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

[EricR]

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.

 

[paulster2626]

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!

 

[dbrewski]

I subscribed to get it all, hit me with details! I get a diploma at the end of this, right?

 

[EricR]

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?!?

 

[JonW]

First time seeing this thread. Congrats to you and I'll be eagerly following along.

 

[FastAndy]

I'm in for all the info you're willing to share. Thanks for taking us along on this ride.

Cheers!

 

[sfrisby]

I'm in for the honorary diploma,

 

[EricR]

*For anyone interested in learning how to identify off flavors*

Go to http://www.flavoractiv.com/2012/02/new-updated-beer-flavour-standards-flavorfiles-2/ and download the flavorfiles. These are what we use in our sensory evaluation class to study different off flavors. The flavorfiles will give you tips on how to identify the taint as well as possible sources.

 

[EricR]

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]

identify the taint

Lol... Sorry, you can have your thread back now.

 

[EricR]

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.

 

[EricR]

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!

 

[dudius]

Good read, glad to see how things are going.

 

[MoreHops]

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?

 

[EricR]

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.

 

[EricR]

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!
Eric

 

[dudius]

Does this mean Morehops and I will be sisters? Either way I'm excited for September.

 

[dbrewski]

Keep the updates coming, love learning more about how a formal brewing education works!

 

[MoreHops]

Does this mean Morehops and I will be sisters? Either way I'm excited for September.

My Johnson precludes me from being your sister. I would, however, be happy to be your brother!

Am pumped for Sept too!

 

[MoreHops]

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!

 

[Mcbobs]

What a great read! Keep the updates coming! I'm glad to see that everything is working out so well for you so far!

 

[FastAndy]

Any updates?

 

[EricR]

Update coming soon! Started the semester today, I will summarize my summer and what's next for my classmates and I in the upcoming days!

 

[FastAndy]

Glad to hear you are starting the new semester soon. I feel like I went the total opposite route from you. I've been brewing on a 50bbl system for a while now for a living and will be starting a 22 week class with the American Brewers Guild early next year.

 

[dudius]

I was surprised how many shift brewers are in the program so that they can further their educations and careers. There are a couple 2nd and 3rd generation brewers as well.

 

[EricR]

...to Average Joe! 10 (almost) year update.

I haven't been on this site in a long, long time. To be honest I didn't do a lot of homebrewing while I was brewing professionally. The daily routine of waking up and running a brewing business until it was time to sleep kind of took the thrill of the homebrew out of it. I came across a HBT email recently and thought it would be neat to provide a LONG overdue update.

So it's been almost 10 years since I first started my brewing journey. What a wild trip it has been.

A lot has happened in the decade since I first started to document my trip into professional brewing, and I intend to be open and honest about it all. While I won't divulge company names specifically here, I will happily talk about the timeline of my career and the high (and low)lights of it all.

Some people may be able to figure out where I was working, and I'd ask them to keep it to themselves for everyone's privacy.

I'll lead off by saying that I am no longer involved in the industry as a professional brewer. 2021 was my last year wearing brew boots as a full time employee, but I do stay involved in the community and occasionally do some consulting. I guess it's back to average Joe for me.

The last year of brewing college was a blur. Some changes in personal circumstance found me living with classmates, which turned out to be the best experience I could hope for. Living and breathing brewing right across from the campus and with easy access to the teaching brewery was huge for my development as a brewer.

One major takeaway if you do decide to get a formal brewing education - take every opportunity to volunteer that you can. I spent 3x as many days in the brewery as some classmates because I was willing to do whatever work at whatever time. I made connections with other industry professionals. and was able to get a stellar reference closer to graduation. Make sure the people in charge know who you are, and what you are capable of.

Before I even graduated I was hired on to be "Brewmaster" at a startup brewery. They were doing contract brewing in the area and I was able to "supervise" the process while in school. Looking back it's laughable, really. How could a fresh grad with no other experience be a Brewmaster supervising some other production brewer, in their brewhouse, on their equipment?

Once I graduated I moved to the town the brewery was to be located in, while construction was underway (and behind schedule, as is tradition) and this is where I got my first taste of what it really means to be a young brewer at a startup.

Spoiler alert - it's not all that fun.

We were still contracting from the brewery down by the college while construction was underway. Most of my week was spent with back and forth van trips on the 401 to help package, label, load and then deliver beer in Toronto on the drive home. Lets just say that 16 hour days would be putting it lightly at this stage.

When not helping with that contracting operation we were doing sales, waiting on contractors, doing demolitions, hosting events, repairing relationships, waiting on contractors some more, dealing with "unique personalities" and just overall running in circles.

