Day 34: Aspiring Brewer(s) #3

Here is the final installment of my "tales of the aspiring brewers" This one came from a couple, Steph and Tim, who sound like they are truly going to go far in this industry...

Hi! I love your blog! Thought I'd respond to your request for stories about people who want to "go pro."

My husband Tim and I are both currently engineers. He's a mechanical engineer and I'm a software engineer. Neither of us like doing this *at all*. We've been homebrewers for about 3 years now, and are totally obsessed. We brew about once a week (though sometimes we do skip a week).

Our goal is to open a brewpub sometime within the next 10 years (we're only 25 right now, so we've got some time). Tim will be the head brewer, and I'll be sort of running the show for the rest of the restaurant, while continuing to brew pilot batches with Tim.

To prepare for this massive undertaking, we're of course writing a business plan, and just sort of hashing out ideas for it. We plan to go to brewing school within the next couple years, and are hoping to get some volunteer experience at a local brewery. Oh yeah, and we brew *a lot*. We're constantly working on perfecting our recipes for our future brewpub.

So, why do we want to do this? Well, we both want to own our own business for starters. But it's mostly because we just really want to brew beer every single day of our lives. It's our passion, and it's the reason we get out of bed every morning, spend 8 hours at a boring, unfulfilling job, then come home to attend to our various fermenters. We can't wait to make brewing our career!

If you're interested, I'm a blogger as well. My blog is called brew.cook.pair.joy (I'm also really into food). Take care, and keep having fun brewing!

Update: Yesterday afternoon, Tim and I received our acceptance letters to the American Brewers Guild! We'll be starting the Intensive Brewing Science & Engineering program in January 2011. We'll graduate in July 2011, after spending a week at a brewery in Sacramento gaining some practical experience! We're extremely excited to attend brewing school, can't wait until 2011!

Congrats on the acceptance to both of you!!!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 33: Aspiring Brewer #2

Here is another wonderful, whimsical tale of a young man and his endeavors to enter the craft brewing world... in Philly!

My name is Andrew Riggar and I am an avid homebrewer and a passionate beer enthusiast. Currently I'm chasing my dream of becoming a professional brewer and to ultimately launch my own craft brewery. For the last two months, my dream has been sort of a wild goose chase. I just graduated college from Temple University in Philly and am unemployed- more time to homebrew! However, now that I've gotten school out of the way I can focus on what really matters to me: applying to UC-Davis Professional Brewers Certification program. Fortunately I satisfied the bulk of my prerequisite courses at Temple, but was one shy; I need to take Organic chem. So it's back to school for one class in the fall. Once I finish this course, then a major step will have been taken thus letting me finally send in my application!

I want to become a pro-brewer for too many reasons... the more the merrier, right? Said simply; I love craft beer, I love brewing it, and I love learning about it... hell, I even like the cleaning/sanitizing! Each batch of beer that I brew is a product of what I've learned, what I've thought about, and how dedicated I can be. Having such a lovable and thoroughly enjoyable hobby has been what's made me realize that it's my dream. And as you are well aware of, having a dream is a special thing. I've always known that I'm not the desk job type so discovering a dream has been very motivational for me.

What I'm up to now is a whole heck of a lot of homebrewing, reading, and preparation. The nice thing about brewing this summer is that it's in preparation for a regional contest at the end of August. I plan on having about 12-14 entries! I've been reading basically everything I can about brewing and the beer industry. I just finished Sam Calagione's book Brewing Up a Business and now I'm onto Beer School by the guys from Brooklyn Brewery. Not to mention all the articles and such on Beeradvocate.com (my user name is ajr24 fyi). Reading about other commercial ventures is just as important to me as the technical and brewing stuff.

