I realize I haven’t written here since before Christmas and therefore since I’ve started at R&B. It’s been an eventful 9 months to say the least. So what is it like starting at a brewery where you will ultimately be in charge of every aspect of the beer that is produced there? Well, it started slowly. The former head brewer Liam Jackson and brewery manager Patrick Moore had brought the brewery from a place that needed some serious attention to a functioning brewery, although several upgrades were still required. Upon my arrival there had luckily already been the installation of a new Pro-Chiller glycol system. The boiler had not been updated in over a decade however and was only half functioning. It would often turn off in the middle of the night leaving our brewing water cold resulting in many cancelled brew days. We were lucky to have Patrick there to take charge of the planning required to get our current boiler up and running. He also coordinated the purchase and installation of our seven new conical fermenters (a first at R&B if you can believe it). Patrick deserves a ton of credit for getting the brewery to where it is today. It’s an old brewery and equipment continues to need attention on a regular basis.

So what about the beers? When I started at the tail end of 2015 I did not bring on any abrupt changes right off the bat. I observed each brew from start to finish, got to know the brewing system, the yeast strains, our water chemistry and really dove in to getting to know the sensory aspect of each beer. I also got to know the brewers and each of their strengths. We all liked the beers but agreed we should look to introduce small changes to get them to where we thought they should be. When we first started tweaking recipes a month or so in to my time there I was able to draw on our team to produce suggestions and find out what they felt our beers needed. We brought in a new yeast strain (BRY-97) as we felt our house ale strain at the time (Wy 1332) was unpredictable, slow, produced too many esters and could throw diacetyl if we weren’t extremely careful. One of the first things we did was increase our mash temperatures in order to build body in to our core brands. Earlier we noticed our beers finishing below 2 P resulting in thin tasting beers. With the new ale strain and our new mash temps we quickly saw that our beers were finishing quickly (5 days including diacetyl rest), consistently (almost always between 2.6 and 3.2 P depending on the beer) and cleanly (I have yet to taste diacetyl from BRY-97 including all of my time at Steamworks – knock on wood ;). After those changes we tweaked the Red Devil and ESB by reducing crystal malt (from about 12% to about 5%) and adding a small amount of Victory malt. The result was a less sweet beer that still offered full malt flavor and changes that did not change the overall identity of the beers. We completely overhauled the Vancouver Special IPA as we all felt it needed a bit more sharpness and a lot more hop character. The result was a medium bodied IPA with big hop flavor and aroma. I think we did a good job of including flavours and aromas of that we all could appreciate, such as pine (Patrick’s fav), tropical fruit (Carly and Octavio’s fav), and dank (Allan and I’s fav). We layered our hops at 10 and 5 minute boil intervals, then a big shot at whirlpool and we increased our dry hopping to 5 g/L. We utilized the classic Cascade, Columbus and Chinook and added some punch with Eureka, Simcoe and Citra. It’s definitely a lot of different hops but we’re happy with the overall product. My favorite comment I’ve heard about it was “It’s like drinking flowers” (I hope they meant that in a good way).

At times it hasn’t been easy tweaking recipes that have been in place for over a decade. For example we recently changed the yeast on the Sun God kristalwiezen to produce a beer we thought was a more authentic example of the style. The beer had won some awards in the part and that made it more difficult to convince others at R&B that we should go ahead with the changes. However, we produced a few test batches and after a few months we had everyone on board. Barry was skeptical of the changes at first but now says he likes it better than ever. Note: We initially changed the yeast from German Ale (Wy 1007) to Bavarian Wheat Blend (Wy3056) and then to German Wheat (Wy 3333) and we are currently fermenting the next batch with Weihenstephan (Wy 3068). 3068 was our first choice but people thought it was too different to change it that much so quickly. Therefore a compromise was needed to get to where we wanted. The blend was subdued enough to start out the transition and we’ve been slowly tweaking to get to our goal. I am finding a lot of times with this gig you just need to go ahead and make the changes you feel are right, but it’s also important to bring people on board. We’re excited that everyone at the company are loving what we are brewing these days.

We’ve also been able to have fun with the Mount Pleasant Series of beers. The first we came out with during my time here was Allan Cukier’s brainchild of the Lavender Saison. We blended French Saison yeast with Belgian Ardennes and dosed the beer with lavender (using lavender from Happy Valley farms on Vancouver Island) on its way to bright. I have to hand it to Allan, I was not the biggest fan of the idea when he pitched it to me, but we spent a good deal of time getting our lavender addition to just the right dose. We’ve heard that people can’t pick out the lavender, and we’re ok with that because we know what it added to the beer and it was exactly what we were going for (we’ve also heard people say the lavender was really strong). The next beer we produced was a recipe I came up with for a White IPA (actually I didn’t think of it as a White IPA at first, it took Octavio pointing out that my recipe was indeed a WIPA). When I was sharing it with my brewers Carly had an idea to use pear juice concentrate we had on hand in place of dextrose and we came up with a decent quantity for our addition. We used Belgian Ardennes yeast, lots of wheat and Galaxy and Centennial hops. We fermented it in one of our old dairy tanks and dry-hopped at fermentation temps of 26 C. The result was a beer that turned out better than any of us had expected. The beer wasn’t too bitter, had a great mix of hop aroma and phenolics and produced what we can only describe as a perfect little funk to go along with it. We had this beer available for about 5 months this past year and I’m hoping to bring it back as a seasonal come spring 2017. We also produced a Vienna Lager we were all happy to have around and a kettle sour featuring Enigma hops that is extremely crushable at 6.5%.