There were some highlights though, I did get to develop some recipes that went on to sell very well in a few Toronto BBQ restaurants. The recipe was developed for them as a private label and then later adapted for our use at the brewery. It's a great feeling to see people take a sip of your product, enjoy it and order another. Especially when you've made 3000L of it

I didn't last long at this company, just over a year. The extreme long days, the lack of actual brewing and a conflict of personalities caused me to start looking for the next job. When an opportunity came up in the city my girlfriend (now wife) was living in I took it.

Lesson I (thought I) learned: Do just as much research and interviewing of your employer as they do of you.

The next job I took was for a brewery in a similar position to the first, albeit with better funding and location. I came on just in time to develop the core recipes, but too late to influence equipment purchases (which would soon become a pain point).

At first this job was everything I had hoped the other would be. More recipe development, faster buildout, more immediate feedback from the community. The equipment that had been selected was from some cheap overseas manufacturer, and SEVERELY oversized for the facility, but how bad could that be, really?

Well the answer is - quite bad. We were brewing in a glorified shoebox in a small strip mall style building with no room for expansion on either side. The brewhouse took up 25% of the floor space, 4 giant fermenters and 2 brite beer tanks took up the rest of the wall and a massive rotary head bottle filler took up the entire center of the floor.

A note on the bottler - This thing was huge, imagine a machine built off plans drawn up in the 80s, manufactured overseas and made to bottle hundreds of bottles per hour. It never worked. The electronics were bad and the mechanical bits constantly broke. Despite bringing in a packaging expert who had taught the course at college, we had to get rid of it. This was a point of contention with one of the founders as he had been the one to choose the equipment for this brewery and he had no clue what he was doing.

We replaced it with a Cask SAMS machine, which was a huge relief at the time. Despite the bad rep Cask gets with some brewers I never had any issues that weren't easily solvable and their support team were great.

Despite these issues the first year went great. We won a gold medal and new brewery of the year at our provincial brewing competition. I was able to hire a good friend from college as second brewer, and trained someone local to help with cellaring who has now gone on to do some pretty cool things in his career.

However, it was not meant to be. A combination of equipment issues and production expectations led to some clashes between myself and one of the owners. I got a call while on the weekend while visiting friends in Buffalo and was let go over the phone.

I won't claim to be 100% faultless in any of these exchanges. These were learning experiences for me and the companies I worked for. However, I still believe there is a right and wrong way to treat people and how all of this went down left a bad taste in my mouth. It's around this point that I started really wondering if brewing was for me long term (3 years out of college, 5 years into working as a brewer).

Lesson I (really did) learn: Businesses with multiple partners that have no defined roles but all believe they are in charge can be a nightmare. When interviewing for a startup brewery ask the question of them "Who is in charge of what, who will I report to, who has the final say on decisions?"

Fortunately a few weeks before this went down I had been contacted by another local brewery asking if I would be interested in coming on as a brewer. I was able to reach back out to them and accept the position, this time as a production brewer with non of the management responsibilities. This turned out to be a blessing.

I was able to learn and refine my skills at a fantastic local brewery. We won many awards in my first year there and I finally felt that I was growing as a professional and was able to focus on what I loved most - Brewing!

Alas, after just over a year the head brewer left to start his own brewery and I found myself once again in the lead position. Fortunately this brewery had been around for a few years and already had clearly defined processes, sales and management.

Thanks to this it wasn't too difficult to step into the lead role and here I got some experience with scheduling a fully booked production schedule, several staff members and a major brewery upgrade. Things continued to move along at a steady pace and we continued to win medals locally, nationally and internationally. I also had the opportunity to travel to some awards shows and conferences, which was a fun experience.

While working for this brewery I also got to take part in hiring staff, training them and developing new standard operating procedures to dial things in across the company. I found that I really enjoyed training people and teaching them about brewing. Writing SOPs, not as much

After a few years at the company I was ready to move on, the company was entering a phase of growth that I was not as capable of managing and I felt that my interests lay in running smaller operations where I could be more hands on. At the same time, my girlfriend had become my fiancée and we were planning a wedding and also looking to move closer to my family. I had at this point been living 5-7 hours away from my family for close to 8 years and was starting to feel homesick.

An opportunity presented itself to go back to the first brewery I had ever worked for, which was now under new management, and help them relaunch. While this opportunity was interesting the real selling feature for me was that it is located only a few hours from my hometown, making visits home MUCH easier. We planned to move there for a year, get the brewery re-launched and then continue down the highway to my hometown.

Lesson learned: Spend time really evaluating what you want to do, there are many paths in the industry and many areas where you can add value. Management isn't always the best choice, and fast growth breweries come with their own challenges.