ALSO, once I'm done writing this e-mail I'm going to a local brewpub (Rock Bottom... it's a chain) to confirm my "play date" with their brewmaster tomorrow. I'm extremely excited to see/feel hands-on the transition from homebrewing to industrial brewing. From reading your blog, I actually feel tons more comfortable with how some smaller scale brewhouses work... well your blog has desensitized me to some terminology. But tomorrow will be my very first experience. I can't wait! Tours of breweries are great, but actually getting to work in one will be all the more valuable.

The amount of integrity and the will to help others out in this industry will never cease to amaze me.

Once I graduate from UC-Davis I would love to contribute to the diverse beer scene in Philadelphia. Currently Philly is experiencing a huge revitalization of its rich beer past. Being a part of that is what I'd love to do. It's the city that made me the beer lover that I am and I'm grateful for it. I've been toying with the idea of creating a Philadelphia Hop Estate in which local brewpubs/breweries can grow/harvest hops- most likely outside of the city. Land outside Philly is pretty cheap at the moment so... I think it's doable.

Here is a quick followup to the story... The Rock Bottom brew date didn't actually work out : ( Andrew is maintaining contact with the brewmaster and working on setting up another day!

Comments? Thoughts? Questions? What are you drinking right now?

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 32: Aspiring Brewer #1

The following story was sent to me last week from a good friend of mine. He is a very intelligent and driven individual, I know that he is going to go far someday. Here we go:

"I thought I'd write a little about my path towards becoming a professional brewer even though it is just beginning. When I was a sophomore in college at the University of Wisconsin, my mom thought it would be fun to give me a basic home-brewing kit for Christmas. It was essentially a fermentation bucket, a bottling bucket, a racking cane, some airlocks, and some tubing. I quickly brewed up my first batch and let it sit for a month after fermentation. When I opened it up and shared it with my roommates, I was suddenly the most popular guy around. It was fantastic. Since then, I have read every book on brewing I could get my hands on, bought more elaborate equipment, made far more complex beers, and entertained the idea of becoming a brewer as a profession.

During the time I was practicing home-brewing, I gained major respect and love for craft beer. After having some Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA it was settled, I wanted to be a professional brewer. Since I am a film major, I didn't have any real marketable brewing-related education so I decided to take an online Siebel course on brewing. It was great. I sat down, worked for hours on a resume, and sent it to about 10 Wisconsin breweries in search for a summer apprenticeship. Even after calling the breweries for a follow up, I was still getting no response, until finally I got a call from a small brewpub in the Dells who wanted me to come in for an interview for a summer assistant brewer position. The interview went well, but unfortunately I didn't get the job.

I ended up realizing my dreams of being an apprentice brewer for the summer were dashed so I enrolled in summer school to finish off my remaining 9 credits. In mid-September I start the Siebel Master Brewers course. The class starts with one and a half months of theory in Chicago then I'm shipped off to Munich to study brewing practice for another month and a half. I then have a break until June 2010 when I go back to Munich for the 6-week Advanced Applied Brewing Techniques course. During those weeks, I get to work on every step of the brewing process and I get to brew my own beer from conception of the recipe through the packaging and consuming of the product.

I can't be more excited for this coming year, and I hope that this education will help me to find a position in the craft beer industry."

Let's have a discussion! Comments? Questions?

Day 31: THIS IS BEERFEST!!!

The life of a brewer is damn fun! Really really damn fun!

Should I start with the Bitterroot Beer Festival or my day today? Let's go backwards in time!!!

I'm drinking a DogFishHead World Wide Stout and writing in my blog... feeling great!
I ate some dinner with Kelly at the brewery... chili cheese waffle fries and some Hellroaring ESB
I weighed out the "all-natural" ingredients for a quadruple batch of TJ's Old Fashioned Root Beer
I ran with Steve to the compost facility to dump our week old spent grains... smelly!!! (I really hope the farmers come and pick up the next load)
I cleaned 21 half barrel kegs and 2 sixth barrel kegs... right when I finished and dumped my cleaning solution I found 5 more dirties downstairs... whoops and damnit
I ate a hot dog and some carrots for lunch
I showed up for work at 1 o'clock
I spent the morning WHITE WATER RAFTING down the Gallatin River! Such a great time! The rapids are pretty weak in most parts of the river this time of year, but that was okay because we had TJ, Steve and Vicky's 6 year old daughter with us on the river. We didn't want her falling out of the boat now! I also got to plan a trip near the end of August... here are the details: we are running a ~20 mile stretch of Beartrap Canyon, Class 4 and 5 rapids near the bottom, world class brown trout fly fishing near the top, oh yeah and we can bring beer! Who could ask for more in a day?