Just recently we have finally brewed our first new core brand since I joined the brewery. With the opening of the Ale and Pizza House we felt it was finally time to bring an American Pale Ale in to the mix. The beer is called Dude Chilling Pale Ale, named after the park we often hang out in after work and named by my lovely wife Judith, who is much better at naming beers than me. We literally just launched it in our restaurant yesterday and I’m extremely happy with it. It’s nothing special but it’s what I like about American Pale Ales. Light in colour, sessionable and just the right amount of hops with a good aroma. I hope this beer takes off, mostly because I want it around, it’s my go to style for an everyday beer. The labels should be ready pretty soon and they are looking pretty dope.

Beers coming up are a double IPA that’s about 8.5% and double dry hopped with Vic Secret, Galaxy and Columbus. We’re also currently fermenting a Russian Imperial Stout that should come in at about 10.5% abv. Oh and we are relaunching our Dark Star Stout with a new recipe – we’ve toned down the roasted malt, added more chocolate malt as well as Victory. We added more calcium carbonate to our mash and fermented it to 4.2 P finishing gravity so it is much smoother that the previous recipe; our abv is unchanged at 4.6%. We’re going to nitro about half of this batch next week and should have it in the restaurant very soon.

OK, so that’s pretty much a run down on the beer front at R&B right now. There’s so much more that’s happened though. Our brewery manager Patrick has left us to start a brewery up in Prince George called Crossroads Brewery (it’s going to be a sweet-as facility with tons of room for patrons including a massive patio, and Patrick’s going to produce some kick ass beers in a market that needs it badly). I was sad to see Patrick go but it opened the door for me to take more control of the brewery. I’m now taking on the roles of Head Brewer, Brewery Manager and Production Manager at R&B and I couldn’t be happier about it. I have a direct line to our owners and General Manager who have been very receptive of our team’s ideas. As long as we keep producing great beer I feel like we will have the freedom we need to keep innovating and staying relevant in a highly competitive market.

Our restaurant (we really want to call it our tasting room but have been told that’s a no-no by the government) took a lot longer than we expected to get opened. We therefore found ourselves quite cash-strapped for quite a while. So over the past few months our brewery improvement program (aka infrastructure spending) has been effectively frozen. But with the opening of the Ale and Pizza house in late July we are now finding ourselves busier than ever (about a 90% increase in production from this time last year!) and I will soon start pushing for more upgrades. We want to begin a barrel program at the brewery and eventually I would like to get a new hot liquor tank and water filtration system. Oh and it would be spectacular to get a canning machine so we can move away from 341 ml bottles and start getting more of our beers to more people. We also desperately need a new keg washer as we are having to perform maintenance on ours more and more regularly these days.

Overall the past 9 months have been a wicked adventure. I view where we are right now as only a small step forward for our brewery but I feel we’re going in the right direction. We will continue to stride forward and need to. With my amazing brewing team we will continue to focus harder every day on the quality of our beers and dedication to producing a product that we feel passionate and excited about. Our goal is to bring the reputation of this brewery to a point where people equate R&B with quality and dedication to our craft. I realize we are not there yet, and some I’m sure will say we’re nowhere close. But as Michael Lewis told me when I was considering taking this position, to take on a role at a brewery that includes challenges is a more important task than stating at a brewery where everything is fine and dandy. I view this role as a challenge and realize I need to keep getting better in order to fully take it on. It’s a long game and it’s just getting started.

Quick question: If you were a member of a brewing team modelled after a rock band, and the band is made up of a malt player, a hops player and a yeast player (and maybe a water and specialty ingredients player in the background), what band member would you be? What instrument would you slay?

Today I have news. Christmas Eve was my last day at Steamworks. I loved that job but came across an opportunity I could not pass up. Tomorrow I start at R&B Brewing as their Head Brewer. I had just began to think I should start keeping an eye out for Head Brewer jobs when Judith pointed me to the job ad. I submitted my resume and met with the guys from Howe Sound, who just purchased R&B last spring. It felt like a great match and a great opportunity so I gave notice at Steamworks at the beginning of December.

First I want to say what an amazing time I had at Steamworks. I worked with an unimaginably talented group of brewers. I learned a hell of a lot from those guys (and gal). I wouldn’t have the confidence to make a move like this if they hadn’t welcomed me and taught me so much in such a short time. I was there only six months but it felt like I knew those guys for many years. Spending day in and day out, often early in the morning to sometimes well past midnight, I got to know them and they got to know me. I picked up so much information and knowledge from all of them and got to know them on a personal level. A can safely say these guys are my good friends and I look forward to keeping in touch for a long time to come. So thank you Julia, Scott, John, Nick and Steve, as well as all the other great people there. It was a fucking proper pleasure to work with you. I am also really glad that these guys all got to know me just as well as I got to know them. I think my personality best comes out when I am comfortable with people and we can freely bounce ideas off one another, or just ask stupid questions without the fear of the question being stupid.

