What Is The Master Brewing Program?

So how does someone become a brewer? Well there are many ways, but one is to become certified by the Institute of Brewing & Distilling. These guys are based out of London and since 1886 they've made it their goal to educate brewers and, more recently, distillers. So, the first week of June I will sit for three exams on sequential days. The first is on Materials & Wort, the second is on Yeast & Beer, and the third is on Packaging & Process. Each one is 4 hours long and composed of 6 essays from within their designated subject matter. All in all it is pretty intimidating but I'm not too worried about it since my professors just gave me a bunch of books that should sum everything up.

The check I had to write on Monday to pay for tuition hurts a little bit less when somebody hands you a stack of books like this. For example, that book in the bottom left of the photo is only printed in Germany. From time to time a used copy pops up on eBay for about $250 but sometimes you can't even find it in the states. We all get excited for different reasons right?

I'll be learning about all of the aspects of brewing over the next 5 months. Each week follows the same pattern.

Monday Morning: Review of past weeks material

Monday Afternoon: Exam

Tuesday and Wednesday: Brewing and Malting

Thursday: Engineering and Packaging

Friday Morning: TA session

Friday Afternoon: Sensory session

Since this is the first week, we are sticking to the basics. Mostly catered lunches, story telling, tours, beer drinking, and slideshows...with a smattering of basic chemistry, biochemistry, and engineering review. I've met most of our instructors and they seem like pretty good guys. Here's a video of Dr. Charles Bamforth (we call him Charlie...his request) who is the head of the program:

Yesterday, we got an extensive tour of Sudwerk, the brewery in which our classes are held. For you brewery nerds, they operate a 15 bbl copper clad German made (c. 1980's) two vessel brewhouse and a 60 bbl US made (c. 1994) stainless steel three vessel brewhouse. They have both cylindroconical fermenters and open fermenters. Sudwerk's portfolio is mostly classical German beers. So they brew lots of lagers but they have a hefeweizen as well. Currently they are broadening their horizons and have started a more American series of production beers and a barrel program. All three of the brewers at Sudwerk went to the Davis program in the past and they're real good guys. I shared a few beers with them after class the first day. Sudwerk has an interesting past, as many breweries do, but I won't get into that now. Partially because I'm not exactly sure if I've got the full story yet.

On weekends we have the opportunity to brew on Sudwerks 75L pilot system. They provide all the ingredients, White Labs provides whatever yeast we need, and we take the wort home to ferment it. There happens to be a kegerator in the back of our classroom so we are encouraged to bring some of the beer in to test it out in class.

Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to say this evening. At the end of class (sometime between 3:00 and 4:00) we are encouraged to stay and enjoy a beer with our classmates. It's a good time to meet the other folks in the class, brainstorm the next homebrewing session, review what we covered in class, or...very rarely...talk about something other than brewing.