West Coast Journey: Storm Brewing

Following our visit to tiny Bridge Brewery in North Vancouver, we decided to quit the suburbs and head right into Vancouver itself. We only had a few hours, and traffic in Vancouver varies between bad and impossible, so we were happy to discover four breweries clustered within a three-block radius. As it turns out, they may be close geographically, but location is all that they have in common.

Brewery or motorbike repairs?

We started with Storm Brewing. In stark contrast to the shiny new suburban nano-brewery Bridge, Storm is an 18-year-old inner city brewery located in a gritty industrial area. The small single story brick building looked like it might house a tool & die shop, or perhaps a Harley-Davidson repair shop.

As I walked from the bright sunlight into the shadowy interior and wended my way around piles of spare parts, racks of tools and large machinery that seemed to have been bodged together, I realized that I was right — this was a Harley-Davidson repair shop. And the biker dude with bleached spiked hair in a purple t-shirt and leather pants, chains hanging around his neck was obviously the owner. Then my eyes adjusted to the dim light — no, wait, my mistake, the place was a brewery, and the biker dude was actually a brewery dude.

Semi-skeletal tap handles would look good in a Mad Max movie.

I am not kidding about the ambience. It sort of looked like a cross between a welding shop and a set for the latest zombie apocalypse movie, heightened by the presence many post-apocalyptic tap handles, as well as the steam rising from the mash tun. (I was lucky enough to visit on a Wednesday, which is brew day at Storm.)

I introduced myself and discovered that I was talking to James Walton, founder, owner, chief mechanic, brewmaster and sole employee of Storm. (At various times, James has had an assistant; however, at the moment, it’s just James.)

He had at one time been involved in the pharmaceutical industry, but soon realized that he was much more interested in his homebrewing, and decided to start up his own brewery. Instead of buying brewery equipment, James taught himself to weld and constructed his own. (I sensed a bit of the rebel in James –  okay, a lot of the rebel.) As a result, some of his equipment is, well… unique.

Lower part of grain hydrator, featuring a series of cascading steps

His brewhouse features the first ground level mash/lauter tun I have ever seen — yes, it sits right on the floor like a giant hot tub. The grain hydrator, which wets the grain with warm water before it falls into the mash tun, is also an interesting design, featuring a series of “steps” or “rungs” through which the grain cascades on the way to the mash tun.

Over the years, James has rebuilt, upgraded and redesigned the brewhouse. Its current capacity is 32 hectolitres, which has to make it one of the larger craft breweries in Vancouver, and a very substantial size for a one-man operation.

He offered me a sample of his unfiltered Hurricane IPA, and I have to confess, given that it is not the shiniest brewery I have been in, I mentally resigned myself to an okay sort of beer. However, I lifted the cup to my lips and — WHAM! Flavour exploded in my mouth. Wow. I love northwest IPAs, and have tasted and savoured a lot of them, but Hurricane instantly stormed its way into my Top 10.

James Walton, powerful warlock, casting spells over his 32-hL ground-level mash/lauter tun

Then I realized it. I had mistaken James for a biker dude, but he was actually a powerful warlock, standing in the dim light of his cavern, casting his mighty arcane spells over the steam rising from the mash tun. This explained everything. (Or perhaps it was simply the IPA casting its potent 7% spell over me.)

When James first started, there were not very many breweries in Vancouver, and he believed they were brewing a lot of uninteresting beer. He also strongly felt that filtering beer significantly reduced and changed the flavour of the beer. He set out to change both the uninteresting part as well as attitudes towards unfiltered beer. In 1995, his first beer, an unfiltered alt named Red Sky, thundered on to the scene and opened a lot of eyes to the possibilities of both unfiltered beer and brewing that pushed the envelope.

(He stopped brewing the alt many years ago, but has just undertaken a collaboration with nearby Parallel 49 Brewing to recreate the recipe as part of Vancouver’s annual Craft Beer Week in June.)

Over the years, James has brewed everything from a porter to a cherry lambic, always unfiltered. Besides Hurricane IPA, his current lineup includes a Scotch ale, a north-German style pilsner, a strong (8%) stout, and a huge (11%) Flanders sour red. Don’t bother looking in liquor stores for Storm beers — you are going to have to travel to Vancouver and search for the beers on tap at about 30 establishments. Trust me, the trip will be worth it.

Handmade equipment, unfiltered beer on tap only, huge 32-hL system manned by a single brewing magician — Storm is perhaps the most unique brewery I have visited.