Next, I want to emphasize how excited I am for R&B. The brewery has a lot of history in my neighborhood of East Van. It’s been going through a lot of changes over the past year and I only know so much about the dynamic that exists at the moment. What I do know is that everyone there seem like great people to work with, they respect each other and are dedicated to continuing to make great craft beer for this city. I will be looking to the overall team to help me do the best job I can. The few short conversations I’ve had with people (over beers of course) have given me confidence this will be a good working environment for that to happen.

There is a new tasting room opening up at the brewery and it looks like it will be very exciting. So far as I know opening could be early February 2016. The outgoing head brewer – Liam, who is moving back to Australia – has done some great work at the brewery over the past several months. He’s produced some exciting beers and worked with the Howe Sound guys to make some much needed infrastructure improvements to the brewery. His hard work is much appreciated and I am grateful to be picking things up where they stand at the moment. There are continued improvements, including new 30 hL conical fermenters, planned for the coming months that should make the place run smoother from an operational, quality and consistency standpoint.

I don’t want to write too much as I haven’t officially started the job yet. So I’ll leave it at that and I’ll have more to say after the first few weeks. All I can say is that this feels right at this time. If anything, this job will show me what I’m made of.

This blog has taken a back seat to life lately. I really haven’t written or felt the need to write in quite a while, but suddenly have the itch to share a few things. Life at Steamworks continues to be great. Lots of learning, lots of fun and lots of hours. Most of my time here has been spent in the cellar where I’ve become comfortable with the day-to-day tasks of monitoring beer, transferring beer, stabilizing beer, centrifuging and lots of cleaning. Over the last few months I’ve worked my way in to the brewhouse and have brewed several batches of Pale Ale, Pilsner, Kolsch, Heroica Red Ale, Black IPA and Blitzen Belgian Trippel. At Steamworks I’m lucky enough to work with a very talented group of brewers. We consistently taste and criticize our beer, discussing and trying ways to tweak our recipes to make our beer better. We all feel we have a long way to go, not because our beer is bad, but because there is always room for improvement. I’m lucky to work in this environment. I hear stories every once in a while from people who’ve worked in breweries where the push for better quality eventually disappears. Stories of laziness when it comes to cleaning tanks, cutting corners to save a buck, and a creeping mentality of ‘oh well, we can probably sell it anyways’. If I’ve learned anything over the past year it’s that a push for quality is paramount to the continued and future success of craft beer. Breweries are opening at an exponential rate and we’re soon going to reach a saturation point. I imagine many breweries will get burned at some point in the future. What will set the winners and losers apart is the quality of the beer. I’m not short changing the importance of marketing or business strategy, but as brewers our job is to continue to make beer better. Consumers are getting more educated and have more choice. It will be their demand for quality that will drive the market going forward.

I’m happy to report that I passed all three IBD modules and have received the Diploma in Brewing. This was no small feat as the pass rate for Module 3 (Engineering and Packaging) was by far the lowest its ever been at 23%. I’ve heard from some really talented, smart brewers who failed this last exam and I find it a bit hard to believe. I could have easily fell in to this group and I think that would have put a damper on my experiences. Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones and I’m happy about that.

So, now school is but a memory. The real work begins. Of the many areas I’ve been working on improving, one of the most important has been the sensory side of things. Judith and I recently took a beer course focused on tasting, I’ve been involved in tasting panels at Steamworks, and I continue to taste beer pretty much every day of my life (there is the odd Sunday I refrain, but not many). I’m at the tipping point where it gets difficult to enjoy a beer that is not quite right, and I find myself getting grumpy at sub-par beer selections. However, I am finding it easier to identify what I am looking for in a beer and what I don’t like. This is helping my brewing, as is discussing things with my colleagues on a daily basis. Jamie Floyd of Ninkasi Brewing told us that sensory is one of the most important things in brewing, never stop tasting beer.

Finally, I just watched Craft: The California Beer Documentary. Charlie Bamforth shared this gem on his facebook page yesterday and it provided some excellent entertainment and insight in to the beer industry in California. It was nice to see some familiar faces from my time down there in the doc as well. Most importantly it was a nice reminder of the industry we are so lucky to be a part of. I would suggest checking it out.

Speaking of how fun this industry is, another aspect I have really been enjoying is all of the events that take place. Since I returned to Canada I’ve been to beer festivals in Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler, Gibsons. We raced a keg through the forest during the Tough Keggar and I will be at a mustache contest tomorrow at Strange Fellows, Friday we will deep fry a Turkey. Brewers know how to have a good time while being passionate about what they do. I’d say so far things have been working out.

The course was done as of June 12^th. We all studied until our hands were cramped up. We gathered in a small room for three consecutive days and dumped as much knowledge as we could in to three lined notebooks. I was impressed at how good the mood was in the room before each exam, people understood that they were going to be the most difficult exams they have ever written but everyone seemed to also acknowledge that they had prepared as best they could and the rest was just putting it down. We also received an inspirational talk from Dr. Lewis. He noted that he enjoyed our class because of how much we bonded, the fact that we had a record number of women (30% of the class) and that “there are no assholes in this class”.

