The UC Davis route is the way to go for professional brew science jobs (in the US anyway). Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh, Scotland is the other top-tier option that's available in English. (Weihenstephaner outside of Munich if you are fluent in Germany is another great option.)
If you're just looking to make beer then there are plenty of other options but the placement rates aren't always great and the pay and work hours and perks for a brewer can be pretty terrible; owning and running a brewery is incredibly expensive, frought with risk, and expensive. -$1,000,000 in equipment to make $100,000 a year to continue reinvesting the profit back into the business for years upon years to maybe "hit it big" if you can get a competitive advantage.
If you're looking for the best bang-for-the-buck on the education/qualification side, I'd recommend taking the Institute of Brewing and Distillation (IBD) General Certificate exams (Brewing and optionally the packaging exam). -When you register for the exam (I think it was about 250 Euros when I took it) they email you a package of pretty fantastic PDFs for learning the basics of large brewery brewing theory. The exam and syllabus ARE slanted towards the British brewing tradition, though, so try to pickup some perspective from the German, Belgian, and modern American traditions from somewhere else. -Read the materials they send you cover-to-cover as soon as possible and then make flash cards on the learning objectives from the Sylabus document, then go through the Sylabus items and skip over any subjects that you feel comfortable with (probably a small percentage) and go back to the docs and review each section and make flash cards so that you can answer the objectives as open-ended questions in as much detail as possible. -The test is multiple choice so if you've memorized all the formulas and have learned the objective you should ROCK it and finish in record time.
After completing the General Certificate exams you should seek out a Brewery and a beer bar to volunteer at to get practical experience; be sure to explain that you've completed the General Cert exams and that you're looking for hands-on experience and for someone who is an IBD member who can "sponsor" your application for the Diploma in Brewing exam. Consider taking the Beer Steward exam from the Beer Cicerone program and the BJCP exam to further expand your beer knowledge in to serving and making beer while doing this.
Look into some short (days or weeks) and focused courses to further pad your "Beer resume" and finally pass all 3 IBD Diploma exams. (It IS possible to take all 3 together but "safer" / easier to take them one at a time spread out 6 months apart.)
-If you have to keep a normal non-beery job in all of this take your time other wise do double duty and get whatever beer industry-related job you can in the mean time that will pay your basic bills.
The IBD Cert obtained through self study, combined with practical experience is IMHO, the best way to get a professional brewery job for the least $$.
[Edit] The Siebel course is also highly rated and focuses on practical knowledge and experience, BUT good luck getting admitted and actually in the program anytime soon and get ready to have a lighter wallet for a great many years. Such an expensive course for a job that pays so poorly; BUT the placement rates from what I can see out of the Siebel program are much better than some of the new online-only shorter programs and you'd certainly have career growth opportunities through the Siebel program and you'd have more career options than just brewer (production manager), etc... (Especially if you pursue the IBD certs and want to go work for a mega brewery in a specialized area.)
The Siebel connections and "business of brewing" side of the Siebel program are, IMHO among the most valuable parts and you CAN pursue those as separate individual courses "ala cart", too.
Adam