So, it's now 6 years into brewing and I'm right back where I started my career. The brewery had not fared well in the interim, equipment was failing, fermenters looked like they hadn't been cleaned in YEARS and the reputation of the company was in the sewer. I probably should have passed on the job, as the battle was more "up a sheer cliff face" than "up hill". But we thought it would only be for a year, a quick fix up and then on to the end goal.

We were wrong.

COVID hit and we were into lockdown. Everything slowed to a crawl and there was no real way to visit my family, or look for work in another province.

Work at the brewery progressed, however. I was able to fix most of the equipment, clean up the tanks, re-design some beers and launch a few new ones. Slowly our reputation started to get better and people were interested in the beer again. It was interesting to be a part of a re-launch as opposed to a launch. I learned a lot about product development and project management while figuring out how to get everything going again.

Unfortunately the COVID stressors were too much, and we had several periods of prolonged downtime. It was at this point that I finally decided that I needed to move on from brewing. Even in the best of times working for a small brewery comes with uncertainty, and now my wife (we managed to have our wedding the summer before COVID really shut it all down) was pregnant. I knew if I were to be the kind of husband and father I wanted to be that things needed to change.

Lesson learned: I used to believe that it was all important to work your passion job. I quickly figured out that's a great way to lose your passion. Sometimes it is more important to have a stable career, with growth potential and regular income that allows you to do the things you love.

I started studying IT in my spare time. Now, I've never been a good student, in fact I'd say I'm categorically bad at sitting down and focusing on any classwork, even when I was studying brewing. But this time I had a real need, and a real goal.

My wife found a job posting for the local hospital who was hiring for a contract position to replace and upgrade computers across the two local hospital sites. I applied, with little real qualification and somehow got an interview - They later told me it was because of my brewing history, they were so intrigued by it that they said they "just had to meet me".

Brewing saves the day once again!

I was offered the position and I gave my notice at the brewery. This marked the end of my journey (for now) as a professional brewer. From Brewing Pro back to Average Joe, the circle was complete.

This is where I'll end my update (unless anyone wants to know what it's like to walk around a hospital replacing computers, and later get promoted to helpdesk, and even later to transition to a work from home job for a tech startup as a customer support manager / project manager / operations / anything under the sun).

It's been interesting to write this all out, I haven't sat down and really thought about my whole brewing journey at once. I'm now happily living in my hometown with my wife and daughter, surrounded by family and friends. I look forward to returning to homebrewing as I get more time, and exploring some new local breweries.

I'm open to questions, so feel free to ask!

 

[Sammy86]

Awesome story man and great lessons for those younger home brewers out there thinking about going pro.

One lesson I would like add to your already great list is to take these chances in your 20's. Going follow a dream and work hard for it...if it works out for you great, if not its not too late to start over and get yourself settled.

Again, great story!

 

[EricR]

Awesome story man and great lessons for those younger home brewers out there thinking about going pro.

One lesson I would like add to your already great list is to take these chances in your 20's. Going follow a dream and work hard for it...if it works out for you great, if not its not too late to start over and get yourself settled.

Again, great story!

Thanks Sammy, I definitely agree. The journey was well worth it. I learned skills and met people that will stay with me the rest of my life. Glad I did it when young, and it may translate into something more in the future. There are so many ways to be involved in the world of great beer these days!

 

[HopChef]

From another former pro, this is the best synopsis of the challenges inherent in the brewing industry, and your story is all too common, unfortunately. There are a lot of amazing and brilliant people and a lot of very challenging people, like all industries, but somehow it hurts more in craft. It's supposed to be a community of passionate people doing something creative and fun. And for the most part it is exactly that. But it hurts so badly to lose or have to let go of something you were sure was your purpose. Kudos to you for sticking it out for so long. And congrats on your family! It's the best clarifying agent.

I'll second the do it when you're young idea. As well as finding the part of the industry that fits you best. There are tons of ways to be in the craft brewing business that aren't slinging kegs or killing your soul.

 

[Homebrew Harry]

...to Average Joe! 10 (almost) year update.

I haven't been on this site in a long, long time. To be honest I didn't do a lot of homebrewing while I was brewing professionally. The daily routine of waking up and running a brewing business until it was time to sleep kind of took the thrill of the homebrew out of it. I came across a HBT email recently and thought it would be neat to provide a LONG overdue update.

So it's been almost 10 years since I first started my brewing journey. What a wild trip it has been.

A lot has happened in the decade since I first started to document my trip into professional brewing, and I intend to be open and honest about it all. While I won't divulge company names specifically here, I will happily talk about the timeline of my career and the high (and low)lights of it all.