I felt good after each exam, I felt like I answered the questions that were asked. I know from talking to people afterwards that I forgot to put a few things down. I also ran short of time on the last exam and had to skip a few small parts of a couple of questions because of that. But overall I feel confident I did well. It’s all over now and we find out our results in September.

Life has been super busy since that time. Judith and I packed up our tiny Davis apartment in 40 C heat and hit the road to the coast of California. We stopped in Fort Bragg to camp next to the beach, there is a brewery there called North Coast and unfortunately we weren’t in town when they were open. I’ve tried a couple of their beers (Saison is great!) and I’m stoked that a friend of mine from the course just got hired as a brewer there. We continued driving up the coast of Oregon for the next few days stopping to camp at Cape Blanco State Park and Fort Stevens State Park. Along the way we stopped at Eel River, Lost Coast, Yachats Brewing and Fort George Brewing. All were decent breweries. Yachats was more of a small beer bar with a small brewery on site that served a lot of homemade fermented foods. I sampled 13 of Fort George’s beers while trying to shield them from the blazing sunshine on their patio.

From Astoria we high tailed it back to Canada up the I5. We cruised through the border with no problems and made it to our friends place in East Van where we are now crashing until we can move in to our new apartment in August. Apartment hunting was a horrible experience. We’ve moved several times in Van but this time was by far the worst in terms of what is available and the crazy cost of rent. But in the end I think we found a place we’re going to like.

I’ve been working at Steamworks now for a week and a half. We’re experiencing a heat wave and the brewery is like a sauna. I’ve been sweating constantly for 8 to 10 hours a day. Other than the heat the job is amazing so far. I’m training in the cellar now and am getting the hang of it. Hoping to be independent very shortly in the cellar and begin training in the brewhouse this summer as well. My goal at Steamworks is to get very good at my job. By this I mean I want to be able to do anything in the brewery properly, safely and efficiently. This goes for all cellar and brewhouse tasks, and many other tasks related to packaging, boiler/steam, maintenance, you name it. On top of this I want to get to know our beers as well as I can and hope to have some input to our processes, quality programs and developing new beers.

I’m turning in to more of a morning person than I’ve ever been. I’m waking up at 5:30 am before my alarm even sounds, to get in for the morning shift. This is the first time I’ve had a job where I’m excited enough for that to happen.  I think I’m going to like this job a lot. Great people, great beer, a brewery that is well established yet has lots of room to grow and develop.

It’s hard to believe the transformation is complete; the Master Brewers program is finished, I’ve written the exams and have begun my professional brewing career. So much has happened over the past 6 months to get here and I’m very happy I did it. I plan to keep in touch with the great brewers I met down in California, who now work at great breweries all over the U.S. (and Japan, Columbia and Brazil). I also plan to keep in touch with Dr. Lewis, who is a fountain of knowledge and inspires me as a professional brewer. I need also to stay familiar with all of the course material and literature I now have, and to continue to build on where I am now. I see this career as a rewarding one with a high ceiling. I am excited to see where it brings me.

It’s 5 days before the first IBD exam, the girthy part of crunch time. I’m taking a study break. A few days ago I had the crushing realization that time is running out and I need to ramp things up. Since getting back from BC I’ve been putting in some respectable hours between class, getting up at 5:30 am to work in coffee shops and an few hours at night, but I also made sure to take the odd night off to hang out with Judith and/or some fellow brewers. I knew the exam was coming but it took until a few days ago for it to really hit me. I’m not going to lie the stress level has risen a bit. But when I start to read, draw diagrams and memorize moisture contents of grain at various stages of kilning, I remember what I’m learning about. It’s beer, and that’s pretty alright.

You know, the problem about reading and studying beer is it makes you want to drink one? I want one right now but am resisting because I want to get a couple of more hours in tonight. Actually, what the hell eh. I’ve got Lemon Ninja, Fuckin eh Brown Ale or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in the fridge….. Lemon Ninja it is. When I brewed this beer a couple of months ago I dry hopped it with an ounce of Cascade and an once of Sorachi Ace. The Sorachi Ace took over and the name Lemon Ninja was born. Now it’s settled down to a pretty delightful level. If I could have clarified this beer a bit better it would be a pretty nice one.

A few random thoughts on clarification. The options are endless with what approach you want to take. Some breweries don’t do anything, maybe throw some Irish Moss in the kettle and call it a day. I am totally good with that, that’s what I’ve done with homebrewing for years. But if you want some stability, maybe use some PVPP for polyphenols, silica gel for proteins, throw in some prolyl-endo-proteinase maybe. You can filter using DE, perlite, you can membrane filter, sheet filter,cartridge filter, leaf filter, cross-flow filter. If you want every living thing out of your beer send it though a sterile filter. Tons of breweries are using centrifuges now, a really good option in my opinion. They may not remove every single particle but you can get the good unfiltered character that people talk about while still removing the vast majority of turbidity. Some breweries use centrifuges as the first step before other filtering. How bright and clear does a beer need to be? Over the last hundred years or so it’s become incredibly important to some people (large breweries), but do you care? Does it depend what you’re drinking? Is centrifuging enough? It’s on the top of my mind because I just spent an hour learning about centrifuges (check out my spiffy diagram!) and now looking at this beer and imagining how beautiful it would look if I would send it through one of these things.