(Addendum: After I published my blog about Bridge Brewing of North Vancouver, a reader pointed out that there is another Bridge Brewing on the East Coast of Canada, in Halifax. By coincidence, I discovered that there is also another Storm Brewing on the East Coast, in Newfoundland.)

West Coast Journey: Bridge Brewing

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Vancouver craft beer scene is exploding.

This just demands some personal exploration, so a few days after driving westward across Vancouver Island to visit Tofino Brewing, Elaine and I travelled in the other direction, taking the eastbound ferry from the Island to Vancouver and booking a room at a B&B in the city of North Vancouver.

View of Vancouver from North Van

(The city of Vancouver proper is separated from North Vancouver — “North Van” to locals — by a piece of the ocean, Burrard Inlet. To reach Vancouver from the North Shore, you must cross the inlet via one of two long bridges. Try to avoid doing this during rush hour unless you enjoy sitting in a motionless car. But I digress…)

I am by nature drawn to nano-breweries. Beer doesn’t have a long shelf-life at the best of times; centuries ago, before refrigeration and railways made transportation of beer possible, you drank beer that was made within a few miles of your home. For household consumption, wives were responsible for brewing the ale served with every meal. For a social evening out, you went down to your local tavern and drank the beer made right there. Beer was local, unfiltered and meant to be drunk fresh. Every brewery was a nano-brewery.

Of course there are advantages to refrigeration and modern transportation, and I would never dream of giving up the ability to head down to my local liquor store and buy German, British and Australian beer. However, to me, nano-breweries and their strong connection to the local population are a pleasant reminder of simpler times.

Since we were staying in North Van, it made sense to visit a nearby nano-brewery on the North Shore, the brand-spankin’ new Bridge Brewing.

Bridge Brewing: small, bright, modern, a little hard to find.

It’s pretty obvious where the name came from–the brewery is just down the road from the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge (one of those two aforementioned bridges from traffic hell). That doesn’t automatically make the brewery easy to find, however: although it’s in a nice, new modern commercial building, that structure is tucked behind another nice, new modern commercial building. It took a few minutes of exploration and head-scratching before we finally discovered it.

Although we arrived outside of the brewery’s normal hours, the door was open and we were lucky enough to catch Director of Consumption Leigh Stratton, who was busy loading kegs into her car for delivery to a local bar. Leigh and her husband Jason started up Bridge Brewing only nine months ago as Vancouver’s first nano-brewery.

Many (most?) craft breweries are started by home brewers aspiring to join the big leagues. In contrast, although both Jason and Leigh enjoyed craft beer, neither had any background in home brewing. Instead, they took the unusual step of bringing in a consultant to teach them how to make beer. Leigh and Jason then took on a partner with no brewing experience and trained him to be the brewer.

Everything in one room. (Two older fermenters are hidden behind the two new FVs.)

Like Tofino Brewing, Bridge fits everything into one room — their brewhouse,  fermenters, and a small sampling bar are all shoehorned into just 930 square feet of space.

The sampling bar features a dedicated growler filler. (When you fill a growler by simply pouring beer into it, you add air as the beer swirls and splashes around in the bottle. This is bad bad bad –  oxygen is a beer killer and reduces the effective life of the growler to a day or two at the most. A growler filler evacuates the air inside the growler and replaces it with beer-friendly CO2, then gently adds the beer, forcing the CO2 out as the growler fills. With much less oxygen in the beer, the shelf life of the growler is greatly extended.)

It being a sampling bar, Leigh poured me a sample of Bridge’s North Shore Pale Ale, which I enjoyed as she took me on a tour. That basically involved standing in the middle of the room and turning around as she described their operation.

Nano-brewhouse: two 2-hL mash/lauter tuns (smaller vessels), two kettles, all sitting on a propane-fired stove.

Each of their 4-hectolitre (400-litre) batches is made by mashing into two 200-litre mash/lauter tuns sitting on direct-fire propane burners. The wort is then transferred to two kettles, also direct-fired, then transferred to one of their four fermenters. (They started with two 8-hL fermenters, each capable of holding a double batch; however, high demand immediately called for an expansion of volume, and they quickly added a 16-hL and a 24-hL FV, capable of holding a quadruple- and sextuple-batch respectively.)