Some people may be able to figure out where I was working, and I'd ask them to keep it to themselves for everyone's privacy.

I'll lead off by saying that I am no longer involved in the industry as a professional brewer. 2021 was my last year wearing brew boots as a full time employee, but I do stay involved in the community and occasionally do some consulting. I guess it's back to average Joe for me.

The last year of brewing college was a blur. Some changes in personal circumstance found me living with classmates, which turned out to be the best experience I could hope for. Living and breathing brewing right across from the campus and with easy access to the teaching brewery was huge for my development as a brewer.

One major takeaway if you do decide to get a formal brewing education - take every opportunity to volunteer that you can. I spent 3x as many days in the brewery as some classmates because I was willing to do whatever work at whatever time. I made connections with other industry professionals. and was able to get a stellar reference closer to graduation. Make sure the people in charge know who you are, and what you are capable of.

Before I even graduated I was hired on to be "Brewmaster" at a startup brewery. They were doing contract brewing in the area and I was able to "supervise" the process while in school. Looking back it's laughable, really. How could a fresh grad with no other experience be a Brewmaster supervising some other production brewer, in their brewhouse, on their equipment?

Once I graduated I moved to the town the brewery was to be located in, while construction was underway (and behind schedule, as is tradition) and this is where I got my first taste of what it really means to be a young brewer at a startup.

Spoiler alert - it's not all that fun.

We were still contracting from the brewery down by the college while construction was underway. Most of my week was spent with back and forth van trips on the 401 to help package, label, load and then deliver beer in Toronto on the drive home. Lets just say that 16 hour days would be putting it lightly at this stage.

When not helping with that contracting operation we were doing sales, waiting on contractors, doing demolitions, hosting events, repairing relationships, waiting on contractors some more, dealing with "unique personalities" and just overall running in circles.

There were some highlights though, I did get to develop some recipes that went on to sell very well in a few Toronto BBQ restaurants. The recipe was developed for them as a private label and then later adapted for our use at the brewery. It's a great feeling to see people take a sip of your product, enjoy it and order another. Especially when you've made 3000L of it

I didn't last long at this company, just over a year. The extreme long days, the lack of actual brewing and a conflict of personalities caused me to start looking for the next job. When an opportunity came up in the city my girlfriend (now wife) was living in I took it.

Lesson I (thought I) learned: Do just as much research and interviewing of your employer as they do of you.

The next job I took was for a brewery in a similar position to the first, albeit with better funding and location. I came on just in time to develop the core recipes, but too late to influence equipment purchases (which would soon become a pain point).

At first this job was everything I had hoped the other would be. More recipe development, faster buildout, more immediate feedback from the community. The equipment that had been selected was from some cheap overseas manufacturer, and SEVERELY oversized for the facility, but how bad could that be, really?

Well the answer is - quite bad. We were brewing in a glorified shoebox in a small strip mall style building with no room for expansion on either side. The brewhouse took up 25% of the floor space, 4 giant fermenters and 2 brite beer tanks took up the rest of the wall and a massive rotary head bottle filler took up the entire center of the floor.

A note on the bottler - This thing was huge, imagine a machine built off plans drawn up in the 80s, manufactured overseas and made to bottle hundreds of bottles per hour. It never worked. The electronics were bad and the mechanical bits constantly broke. Despite bringing in a packaging expert who had taught the course at college, we had to get rid of it. This was a point of contention with one of the founders as he had been the one to choose the equipment for this brewery and he had no clue what he was doing.

We replaced it with a Cask SAMS machine, which was a huge relief at the time. Despite the bad rep Cask gets with some brewers I never had any issues that weren't easily solvable and their support team were great.

Despite these issues the first year went great. We won a gold medal and new brewery of the year at our provincial brewing competition. I was able to hire a good friend from college as second brewer, and trained someone local to help with cellaring who has now gone on to do some pretty cool things in his career.

However, it was not meant to be. A combination of equipment issues and production expectations led to some clashes between myself and one of the owners. I got a call while on the weekend while visiting friends in Buffalo and was let go over the phone.

I won't claim to be 100% faultless in any of these exchanges. These were learning experiences for me and the companies I worked for. However, I still believe there is a right and wrong way to treat people and how all of this went down left a bad taste in my mouth. It's around this point that I started really wondering if brewing was for me long term (3 years out of college, 5 years into working as a brewer).

Lesson I (really did) learn: Businesses with multiple partners that have no defined roles but all believe they are in charge can be a nightmare. When interviewing for a startup brewery ask the question of them "Who is in charge of what, who will I report to, who has the final say on decisions?"