+= ???

Hmmm, what else did I study today? Drawing out CIP circuits, all of the methods for various difference and descriptive sensory tests, origins and process effects of classic flavor compounds, review of all contaminating wild yeast and bacteria, lab methods of isolating/identifying cultures.

Soo, things in Davis are quickly coming to an end. It’s going to be sad to go but I am more than ready to move on to the next chapter. At this point I feel like I know as much as I’m going to get out of this class and from studying, save for memorizing some numbers and key points the examiners are going to be looking for. I am far more interested at this point in getting my ass back to Canada and starting at Steamworks, and then learning more while applying my new found knowledge. Every time I draw a diagram or write out what I would do in a typical brewery situation, I just want to get to the brewery and actually do it. I am so stoked for that to start.

It’s incredible how useful the four weeks I had on internship helped with what I’m learning. Being able to relate what’s written in text books to something you’ve seen in action is priceless in terms of being able to remember it. And having learned what I’ve learned in school and then going to the brewery brings a lot more meaning to all of the equipment we have.

So I am a bit restless, even though I am studying non-stop and at times stressed about some silly exams. Being in the brewery and away from sitting all day is going to be so refreshing. It is one major reason I made this jump. So just one more week of sitting/studying/writing, a couple weeks of travelling with my wonderful wife, and then it begins. I am so incredibly ready for that to happen.

It seems like posts are getting fewer and far between but I’d like to give an update on intern life at Steamworks and Phillips. I am pretty happy that I chose to do both of these internships because I was able to see two great and different breweries and work with lots of great people at both of them. I touched a bit on Steamworks last post; great crew, excellent and positive work environment and everyone knows everyone. I really liked the community at the brewery and even though times were busy and problems needed solving no one seemed stressed and everyone really seems to enjoy their job. My kind of place! Change is in the air at Steamworks with brewmaster Caolan heading back to Australia, I am told to start his own thing back home. I didn’t get to meet Caolan by the time I started but he did a great job designing the brewery just off of Boundary Rd and his lineup of great beers (Pils, Pale, White IPA, Jasmine IPA, Imperial Red were a few that we brewed while I was there) is still in full production with very ample brewers taking care of things. The new brewmaster, Julia, was scheduled to start but unfortunately not until after my internship ended so I did not get to meet her. She comes with tons of experience including several years looking after all aspects of brewing and production at Molson. She will bring with her a high standard of quality, consistency and efficiency that is priceless for a rapidly expanding brewery. The brewers I did get to work with were great. Lots of good ideas, experience and knowledge being shared all the time and it was really nice to feel like I could contribute to these conversations with what I had been learning in Davis. I really felt like a member of the team by the end of the two weeks. Steamworks facilities are tucked in an old tile factory/showroom building with great natural light and big square footage. They’ve got a 50 hl brewhouse, 11 or so fermenters of about 100 hl, and some conditioning and bright tanks. I was able to move around from the brewhouse to the cellar to their KHS bottling line depending on where I could help out most but I was able to spend a decent amount of time learning in all of these areas.

I moved on to Phillips in Victoria for the second internship. Phillips produces an amazing amount (both in number of varieties and amount of beer produced annually) of high quality beer. I was blown away by the amount they are able to produce on a brewhouse that produces somewhere around 30 hl per brew. They have 50 fermenters now, ranging from about 30 hl to over 200 hl and they are brewing very efficiently to fill them. They have a product development team that brews on a pilot system, a dedicated quality assurance/quality control person, a great brewing/cellar team, a fast paced packaging team as well as maintenance, folks who run the tasting room, a distiller and probably lots more that I didn’t even get to see. I was very impressed by the quality control programs and instrumentation they had at the brewery. Many of the techniques, like using PCR for microbial identification, are ahead of the game in terms of craft brewing (I think), but it makes sense when you think of how much they are producing and how quickly they are releasing new products. The brew house at Phillips was really interesting to get to see in action, it is a mash filter/press system, which we have learned about in Davis but I had never seen in person before. Having even just a tiny bit of experience on this really solidified what I had been studying about the system. A few of the other exciting things at Phillips included a CO2 recapture system, an operating distillery (where I was able to hang out with the distiller and learn more than I ever knew about distilling in about an hour and a half), and they are actually planning to do their own malting there, so I was able to at least see a large steeping tank (too bad the kiln was not installed yet, that would have been sweet to see!).

My time in Van seemed pretty quick and there were many nights of social activity with all of my friends around. My time in Vic was a little more relaxed and I was able to catch up a bit on studying which made coming back down to Davis a bit easier. I rolled in to Davis last week just in time to catch the last packaging review session and luckily made it to a micro/sensory lab on campus with Jim Brown. Tomorrow the fun starts and we start the final review sessions (first is engineering/packaging). I had a few beers with some of my classmates this weekend and that was awesome. But those nights will be pretty much nonexistent for the next 4 weeks or so until we sit the IBD exams. I’m feeling pretty good about things as they stand but definitely have lots of practice to do. Can’t wait to get to work and really can’t wait to get the exams written and over with.