With the increase in fermentation space, Bridge expects to produce 800 hL by the end of their first 12 months. That may sound minuscule, but actually represents 200 batches of beer in their first year, a respectable number for any start-up brewery.

Since this is the Pacific Northwest, it’s not surprising that Bridge’s main beer, North Shore, is a 5.5% abv northwest-style pale ale. The nose is nicely citrussy, with floral hints, the body medium, with a pleasant malt & caramel taste. Although it possesses only 27 IBUs–fairly moderate for this part of the world–that’s enough to impart a pleasingly crisp and dry finish. All in all, a very good beer to have in the fridge. Bridge packages some of this in 650 mL bottles for sale in a few liquor stores, and some in kegs for a few bars, but a lot of it is sold to locals who bring in growlers to be refilled.

They are also about to add Hopilano IPA to their year-round label stable — again, almost a required product for this part of the world. (The word “Hopilano” is wordplay on the nearby Capilano River.) Bridge also makes a rotating series of seasonal beers — this summer will feature a kölsch.

Like several other West Coast breweries we toured, Bridge does not filter their beers. While this probably shortens the beer’s shelf-life a bit, the upside is the retention of more flavour, aroma and protein.

Bridge also prides itself on its eco-friendly processes. The brewery does not have a hot liquor tank that constantly keeps water hot for brewing and cleaning; instead they rely on a tankless water heater to flash-heat cold water, instantly producing hot water on an as-needed basis. Almost all waste products and packaging are recycled, composted or reused, even to the point of washing and reusing growler caps. About the only items that end up in the garbage are foil hop bags.

Bridge is obviously putting a lot of work into connecting with the local community. They have a modern website, and their Twitter feed (@bridgebrewcrew) reads more like a conversation with the neighbours than a promotional tool. A couple of days after we visited, they sponsored their first annual North Shore 10K Growler, a 10,000-metre run that started and finished at the brewery. However, it was not your ordinary 10K: each participant who ran the entire distance carrying two growlers of water — that’s almost 5 kilos (10 lbs) of extra weight hanging at the end of your arms — won two free growlers of pale ale each week for a month.

(That is a very generous offer by a tiny brewery. Twenty-four runners successfully took up this challenge — at just over 15 L of free beer per person, that is a community freebie of 360 L of beer, almost an entire batch. On top of this, I’m sure there were a few free pints consumed at the brewery following the race as well.)

With the strong demand for their product, a small eco-footprint and a good local presence, Bridge Brewing seems to be another well-thought-out business plan. I will be very interested in watching their growth over the next couple of years.

West Coast Journey: Tofino Brewing

As I mentioned in my previous post, just a couple of days after finishing my Brewmaster exams, family business took me to British Columbia for a couple of weeks. In retrospect, the timing was not perfect–I flew out of Toronto just a few days before the Ontario Brewing Awards, and left B.C. just a few days before the Canadian Brewing Awards in Victoria. However, on the plus side, once my family commitments were completed, I had some time to explore some of the craft breweries on the West Coast.

Nurtured in the Northwest craft beer movement of the 1980s, B.C. craft brewers have always been about five years ahead of Ontario in terms of consumer attitude and marketplace penetration. So if you think the craft beer scene is burgeoning in Ontario, you need to visit B.C., where the craft beer scene is exploding. This year alone, nine new breweries and brewpubs are scheduled to open in Metropolitan Vancouver, bringing the city’s total to 20. And new breweries are popping up around the province as well.

I decided to start my journey of exploration by driving out to Tofino Brewing on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Tofino is one of a handful of small villages that cling to the harsh mountainous western coast of Vancouver Island. With nothing between it and Japan except several thousand kilometres of Pacific Ocean, Tofino is lashed by fierce storms in the winter; even summer days are usually accompanied by a daily blanket of morning mist, rain and cool winds. Fifty or sixty years ago, there was only a tiny fishing village here, connected to the populated east coast of the Island by a bone-shaking, white-knuckled, 6-hour drive over a tortuous gravel road clinging to sheer cliff faces.

Long Beach: 20 km of hard sand and big waves

Then in the 1960s, hippie surfers discovered the big ocean waves endlessly rolling onto Long Beach, a 20-km stretch of hard tidal sand just outside Tofino. The Clayquot Sound old-growth forest controversy of the 1980s, pitting loggers against the nascent eco-movement, brought attention–and even more visitors–to this part of the world. The gravel road was paved and improved, cutting the 6-hour drive to about 90 minutes. Now Tofino is a busy tourist town offering eco-adventures via kayaks, floatplanes, and whale-watching boats. A new generation of surfers has arrived, and like their snowboarding ilk at Whistler and Banff, they eke out a living waiting tables and doing odd-jobs between surfing sessions.

