Looking for advice on finding a job in a brewery

I know I've only been doing this for 4 months, but I know brewing is what I want to do. There's a couple breweries and some brew pubs in the area, and I was looking for advice on what I should do to get my foot in the door.

From what I've read on a couple threads, I should call up all the local breweries and ask about openings. Once I get to the interview part, bringing some HB could be good, provided it is good.

I'm wondering if I should do other stuff like submit entries into local contests. The Orlando Brewery has a volunteer corps, so I signed up for that a few weeks ago but haven't heard anything yet likely due to the fact that under availability I had to put "Varies, normally open on Sundays or Thursdays" thanks to my current job.

Should I do stuff like apply to local craft distributors and brewpubs? There's a Bud brewery (factory really, since it barely qualifies as brewing IMO) in Jacksonville, but...Budweiser. Don't want to work in a water bottling plant, especially one 3 hours away. Cigar City brewery is closer than that, and happens to be the #4 brewer on ratebeer.com.

Any advice? Ultimately I'd love to own my own brewery but that has its own list of problems and is definitely a long-term type of goal. I'm looking more to be a brewer within 5 years time.

The best way would be to get a job washing kegs or working the bottling line and work you way to the cellar and brewery.

Look in the the job requirements in the URL I provide below, see how many you can reasonably claim as skills you possess...

http://probrewer.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=27

Thanks for the link, Baja Brewer. I am looking for an entry level, so from the job listings I saw there, I'd be able to do many of the entry level ones. I'm not going to lie to myself and say I can formulate recipes and be in charge of the brewing process. But from what I've seen of some of the brewer assistant positions, there's not a lot of skills to be had. Lifting 55 lbs, diploma/GED, some college course work maybe (chemistry, biology, physics, engineering).

Erroneous said:

Thanks for the link, Baja Brewer. I am looking for an entry level, so from the job listings I saw there, I'd be able to do many of the entry level ones. I'm not going to lie to myself and say I can formulate recipes and be in charge of the brewing process. But from what I've seen of some of the brewer assistant positions, there's not a lot of skills to be had. Lifting 55 lbs, diploma/GED, some college course work maybe (chemistry, biology, physics, engineering).

Click to expand...

No problem... I would love to work in a brewery while I'm still young, but I gotta finish school first- and then (maybe) say screw it and go into a program like Siebel