Oh, one more really cool thing happened while I was gone. I was offered a brewer’s position at Steamworks and I am happy to say I have accepted it. Looks like Vancouver will once again soon be our home and I will be working at a great brewery at an exciting time. I honestly couldn’t be happier!

It’d been quite a while indeed since I’ve written a post, apologies all around! Chalk it up to being busy with all things beer. We finished up the first phase of the course, I attended the Craft Brewers Conference in Portland, and I’ve started my internship at Steamworks Brewing in Vancouver. In there were three very early morning flights (thanks Aeroplan!), a couple of nasty hang overs, very many amazing beers and meetings of even more great people.

Our graduation day (for the Professional Brewers Certificate – i.e phase one of the course) was a pretty damn good day. We gathered in the Sudwerk reception hall, drank Sudwerk’s brews, were treated to great cheese and a good meal, and then received our certificates presented by Charlie Bamforth, Michael Lewis and Steve Presley. From there we continued with the beer, spilled out in to the park to play tips (lazy man’s frisbee), carried on for greasy burgers and ended playing pool while drinking cheap pitchers of Tecate. My brain was fuzzy the next morning and reality started to set in that I had to leave Davis for Portland and Vancouver.

Monday morning rolled around and my amazing classmate Peter offered to drive me to the airport. At 5 am. We picked up another classmate who was also going to the conference and we had assumed we were both on the same flight. Problem was, we were actually leaving from different airports, so we ended up having to drive to Sacramento, then to San Francisco. We got stuck in traffic and I damn near missed my flight. Thanks to Peter’s California style race car driving I got on the plane just in time for it to roll out of the gates…then remembered I had left all my clothes at the security gate.

Meh, after getting to Portland and buying some cheap clothes to get me through the week the fun began. The first day of the conference I headed down to Eugene to tour four breweries: Vagabond Brewing, Falling Sky, Claim 52 and Oakshire Brewing. These are small breweries, I was taken aback by how small Vagabond and Claim 52 brewing are in particular. For example, Claim 52 has three one barrel brew sculpture systems and apparently they will produce up to 7 barrels of wort in one day. That is some dedication and hard work for a tiny bit of beer. The owner is a home brewer turned pro who had the will to do it and I wish them all the best. My favorite of the tour was Falling Sky brew pub. I really like how they focus on great beer and food pairing and the brew pub model is perfect for that. It really works with their small system (around 10 barrels I believe) and they can put out a large variety of different beers throughout the season to pair with whatever food they are interested in at the time.

After the tours we had the welcome reception, which was held in the stadium across from the Oregon Convention Centre. I walked in to that place and was blown away by the size of the crowd (11,000 drunken brewers!) and by the entertainment we were treated to. There were fire spinners and jugglers, there were a ton of good beers to be sampled and some good food, although quite the line up to get it. I ran in to the Sudwerk brewers and later bumped in to some brewers from Vancouver breweries including Powell Street, Four Winds, Central City and Bomber. I ended up hanging out with a bunch of these guys after the reception at a couple of different venues including Apex, which was packed with people from the conference and had absolutely great beer on tap.

The next few days I attended a bunch of technical talks on topics including colloidal stability, yeast metabolism and byproducts, dry hopping/non iso-bitterness, hop oils and also sat in on a session on how to build and open a microbrewery, and another on how to set up a QA/QC program for a small brewery. I wondered around the trade show and checked out bottling lines, hop suppliers, bottle manufacturers, flavor spiking agents for off flavours, label makers and a ton of other random but cool things related to brewing.

Each night of the conference was followed by various and multiple events around town. Lagunitas threw an amazing party held in two venues a block away from each other. It was free for all conference attendees and included as much Lagunitas as all of the brewers in Portland could ever drink. Each night I ended up meeting new people and having great conversations, all about beloved beer (at one point I remember talking to Chris White about yeast at about 2 am, how cool is that?). I am realizing I can talk about the stuff for a really long time. I guess this bodes well for my future in this industry. I ended up at Cascade Barrel House, one of my favourites, and checked out Base Camp a few blocks away, as well as Burnside Brewing. The weather was great and the patios were packed.

Sadly, Saturday morning came along too quickly and I needed to head to the airport again way too early. The shining silver lining was that I got to meet my wife in San Francisco and we walked around town all day in a city that is very alive. We saw at least two parades, two street festivals, a park filled with thousands of happy hipsters and many packed patios. Unfortunately I only got to hang out with Judith for one day before taking off again, this time up to Vancouver.

I arrived in Van starting to feel the effects of the previous week, but met up with a bunch of my great friends back here for a barbeque and some playoff hockey. My buddies hooked me up with a place to stay, a bike to ride for the next couple of weeks and some tasty Vancouver based beer. We had time to check out the new Big Rock brewery in Van, where our friend Matt is now brewing. They have some incredibly shiny and beautiful brewing equipment in that place! And I’m stoked for Matt as he is like me and just getting in to professional brewing.

