA beer style, which of course includes a tasting.

Today I was in the teaching brewery for the third time this semester. My partner and I were brewing a malt-forward beer to compare to the ones brewed over the past 2 weeks by the other groups. We used a pretty basic recipe, somewhere along the lines of 8kg pale ale malt, 2kg Maris Otter and then 1kg of the specialty malt. Although the name escapes me I believe it was some kind of french roasted malt coming in at around 150L. It smelled like burnt toast as we were mashing in, and the color was a rich dark brown. We brewed the lightest (color wise) of the 3, so I am excited to see how it turns out, and how the others are as well. We are supposed to do a side by side comparison in Sensory Evaluation, one of these days.
 
Dude the more info you share with us, the better.

If you brew something particularly awesome, if you're allowed, perhaps share the recipe with us so we can brew along with ya.

Cheers!
 
You can have an honorary brewmaster diploma, created by me, if you are still following at the end of two years. You can hold me to that.

I will share more technical information, and I will share what recipes I can.

I forgot how tough school can be, why did no one warn me?!?
 
I'm in for all the info you're willing to share. Thanks for taking us along on this ride.

Cheers!
 
I am currently in Sensory Evaluation watching presentations on beer styles. My group presented first on IPAs, with a sampling of Mad Tom IPA from Muskoka brewery. The second group presented Bitters and we tasted the schools Butler's Bitter and Granite Brewery ( from Toronto)'s Best bitter. Current group presenting on wheat beers and we are wrapping up the class with Triples. So many samples, so delicious. Next week the final 4 groups will present.

Since last update we've had a few new assignments assigned and some tests to study for. We are coming up on the end of the first semester (December 14) and there is still plenty to do.

In the spirit of full disclosure I am a little tipsy from the samples, so excuse any errors in my grammar. Cheers!
 
m_c_zero said:
Lol... Sorry, you can have your thread back now.

Haha I was waiting for someone to comment on that.

I have officially moved from tipsy to mild drunk. Ha a few wheat beers ( ayinger, hoegaarden, and a home brew) now on to the Tripels. La Fin Du Monde, from my native Quebec and La Trappe, an official Trappist beer from the Netherlands.

I will have to keep the drinking going to avoid an early evening hangover.
 
Well it has been a long time since I last updated this thread, I got caught up in school and part time job having and to be honest didn't really feel like writing down my day to day. Anyhow, I have some spare time now so I will try and give a general overview of my second semester thus far. Beware, wall of text will follow!

This semester is supposed to be the most difficult one of our two years at the college. The class load is pretty heavy, including courses such as Brewing Microbiology, Brewing Chemistry, Packaging, Equipment, Sensory evaluation and Communications.

I will be the first to say that I have serious trouble with science related courses. For whatever reason I just seem to have trouble getting all the information in my head. That being said I feel like the microbiology course has been the most important course we have taken so far. We are learning all about quality control practices and how to do various tests on our yeast. So far we have covered the basic stuff about working with lab equipment and have done some labs on streaking plates to culture yeast, as well as Gram staining to try and identify different bacteria cultured from various spots around the brewery. The lab portion of the class is great but we always take more than the allotted time, which means our professor has to rush through the lecture half of the class that comes after. This is problematic for me because I have trouble keeping up at a tortoises pace, never mind the breakneck speed we go at. They say slow and steady wins the race, but as I just had my mid term in the course yesterday we'll see if that holds true.

Chemistry so far has not been my favorite course, I find it to be a little disorganized and a lot of the time I'm not sure how what we're learning has anything to do with chemistry. The teacher is a great guy though, and the course seems to be picking up steam so I look forward to continuing on with it after the break.

Packaging. What to say about packaging? Even the teacher himself said on the first day of class we are going to hate him because this is the worlds most boring subject. There may have been some truth to those words. As much as I may complain about it the fact remains it is an important subject to learn, and our teacher has so many stories from the industry that he always manages to keep it entertaining. The vibe I get from this class is that bottles are the devil, and apparently we should just go ahead and get rid of them, as cans are safer, cheaper and better for the overall quality of the beer. They also provide more surface area for branding and cost less to ship (lower weight). There are about a billion things that can go wrong on a bottling (or canning) line and I am starting to get the feeling that I should take a general mechanics course to supplement my learnings at the college.

Sensory evaluation this semester has put more of a focus on the different kind of tests we can set up for panelists in order to properly run a solid quality control program. We haven't tasted any exciting beers yet, but the good ol' off flavors have made a re-appearance. Hooray. The class this semester is at 8:30am on Monday mornings, and let me tell you, there is nothing quite like warm spoiled beer to wash away memories of your weekend and bring you back to the reality of schoolwork.

Communications this semester is a much better course than last, as it is tailored specifically for our program. During the first half of the semester we have worked on developing media kits and press releases, and in the second half we will be learning how to write a business plan to present to potential investors. One of the most interesting courses to date (that doesn't have to do with brewing, mind you).

Practical brewing is still on Wednesdays, and still only once every 3 weeks. I am feeling much more confident in the brewery this semester though, and am really enjoying the time I get to spend in there.