The big door is open: C’mon in!

Tofino Brewery is located in a section of an industrial building just outside of town. Like several other small breweries we visited in B.C., if the big delivery door was shut, the brewery was closed. If it was open, come on in! As luck would have it, the brewery was open, and when I introduced myself, I was given a quick tour–not quick in the sense that they were eager to get rid of me, but quick because it is a pretty compact set-up.

I confess that, given the young average age of the locals, and the laid-back lifestyle of a population more interested in rippin’ the primo rollers around nearby Incendiary Rock than in getting a science degree, I half-expected to see the brewing dudes at Tofino Brewing standing around a 50-litre pot, stirring the mash with a piece of driftwood.

The mill tower (and motorcycle stand). Bags of grain are carried upstairs and poured into the two-roller mill. Milled grain slides into large funnel where it is pre-hydrated as it falls into mash tun.

However, what I saw instead was a clean, professional state-of-the-art brewhouse. The single room contains the sampling bar/retail operation, the grain tower holding a two-roller mill (whimsically topped by an ancient motorbike frame), the brewhouse, and fermenters.

(A confession: As my fellow Brewmaster students know, I am usually an avid note-taker. I distinctly remember taking notes during my visit to Tofino Brewing. And yet, perhaps a legacy of the several samples of beer I tasted, those notes–which included the size of the brewhouse, the name of my guide and various other pertinent details–cannot be found. On the plus side, my wife Elaine volunteered from this point forward to be my note-taker and blog co-author during brewery visits.)

The brewery was founded a couple of years ago by three friends who were tired of financing their surfing habit with arduous odd jobs around town. Having between them various business degrees (but no brewing experience), they put together a business plan for a local brewery, and convinced brewmaster David Woodward of Whistler Brew House to move to Tofino.

The brewhouse has a mash/lauter tun of perhaps 10 hectolitres (due to my lack of notes, I’m guessing at capacity based on my photos), and I seem to remember my guide mentioning that they could push capacity to a typical knock-out of 13 hectolitres of wort.

(L to R): Electrically heated mash/lauter tun, kettle, whirlpool

Tofino has a shortage of fresh water–although a lot of melted snow comes off nearby mountains, most of it ends up in the ocean well before it has a chance to reach the town. Even in this wet climate, the large number of tourists puts a huge strain on the water system each summer. For that reason, the brewery vessls are electrically heated rather than steam-fired. (My guide did allow that this added a certain flavour of caramelization to their Tuff Session Pale Ale, and that cleaning the elements after every batch was a pain.) Water is also saved by recycling warm heat exchanger water into the hot liquor tank to be used in the next batch of beer. (Niagara College’s Teaching Brewery also uses the same water-saving method.)

Tofino Brewery does not filter their beer; for that reason, rather than having a combined kettle/whirpool, they have a separate kettle, and a dedicated whirlpool to remove as much trub as possible. (Many small breweries combine the kettle and whirlpool in order to save money on capital expenses–however, the inevitable design compromises means the kettle doesn’t heat as efficiently, and the whirlpool doesn’t remove trub as efficiently.)

Fermenter farm. Smallest FV at far end was one of originals. Largest on the right is the newest.

From the whirlpool, the wort flows through the heat exchanger to one of eight fermenters. The brewery started with three FVs–one horizontal and two cylindrical-conicals–each capable of handling a single batch. They have since invested in several double batch cylindrical conicals, as well as one capable of handling a triple batch (or perhaps it was a quad batch). The horizontal fermenter has been converted into their hot liquor tank.

The brewery initially didn’t have enough room (or the money) for a bottling line, so the original business plan envisioned direct sales at the brewery via refillable growlers–consumers would buy a growler, then bring it back to the brewery to be refilled. Apparently the recycling aspect of that plan struck a strong resonant chord in this eco-friendly community: the brewery originally bought 300 growlers, thinking that would last them a month–those sold out in less than a week. They ordered another 600–those were gone in another week. Local demand for Tofino beer was–and continues to be–overwhelming. In the 30 minutes I was there on a Saturday mid-afternoon, an endless stream of casually-dressed locals arrived to have a growler (or two) filled.

