It’s been a while since I’ve written. All I can say is that time is flying by at a pace that is a bit faster than I’d like. I’ve been doing my best at balancing time between class, studying, events, brewing, time with my wife and socializing with the professors and students in the MBP. All of these things are really great (and important) but all of them take time and it’s coming at the expense of sleep and relaxation, which seems to make time in general go by too fast. I’ll try to write this blog when I can but it’s one of the things that is difficult to find the time to do. For now though I’ll try to summarize some of the things we’ve done over the past couple of weeks.

We had Dr. Jim Brown for two days last week and we were taught an incredible amount of information about yeast and fermentation. We were taught about glycolysis and other metabolic pathways that form fusel alcohols, esters and ketones (among many other things) that contribute to the flavor of beer. We went in to detail on a wide variety of yeast strains (many more than S. cerevisiae and S. pastorianus) and contaminating bacteria. We covered cell biology, DNA sequencing, a variety of yeast identification methods and plating yeast bacteria samples and how to isolate and culture different colonies. We were taught about proper cleaning techniques and what can happen when you get an infection in the brew house.  That was a ton of information to take in over two days considering this covers a good chunk of what we will need to know for the second part of the IBD exams. It would have been nice to have spent more time on this stuff but I guess they could only schedule Jim in for these two days (we’ll see him again in a couple of weeks for review). We did get a good set of handouts and I have a ton of notes from those two sessions that I will need to study…starting tomorrow morning, which is fast approaching.

I attended the MBAA winter meeting for the Northern California district last Wednesday that was hosted by Track 7 in Sacaremento. I had a really good time. We got a tour of their new facility (30 barrel system in a massive warehouse), we heard from the UC Davis Master’s degree students on some of the research they were doing. I talked to brewers from all over Nor Cal, and we were treated to many samples of great beer from their breweries. I got to hang out with our profs in a relaxed social setting which was great because they gave me thoughts on how they thought I was doing in the course, advice about internships (more on that to come later) and some pointers on ‘what to know’ for the exams.

We had Jeffers Richardson from Firestone Walker visit us on Friday and treat us to some excellent beer samples from their wild beer program that he heads up. We learned about what oak can bring to beer and, in timely fashion, learned about using wild yeasts and bacteria for producing barrel aged beers. The three samples he brought in (Sucaba, Agrestic and Concecration from his friend Vinnie at Russian River) were so complex and enjoyable I swear I felt some form of euphoria by the last sip. I am incredibly impressed by the programs they have set up and how they produce these beers. By Jeffers’ description, from what I understand, they have about 800 barrels of beer aging at any one time. From those they will ‘get to know’ those of them between 8 and 48 months old. When they go to produce a beer they will have in mind about 100 of the barrels that they might want to draw from to include in a blend that will produce the final beer. They taste the beers one by one, look over past and present notes and blend about 26 of them together, by taste, to get that year’s version of the beer that will go to market. Their wild beer program produces only about 9 batches of beer a year this way. Man, I would die for a job like that, but it would probably take me 20 years to get the sensory skill to be able to do it. The visit from Jeffers was a great reminder of just how important sensory is to being a good brewer. All of the long time pros we’ve met have emphasized that. Even some of the guys who don’t spend too much time brewing these days will spend a lot of time seriously tasting their beer. And the good ones don’t compromise on what’s acceptable.

We also toured the Anheuser Busch facility in Fairfield the other day. Impressively massive brewing vessels. Brewers brewing from a room full of computers.