That about sums everything up so far for this semester, next week is our reading week and then we'll have just seven weeks left until year one is over. Many of my classmates have already secured summer positions at a wide range of breweries and I myself am waiting to hear back from a few in the area. I have also been fortunate enough to secure a spot to write the Institute of Brewing and Distilling brewing modules exam this summer, taking place on the 4th 5th and 6th of June. The school has recently become a testing center and as such they will be footing my bill for the tests!

As always, I welcome any questions about my coursework or the school in general. I will be checking back here more frequently, I forgot how much it helps me to write down whats been going on in school.

On a side note - any brewers in the area should shoot me a PM, as we are starting up a homebrew club in the upcoming weeks and we would love to have as many people as possible!
 
I had wondered what had become of you since there weren't any updates since Nov. I was starting to think that maybe you fell into an industrial-sized mash tun and couldn't get out!
Glad to hear things are on the up & up!

Edit: on a side-note, do you get summers off? Or is it a year-round program?
 
I had wondered what had become of you since there weren't any updates since Nov. I was starting to think that maybe you fell into an industrial-sized mash tun and couldn't get out!
Glad to hear things are on the up & up!

Edit: on a side-note, do you get summers off? Or is it a year-round program?

Haha well it wouldn't be unheard of! I don't really have a good reason for not keeping up with the updates, but I will try and do better now!

We have the summers off, but we are expected to get an internship in the industry somewhere. Most people end up at some brewery or other, either bottling, brewing or other various tasks.
 
Looks like it's time for another of my sporadic updates!

I would like to start by congratulating Dudius and MoreHops on their acceptance to the Brewmaster program! Dudius will be joining us at Niagara College and MoreHops will be part of the first year at Olds College, where we have just started up a sister program!

For whatever reason the school has been near empty over the past few weeks, I don't know if motivation is running low or people have decided to extend their vacations by several weeks - but at least parking has been easier!

In the brew program all is well, the work flow is constant and now with the end of my first year coming up I have to start all the projects that I've been putting off for weeks. In Microbiology we have been learning about yeast propagation and how to up-culture yest from a single colony. Although labor intensive, this allows us to learn the methods necessary to continuing our yeast throughout multiple generations, instead of purchasing new yeast every time we need to pitch. There are pros and cons to both options, and not all breweries have the knowledge or capital to invest in lab equipment. Unfortunately my group was not able to get in the lab as often as we needed to due to other classes being scheduled, but our yeast grew happy and healthy anyways. They grow up so fast, those little cells.

In communications we have started working on our business plans, it has been interesting to see the dreams of my fellow classmates and what they would like to open in the future. I am currently torn between a fictional brewpub and a fictional nano-brewery. Cost wise a nano brewery would certainly be cheaper but with less potential for profit down the road. Decisions, decisions!

In packaging we are working on our final projects - designing a packaging line for an assigned brewery. I have been assigned a 70 000HL/yr Barbados brewery. Since our assignments are all based on actual breweries a little research turned up Banks Brewery in Barbados, which appears to be the only brewery of this size in the area. I have sent an email to the company in the hopes that they will share some information about their packaging line. In other packaging news we were fortunate enough to have a presentation from Sebastien Delgado, the VP of sales for Krones in Canada. He missed the class by about 30 minutes, but there were a few of us in the campus pub when our teacher brought him down to have a few beers so a few classmates and myself were able to pick his brain about packaging and the future of the industry. Very intelligent man, and super friendly to boot!

Our equipment teacher has been absent for 3 weeks at this point, he is off in P.E.I. helping to open a brewery, so we have had guest lecturers for his class. Most recently we had a representative of DME manufacturing come in to talk to us about brewhouse design and automation. DME sure seem to know what they are doing, and I got the impression that they would be a great company to buy from. Next time I have 500 000$ lying around they can expect a call from me.

Next week will be my last week in the teaching brewery for the semester. We are being given a list of things that need to be accomplished as well as a recipe to brew and then we are on our own to complete the tasks. It will be interesting to see if the 8 of us in the brewery can work together to get everything done on time. I am confident it won't be a problem.

In other news I have received my review package for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling exam. To give you an idea of how much information there is to go over, the syllabus is 54 pages by itself. There are going to be some late nights reviewing, I can already tell.

Niagara College was featured on the Rick Mercer Report this past week (think Canadian Daily Show or Colbert Report) and some of the students in my class were shown in the brewery, but mostly it was second year students. We are all there in the end though, for the final hoorah. If anyone is interested the video can be viewed here:



Most of the students in my class have jobs lined up for the summer already, which is fantastic news! All in all the semester is going well, but I am looking forward to working over the summer.

Cheers! :mug:
Eric
 
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Does this mean Morehops and I will be sisters? Either way I'm excited for September.
 
Just read that Butler's Bitter from the Niagara College Teaching Brewery won Gold for the English Style Pale Ale (Bitter) category at the Canadian Brewing Awards. Was that your class, Eric? If so, that's ultra-awesome! Congrats! If that wasn't your class, that's still super-awesome for your school!
 
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