Demand being strong, when another unit of their industrial building became available, the brewery quickly moved in, turning part of the space into a cooler capable of holding dozens of kegs for delivery to local restaurants. The remainder of the new space gave them the room they needed for a 6-head Meheen bottle filler. Although this is probably capable of filling more than thirty 650-mL bottles a minute, the small table-top bottle labeller really slows the process down, since each bottle has to be individually hand-inserted and removed.

The open-air lounge. Casual dress encouraged.

The tour finished, samples were quickly offered at the in-house bar, and gratefully accepted by this thirsty traveller. (Hence the lost notes.) Tofino’s flagship beers are a fairly mainstream blonde, a nice English-style pale ale (with the aforementioned caramel notes), and a snappy northwest-style IPA–de rigeur for this part of the world. They also had a coffee porter bottled–another clever addition to the lineup, since good strong coffee is a huge part of the West Coast lifestyle–but alas, none was on tap. Curiously, you can’t buy a single 650 mL bottle at the brewery–the minimum purchase is four bottles, which is more than my poor suitcase would hold for the flight home (unless I discarded all my clothes, a concept with which I briefly toyed). In any case, I left without a bottle of the coffee porter, but I did buy a logo t-shirt, since I do not have enough t-shirts with brewery logos.

The last phrase of the previous sentence is a complete lie.

Locals love the growlers

In a nutshell, despite the added expense of having ingredients shipped from mainland to the Island, and then shipped to the far side of the Island, Tofino Brewery seems to be a rollicking success, buoyed by the strong support–and thirst–of the local population. At a glance, the brewery seems to be brewing close to capacity, and it will be interesting to see if this results in a further expansion–perhaps a larger brewhouse or more fermenters.

Well-made local beer, made in tune with local sensibilities. Now that was a well-thought-out business plan!

Day 600: A look back… and a look forward

Well, there it is: Six hundred days since my first day of Brewmaster classes. Hopefully I learned how to make good beer, and more importantly, that I learned how to do it safely and consistently. I’ve definitely met a lot of great people in the local brewing scene, as well as several people in ancillary industries. And my fellow graduates should form the core of a stronger craft brewing industry over the next few years–many have already started work in breweries from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.

But let’s be realistic: As good as the program was, there’s still room for improvement.

If I were the Mayor of Beer, here’s what I would do:

1. Enlarge the Teaching Brewery. The current space is too small by half. It’s hard to learn about the proper way to do one thing when you are dodging around five or six other people doing other things. (Apparently plans are being drawn up for a larger Teaching Brewery.)
2. More teaching in the Teaching Brewery. Sometimes I felt that we were learning how to brew by a process of osmosis rather than by structured lessons in proper procedure.
3. More lab work (and more lab work tied to the Teaching Brewery). We need more lab work in the formal chemistry and microbiology labs to reinforce lecture material. But we also need more lab work tied to the Teaching Brewery. Small teams of 1st- and 2nd-year students should be taking daily samples from the Teaching Brewery for analysis in the lab, testing for yeast viability, IBUs, water composition, microbiological content, etc. More lab work and attention to Quality Assurance is what will take craft brewing to the next level; Brewmaster students not only need to learn about it, but need to live it constantly during the course.
4. Small business, not large corporation.  With courses like Human Resources and Business Ethics, the current focus of the Brewmaster program seems to be the large corporate workplace. These classes should be replaced by courses that will help us set up and run small businesses. An introductory accounting class would seem to be ideal. There is also an Operations Management class already offered  in other courses that includes “customer service, forecasting techniques, procurement, supply management and just-in-time strategies, aggregate planning, inventory management, materials requirements planning, scheduling techniques, quality management and control techniques, and productivity analysis and improvement.” 
5. Better central coordination. There does not seem to be any hand on the tiller at the moment. None of the teachers knows what is being taught in other classes, so duplication of material is rife. For instance, we learn about gas laws in Packaging, then learn about gas laws again in Filtration, Carbonation & Finishing. Someone has to take charge, meet with the teachers–or even bring the teachers together–and negotiate some sort of coordinated approach to the program materials.
6. (While we are mentioning Packaging and FCF, wouldn’t it be more more logical to have FCF first, followed by Packaging, since that is what happens in real life?)
7. Real world applications. Given that Brewmaster students will be brewing professionally as soon as they graduate–actually many students were brewing professionally before they graduated–more of the Brewmaster program should be linked to the outside world.
   • As I have already suggested, our final project beers should have to be entered into a real brewing competition versus professional brewers.
   • Brewmaster students should be leaving the program as fully qualified beer _________s, whether that be BJCP judge, Ciccerone, Prud’homme or one of several other official designations.
   • Likewise, Brewmaster students should have to judge at several professional competitions as part of the program.
   • Every student should have to belong to the Master Brewers Association of Canada (MBAC), and every student should be required to go to each of the MBAC quarterly technical seminars.
8. Yeast propagation and cropping. Right now, a fresh batch of yeast is used for each brew in the Teaching Brewery. However  out in the real world, yeast is cropped from one batch and used in the next batch. Part of the problem is the small size of the Teaching Brewery (see Point #1), but there has to be some way to incorporate proper yeast management.
9. DE filtration. Likewise, filtration using diatomaceous earth (DE) is industry standard, but we do not have a DE filtration system at the college. Yes, DE presents a possible health hazard, so don’t have any DE on site–just have the filter there so we can at least learn to set it up (minus the DE) and clean it.
10. Proper classrooms.  A Sensory course requiring a delicate sense of smell and taste being given in a science lab full of chemical smells? Again, it seems that a central coordinator should be able to stick-handle problems like this with the college administrators.
11.  More field trips to breweries. Given the number of breweries within two hours of the college, it seems unrealistic that we only had one field trip in the last month of the two year program. Seeing how breweries are set up and talking to the brewers is important.
12. Technical seminars. Bring in brewmasters to give 2-hour seminars on technical aspects of brewing: lautering issues with bigger mashes, or care and feeding of yeast in high gravity brews, for instance.
13. Make student education more important than college profit. Sales of college-made beer (and wine and food, for that matter) produce money for the college. That helps the college, obviously, but sometimes it seems that education takes a back seat to business. For instance, the dates of the very profitable Caps, Corks & Forks dinners are set without any regard to the time needed to properly design and brew beers to match to the cuisine. Again, this may be an instance where a strong central voice for the program is needed.