I started at Steamworks and today was my third day. So far I have had a really great time there; I’ve met a ton of really good people to work with that all have each other’s backs. I’ve spent a day each in the brew house, cellar and on the packaging line. Obviously the brew house is a great place to be, every brewer dreams of being there. This is where the product is born and where the brewer has the most influence on what the finished beer will be. My one day of experience on the packaging line was super exciting and fast paced, with load popping noises and lots of trouble shooting. I have a feeling this work is for people who are good mechanically and have a lot of patience. I was particularly drawn to the magic of the caller however. Upon first impression, this seems where you get to know your beer and get a pulse on the entire brewery. I will enjoy spending many hours here in the future. Being in this kind of work environment has really made me feel like I’m making a good move getting in to brewing. I might be taking a pretty decent pay cut from my last job but I’m going to love coming to work every day and that is priceless. Free beer and ping pong after the shift help with that as well.

While I’m here I also plan to study, I just haven’t been able to find much time quite yet. Between spending the day at a great brewery and seeing a lot of great friends in Van there hasn’t been too many opportunities. But, it’s got to be done. So this weekend will be spent hitting the books. Besides, the experience over the last few days has me curious to dig deeper in to a few topics. I guess that’s the best part, I just keep getting more interested in this topic.

We are nearing the end of the first session of the MBP which comprises 11 weeks of intensive class-oriented sessions broken up in to three modules: i) raw materials to wort, ii) yeast, fermentation and beer quality, and iii) packaging and engineering. On top of this there was a significant sensory portion as well as several brewery tours and guest speakers. This will wrap up by next Friday. Also, there are a few people in the class that are enrolled in the Master Brewers Certificate Program and this will be the end of the road for them. It’s going to be a bit sad when this session ends and some people head off, but I think most of us are looking forward to a bit of a change of pace and a chance to let everything we’ve learned sink in.

Like I mentioned before the next session of the course, session 2, is a lot less formal with some people choosing to do an internship and those that stick around in Davis getting to take part in laboratory exercises with Jim Brown and Charlie Bamforth. There will also be a few more guest speakers, I think another brewery tour or two, and it will be a good time for people to study and ask questions to professors. I will be doing internships during this time so it is back to Canada for me for about a month.

The third and final session starts in mid-May about four weeks before the IBD exams and will comprise of more lectures and a little bit more focused toward the exams. The IBD exams – Institute of Brewing and Distilling – are written by 200 to 300 people every year from around the globe and are broken up in to three exams that are the same as the three modules outlined above. The IBD is a separate entity from the Master Brewers Program and UC Davis but one of the main goals is to prepare students for these exams. The other main goal being to prepare students as best as possible for a career in brewing.

So at this point I think it would be good to give my impressions of the course. The first general impression is that I have learned an absolutely incredible amount about beer, brewing science and the brewing industry in a very short amount of time. I have found the information we’ve been taught to be very relevant (I’ll get a bit more accurate reading on that when I do my internships) to brewing as a career. Even though we have been learning primarily in a classroom, we are taught very practical things that people with even a little bit of brewing experience can use to improve their skills. My impression is that I am already much more prepared for a career in brewing than I was before this program.

I have really appreciated the industry insight we’ve obtained via guest speakers. We’ve heard from lawyers, head brewers and brewmasters, brewery owners, purchasers, distributors, sales reps, suppliers and vendors. All of these people have been really forthcoming with information and have not been afraid to tell us some inside stories of things they’ve had to deal with. Some examples (without giving too much information) include a brewmaster who formerly worked at a large macrobrewery that was bought out by a massive global conglomerate gave us his insights on the company take over and why he felt he needed to move on. A supplier told us a story of working for a former company that tried to rip off an idea for a filter aid from another company and tried to get him to lie about it. A sales rep that had such a terrible experience with a distributor that it cost his company several hundred thousand dollars just to get rid of them. Also a lot of less significant but very insightful experiences were shared with us over beers. All of these speakers also gave us their contact information and I feel genuinely welcome to shoot them an email if I ever have any questions, or if I’m ever in the same area as them.

My impression is also that the MBP is a very well known program and candidates are very sought after, at least in the US and let’s face it, this is where the leading edge of brewing today is taking place. We’ve had recruiters from Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Deschutes, Hanger 24, Anchor Steam and even from Brew Dog in Scotland come to visit us and interview those in the class that are interested. Unfortunately it would be difficult for me to work down here in the US due to visa issues and I am actually really excited about returning to BC to work because I see a ton of parallels with what is going on down here, and the scene back home is exploding.

The last thing I want to talk about in terms of my impressions do not actually have to do with the course but the IBD exams that we are preparing for. We were provided a 2100 page set of revision notes from the IBD about a month and a half ago, along with a booklet of old exam questions from the last ten years or so. My impression of the exam at this point is that it is very intimidating, is full of vague questions and has a very low pass rate (especially in recent years).  My impression at this point is that a candidate could know a great deal about all aspects of brewing from raw materials to packaged product and still have a very real chance of failing the exams. In fact we’ve heard from some prominent people familiar with the exams about issues with examiners marking incredibly difficult, to the point that the person who last year won the J S Ford award (given to the person with the best overall grade on all the exams) protested by not showing up to accept the award because he didn’t believe his marks could be so low. Looking at past examiners comments, some years ago the overall pass rate was up around 65 to 70%, but has gradually and steadily declined down to a 40% pass rate in 2014.  This has some people a bit worried that they could walk away without the Diploma in Brewing certificate even though they put the effort in to it and have the knowledge required. I have to admit that this thought has crossed my mind as well. But all I can do is keep my head down and keep learning. At the end of the day, this information is to make me a better brewer, it’s not for the letters after my name. One thing is for sure, I know that these exams will be far more difficult than any exam I’ve written in undergrad or my Master’s degree programs (OK, except for quantum chemistry, that shit was ridiculous).

