Definitely. However, homebrewing and commercial brewing are, as I understand it, very different animals. Some commercial experience, even as a guy just moving bags and hoses around, would prove that you have actually been in the environment you claim to want to work in and you know what it's like -- but you still want to do it.
Medical schools want applicants to have worked in a hospital, or at least to have "shadowed" a real doctor many times before they apply to med school. A lot of people think that they want to be doctors, but if someone has seen what a doctor actually does and still wants to do it, then they are that much more likely to stick with it and therefore are more worthy of the medical school's limited spaces.
I can't speak to experience in the fermented beverage industry, but to the medical school, I can tell you that is exactly the way it is. Your homebrewing proves that you have the interest and knowledge about beer, so that might help you get your entry-level job, but from there you have to prove yourself on a commercial scale, I'd imagine.