I’m certain that several of these concerns are already being addressed, and I am actually looking forward to coming back to the college in five years to see the improvements that will have been made in both the facilities as well as the curriculum.

So, that’s my look back. Now what? As a child of the sixties, I was raised to believe that learning is a lifelong process. So I intend to keep learning about beer, and to keep you informed about that ongoing journey through this blog. A Student of Beer I have been, a Student of Beer I shall remain.

What’s coming up?

Well, to be truthful, I haven’t actually thought that far ahead yet. My primary concern was finishing all my exams, handing in my final assignments and passing all my classes. Normally you would think that I would immediately start looking for a job. However, just a couple of days after my last exam, I had to fly out to British Columbia on family business, and I have extended that visit into a two-week vacation and an opportunity to visit as many West Coast breweries and brewpubs as possible. I’ll be writing about those breweries over the next couple of weeks.

Once I get home, yes, I’ll start looking for a job, and I’ll let you know how that goes.

And looking a bit further into the future, I will be attending a beer bloggers’ conference in Boston in late July–I will definitely be blogging about that.

Cheers!

Day 598: Reflections on 4th semester

Alrighty, it’s time to take a look back at 4th semester courses.

The Brewing Industry: This course is central to the overall program. Jason Fisher pulls no punches in laying a great big reality check on us. Want to open a brewery? Get yourself a million dollars. (Or better yet, 1½ million.)  Contract brewer, bricks & mortar brewery or brewpub–what beers should you be brewing (or not brewing)? What are your key metrics? What is your competitive edge? What are your distribution channels? Will you make any money? The only problem with this course is that we needed to hear this stuff way earlier in the program–2nd semester if possible.

Brewery Management: Mike Arnold is a highly organized hard-nosed businessman who just happens to make beer, and he passes on a lot of essential info about running a business: step-by-step instructions for how to incorporate; how to avoid expanding before you’re ready to expand; several tax-saving loopholes; whether to lease or buy; basic accounting; critical path planning; making and pitching a business plan (to real brewers and bankers). The only problem I had with this class was that Mike’s instructions for assignments were either verbal–leading to misunderstanding later on–or the written instructions were vague.

