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!