Fortunately a few weeks before this went down I had been contacted by another local brewery asking if I would be interested in coming on as a brewer. I was able to reach back out to them and accept the position, this time as a production brewer with non of the management responsibilities. This turned out to be a blessing.

I was able to learn and refine my skills at a fantastic local brewery. We won many awards in my first year there and I finally felt that I was growing as a professional and was able to focus on what I loved most - Brewing!

Alas, after just over a year the head brewer left to start his own brewery and I found myself once again in the lead position. Fortunately this brewery had been around for a few years and already had clearly defined processes, sales and management.

Thanks to this it wasn't too difficult to step into the lead role and here I got some experience with scheduling a fully booked production schedule, several staff members and a major brewery upgrade. Things continued to move along at a steady pace and we continued to win medals locally, nationally and internationally. I also had the opportunity to travel to some awards shows and conferences, which was a fun experience.

While working for this brewery I also got to take part in hiring staff, training them and developing new standard operating procedures to dial things in across the company. I found that I really enjoyed training people and teaching them about brewing. Writing SOPs, not as much

After a few years at the company I was ready to move on, the company was entering a phase of growth that I was not as capable of managing and I felt that my interests lay in running smaller operations where I could be more hands on. At the same time, my girlfriend had become my fiancée and we were planning a wedding and also looking to move closer to my family. I had at this point been living 5-7 hours away from my family for close to 8 years and was starting to feel homesick.

An opportunity presented itself to go back to the first brewery I had ever worked for, which was now under new management, and help them relaunch. While this opportunity was interesting the real selling feature for me was that it is located only a few hours from my hometown, making visits home MUCH easier. We planned to move there for a year, get the brewery re-launched and then continue down the highway to my hometown.

Lesson learned: Spend time really evaluating what you want to do, there are many paths in the industry and many areas where you can add value. Management isn't always the best choice, and fast growth breweries come with their own challenges.

So, it's now 6 years into brewing and I'm right back where I started my career. The brewery had not fared well in the interim, equipment was failing, fermenters looked like they hadn't been cleaned in YEARS and the reputation of the company was in the sewer. I probably should have passed on the job, as the battle was more "up a sheer cliff face" than "up hill". But we thought it would only be for a year, a quick fix up and then on to the end goal.

We were wrong.

COVID hit and we were into lockdown. Everything slowed to a crawl and there was no real way to visit my family, or look for work in another province.

Work at the brewery progressed, however. I was able to fix most of the equipment, clean up the tanks, re-design some beers and launch a few new ones. Slowly our reputation started to get better and people were interested in the beer again. It was interesting to be a part of a re-launch as opposed to a launch. I learned a lot about product development and project management while figuring out how to get everything going again.

Unfortunately the COVID stressors were too much, and we had several periods of prolonged downtime. It was at this point that I finally decided that I needed to move on from brewing. Even in the best of times working for a small brewery comes with uncertainty, and now my wife (we managed to have our wedding the summer before COVID really shut it all down) was pregnant. I knew if I were to be the kind of husband and father I wanted to be that things needed to change.

Lesson learned: I used to believe that it was all important to work your passion job. I quickly figured out that's a great way to lose your passion. Sometimes it is more important to have a stable career, with growth potential and regular income that allows you to do the things you love.

I started studying IT in my spare time. Now, I've never been a good student, in fact I'd say I'm categorically bad at sitting down and focusing on any classwork, even when I was studying brewing. But this time I had a real need, and a real goal.

My wife found a job posting for the local hospital who was hiring for a contract position to replace and upgrade computers across the two local hospital sites. I applied, with little real qualification and somehow got an interview - They later told me it was because of my brewing history, they were so intrigued by it that they said they "just had to meet me".

Brewing saves the day once again!

I was offered the position and I gave my notice at the brewery. This marked the end of my journey (for now) as a professional brewer. From Brewing Pro back to Average Joe, the circle was complete.

This is where I'll end my update (unless anyone wants to know what it's like to walk around a hospital replacing computers, and later get promoted to helpdesk, and even later to transition to a work from home job for a tech startup as a customer support manager / project manager / operations / anything under the sun).

It's been interesting to write this all out, I haven't sat down and really thought about my whole brewing journey at once. I'm now happily living in my hometown with my wife and daughter, surrounded by family and friends. I look forward to returning to homebrewing as I get more time, and exploring some new local breweries.

I'm open to questions, so feel free to ask!

Pics or it didn't happen !
Just kidding you. That's cool you came back after all this time. Even though it didn't turn out to be your dream career, at least you lived it and found out for yourself. Great post. No loose ends left in this thread.