Beers Sales & Promotion: During the first half of the semester, there was too much abstract marketing theory, and not enough practical examples. For instance, instead of just talking about proper store set-up, perhaps we should also have seen photos of good and bad examples of store layouts. Ditto good branding versus bad branding, or good use of social media versus bad use of social media. Then during the second half of the semester, our major assignment was to plan tours of the Teaching Brewery during the college’s Spring Open House. However, that involved event planning, which had nothing whatsoever to do with sales and promotion. This class needs a major re-think if it is to be at all relevant to the Brewmaster program.

(Small digression: Up until this semester, we hadn’t learned anything about the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) or the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). Then during the first three weeks of the fourth semester, that’s all we heard about in all three of these classes. It was a classic case of overlapping curriculum, and again emphasized that there seems to be very little oversight or coordination of what is being taught in the Brewmaster program. But I digress…)

Specialty Brewing: This semester, our big project was to brew up our very own custom-designed beer. To my way of thinking, this was too open-ended and needed a link to reality. I would suggest that every student beer has to be entered into a professional beer competition in any category except the “Open” class–in other words, students have to choose a specific style, brew to the style, and then put it up against professional examples of the same style.

Beer Evaluation and Judging: Dan MacKinnon is a really nice guy who knows his stuff. Unfortunately, the material he was planning to teach us this semester about tasting panels, statistics and reports had already been covered by Mark Benzaquen in 2nd semester’s Sensory Evaluation. In addition, this class–which largely involved trying to detect tiny levels  of off-flavours in beer–was held in a chemistry lab; the strong chemical odours made the whole tasting exercise rather impossible.

Human Resources Management: In theory, this looks like a good bet, right? If I’m a brewmaster, I should know how to manage my staff. In practice, this course concerns management on a large scale in a corporate setting. As such, it held little if any relevance to the person who is off to work at a small brewery–which is pretty much all of us.

Overall, the final semester mainly concerned the business of brewing. As a result, the material covered was a lot drier than previous semesters. I would suggest mixing some of these courses into the other semesters so the fourth semester seems a bit more lively. This would also make the 4th semester more palatable to the student who is not planing to open his or her own brewery.

Much of the work this semester revolved around group assignments. Of course this meant that 90% of the work got done by 10% of the students. If group assignments are all necessary for these courses, then this is another reason to move some of them to other semesters.

Up next: my thoughts on the overall Brewmaster program.

 

Day 591: Final day of the program

The last day of Exam Week started with a meeting. A few weeks ago, a couple of us Brewmaster students had been asked to discuss the course curriculum with our fellow students. This morning, we brought those comments and suggestions to a meeting with Craig Youdale, the Academic Chair of the department and Jon Downing, the Teaching Brewery Brewmaster. We have already seen changes made to the first year of the course, some of which may have been due to our comments last year, so we hope that the comments and suggestions made this morning will have a similar effect on the second year of the course, and on the program overall.

The meeting ran long, so I was actually very late for my final Creative Writing class–only got there in time to hand in my  portfolio.

And then it was time for the final final exam….errr… last final exam, in Sensory Evaluation.

And that was it for the Brewmaster program.

Done. Finished. Over. Completed. There is no more. Woo-hoo!

Contrary to the title of my blog, it’s not quite 600 days since I started–due to a change in the structure of the spring semester this year, we are finishing one week earlier than originally planned… but “591 Days to Brewmastery” doesn’t have the same ring as “600 Days”, does it?

So what now for this new “brewmaster”? First–and most important–it’s time for a cold beer!

(Okay, let’s admit it–just about any time is a good time for a cold beer. But I digress…)

Over the next few days, I’ll post some reflections on second semester, and some thoughts about the Brewmaster course overall.

Day 589

Two more exams today.

First up was Sales & Promotion. Pretty straightforward mix of multiple choice, short and long answer.

Then Brewery Management–a mix of multiple choice and short answer, plus one long question that involved rounding off hectolitres of beer for purposes of excise taxation. (Long question: I hate it when you think you’ve got the proper way to solve the question figured out, then right after the exam is over, someone mentions the proper way to do the question. D’ohh!)

Brewmaster Class of 2013 and cask of grad beer

Although most of us have one exam left, a few students have to leave early in order to start new jobs, so they have already written the last exam. Yes, this was their final day. It seemed like an appropriate time to gather in front of the Teaching Brewery for a quick snapshot with Brewmaster Jon Downing and our cask of graduation beer (“The Fox Sleeps in the Barn” Niagara Peach Lambic-Style Sour Brett Ale).

The cask will be tapped this evening. Luckily for all concerned, our final exam is not until the day after tomorrow.