In terms of how well the course prepares students for the exams, we’ll have to wait and see. But for sure it takes a lot of private study on top of just attending the lectures. We’ve been told to read widely and gather different opinions on all topics. The course is simply not long enough to be able to teach you everything you need to know for the exams, but it does provide a very good base of knowledge from which to shoot out from and learn on your own.

So to recap, at this point the course has been amazing, I’ve met incredible people and learned more than I could have imagined. I am feeling very ready for work in a brewery, and very confident in my knowledge base. I am a bit intimidated by the upcoming exams, but this will keep me motivated to keep learning. Time has gone by quickly and I know when I look back on this time it will feel like a blip, but I will never forget my time here as it’s been one of the best experiences of my life. Here is a photo of our class taken at Lagunitas, lots of great brewers in here!

Lots and lots of studying. That’s what I’ve been up to since Jim Brown taught us fermentation and microbiology a couple of weeks ago. This topic in particular has been the most challenging area for a lot of us in the MBP so far. With a lot of the other topics I have found I have been able to follow the story logically and that has helped me remember things. It’s the same for fermentation, if you can follow what’s happening you can logically work your way through it and remember what the steps are and what is important to brewing. The problem is that the steps are sometimes extremely complicated biological pathways. This is particularly true for understanding yeast-derived flavor compounds. Fusel alcohols, esters, VDK’s, fatty acids, organic acids, ethanol are all produced by different metabolic pathways related to glycolysis from glucose to pyruvate. So I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week and a half going through these pathways to better understand them. I think it is finally paying off, I’m feeling much more confident about this stuff…I think. We’ll see when I get back the exam we wrote on Monday.

We are also spending a lot of time these days on contaminating organisms – wild yeast and bacteria. Beer is a fairly inhospitable environment as it has low pH, high ethanol content and the α-acids from hops also act as a disinfectant. However there are several organisms that can make a brewers life hell and we need to get to know them, where they hide, when they pop up and how to get rid of them (sometimes not possible…tear down the brewery). I find this to be particularly useful as a brewing student. As the course was described to me, it is not only about making good beer (anyone can do that), it is about knowing how to fix problems when they occur, or better yet, how to prevent them.

We had our final (official) brewery tour of the course last week and this time we hit up Lagunitas in Petaluma California. A brewery known for good times and they showed it to us. We were first treated to a couple of beers in their inviting and rustic tasting room that reminds me of my Grandpa’s basement (lots of things on the wall and lots of old furniture). The tour was focused on packaging so we headed over to their keg line and pretty quickly to the bottling line. When we got to the bottling line we stayed there for the rest of the tour, had free reign and got to check out all of their equipment. The staff were really nice and surprisingly tolerant of us running about. They even pulled a couple of bottles off of the line for us to try an “8 second old” Undercover Shutdown (I encourage you to research how that beer got its name). After the tour we sat in the scorching sun (have I mentioned it’s been summer here for at least a month) and tasted a good variety of their beers.

It’s hard to believe we only have two and a half weeks left of the first phase of the course. Next week the Pope of Foam, Charlie Bamforth is finally back from overseas and he will be teaching us about beer quality and of course, foam. I am definitely glad he will be back because he brings a certain excitement and comic relief to the class. After how intense the last couple of weeks have been in terms of material I think we will all appreciate it.

So I suppose I should mention some exciting things I have planned for the second phase of the course. This next phase is a lot less structured that the first phase, where we basically sit in front of instructors and learn. For the second phase, some students take internships and some choose to stick around for review, microbiology labs and guest speakers. I was unsure of what to do initially but I have decided to take the internship route as I need the experience and I am craving some hands on work in a brewery. I have set up two internships that I am extremely excited about. I will initially be at Steamworks in Vancouver (the Burnaby brewery) the last two weeks in April and then I will head to Victoria for two weeks at Phillips Brewing. I am super thankful to the folks at both Steamworks and Phillips for bringing me on and I hope I can contribute with some old fashioned hard work and motivation.

The week before these internships begin I will be attending the Craft Brewers Conference in Portland Oregon. I am also very excited about this opportunity and hope to meet some experienced brewers who can give me some pointers on being a successful brewer. I was hoping more people from our class would join but I think the cost of the conference is holding people back (It’s a good thing I bought my tickets before I was unemployed). I will write a bit more on what I hope to get out of the conference closer to that time, and once I attend I hope to write a good summary of what I learned.

That’s it for me for now. Tomorrow I’ll be learning about lab analysis on beer and then studying for our upcoming engineering test. We have a long weekend coming up since we don’t have sensory this week. I was planning on studying all weekend, but with the weather forecast at 28°C, I think I will join Judith on a hike at Yosemite National Park instead.