This past weekend I was lucky enough to brew with four talented and hilarious classmates, along with a Sudwerk Brewer and his energetic border collie.  We brewed an Americal Brown Ale on Sudwerk’s B3 Brew Sculpture.  Before brew day we were tasked with doing all of our calculations by hand.  I spent way more time than I had planned on these calculations but I’m glad I did because it really gave me a good feel for where all of the numbers come from. A couple of years ago my brother gave me a copy of Brad Simth’s Beersmith software and I’ve been using it ever since to formulate recipes.  Doing the manual calculations gave me a good idea of the equations that go in to that software and the assumptions that are made. We began by choosing a desired ABV of 5.5% and choosing our grain bill. From that we worked backwards to work out our starting gravity, weight extract required, grain weight, estimated wort colour, amount hops for desired IBU, mash volume for desired water/grist ratio, sparge water volume, temperature for strike and sparge water, pre-boil and post boil volumes, evaporation losses, etc, etc.  The great thing about this system was being able to do a step mash in order to make our β-and α-amylase enzymes happy.  We opted for a 62-67-70 deg Celcius mash at 10-40-10 minutes, respectively, in order to promote a dextrine rich malt character to our beer. We were able to hit our temps, gravity and volumes spot on, probably the first time I’ve brewed with such accuracy.  After brewing just once on this system it’s going to be difficult going back to my mish-mash homebrew system that I brought down here (but I will). I can’t wait to have a permanent place to live just so I can start building something like this.

Brew day was also a ton of fun, as they always are.  Burgers were on the grill and we sampled some more great Sudwerk beer (great German style pils).  Dr. Lewis showed up and hung out for a little while, looked over our calculations then told us he didn’t have time for this nonsense (can I say I brewed with Michael Lewis now?).  Apparently I really sound “Canadian” when I brew too; must be all the excitement.  Our beer ended up being named the Fuckin’ ‘eh Brown Ale.

Besides brew day the course is getting busier. Lots and lots of readings that I struggle to keep up with. I’m feeling fairly confident with my understanding of the material, I just need to put the time in to it (i.e. must avoid laziness).  I’m realizing I’m fortunate to come from an engineering-oriented background, especially one that involves hydraulics.  My previous career choices had nothing to do with brewing but somehow they seem to complement it, at least so far.  I guess I lucked out on that.

We had our first sensory science session on Friday with Sue Langstaff. She is very talented at what she does, which is explain sensory science and try to help people describe what they are tasting.  For me this is going to be one of the most difficult parts of the course.  I have no previous training in this area and as Sue explained it’s not in our nature to be able to describe tastes and smells.  We are really good at describing things we see and hear, but taste and smell is processed in a different part of the brain.  What you taste and smell is really just a perception, it’s how your brain interprets the molecules entering your face and your brain can play tricks on you.  A bunch of us practiced tasting again tonight after class (below; such a hard life) with a fellow student who has been through BJCP training.  There were about eight of us standing around tasting the same beers and at one side of the circle we’d come up with totally different tasting notes than the people at the other side of the circle.  I think it’s really going to come down to getting to know certain terms to describe the tastes and aroma of different aspects of the beer (malt, hops, mouthfeel, etc.) and then going through them in your mind and deciding if you’re picking any of them up.  Anyway I’m a long way away from feeling confident describing what I ‘m tasting.  Good thing there are several weeks of training to come, along with many more great beers to be tasted.

My life has pretty much been all school right now.  I’ve been to my apartment and the brewery and back and forth and not much else.  I’m living the dream.