Now onto the Bitterroot Beer Festival! Kelly, Steve, TJ and I pulled out from Big Sky at 8:04 AM on Saturday morning. We ventured about 4 hours west and north through Missoula, MT to Hamilton, MT for the festival. On the way we stopped off at Kettle House Brewery (they make a delic Scotch Style Ale called Coldsmoke!) Tim from Kettle House showed us his new facility which is located in a restored train station. It was beautiful! I am definately jealous of parts of their setup, but from what we heard he for sure has his own set of difficulties in his process. No brewery works perfectly!

We arrived at the festival "late" or so we thought. We were asked to show up at 12:30... that would have been a huge waste of time! The festival started at 3:00 PM, we showed up at 2:30 and finished our setup in 17 minutes flat. There was somewhere around 15 breweries with over 40 beers there. We were in a tent in the middle of a blocked off street. At first the festival started out slow, but by the end of the evening I saw wristband #2000 floating around... it was packed!!!

Beer festivals are probably my favorite part of working in this industry. The main reason for this is that the people who show up at the festivals are very very open to trying beers they normally wouldn't try. Before serving our beer, people usually ask things like:

"What is your lightest beer?"
"Do you have (bud, miller, coors...)?"
"I've never had that style before, will I like it?"
"What is your best beer?"

These people obviously don't have much experience with craft beer. Usually after they try our beer, 99% of the time they say "Wow, that is so good! I never expected that!" I can witness the enlightenment of newly converted craft beer drinkers! Some of the other breweries brought silly "crowd pleasing" beers that are light and fruity and unappetizing (to me). They miss out on this opportunity! Who has fun serving beer like that? Your customer doesn't learn anything knew and you certainly miss out on the experience of helping them learn more! We brought our Lone Peak IPA and our Hopfest '09 Brown Ale, not exactly "comfortable" beers for most of the beer drinkers in the world. We flaunted the fact that we love hops, and in my opinion we were rewarded greatly for it! As the day went on we saw more and more returning customers because our beer was simply "more yummy" than all the other beer at the festival!

Here are some things that I learned while at this festival:

1) Don't drink your own brewery's beer, you drink it all the damn time, go try other beer and compliment the brewer (its free anyway!)
2) Have some swag to give away with your brewery's name on it so the drunk people can remember the delicious beer they drank
3) Bring business cards, it is networking heaven
4) If you see someone standing in front of your booth looking lost, be friendly and gesture them over, give them a beer sample, they will love you
5) If at the end of the festival your boss says "Boobs for beer" and people start lifting their shirts for pints... I didn't learn anything here except that this works!
6) BRING A TOOLBOX, things always break!

The end of the beer festival was quite a shit-show, this is becoming a trend... I get to go to another festival this weekend, if it also turns into a shitshow then my hypothesis will be confirmed and I will explain why this happens in detail.

Here is a snapshot that Kelly took during the festival, it rained on us just a little bit (don't worry the beer drinkers stayed!)


Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 30: I've got a case of the fridays...

Day 29: My Favorite Style of Beer!

My favorite style of beer is... Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatmeal Stout!!!

This is a picture of filling the VERY FIRST KEG of Lone Peak Bourbon Barrel Aged Hippy Highway Oatmeal Stout! It was a busy and exciting day at the brewery. Any day that starts with a pint of bourbon stout has to be... am I right?

Why was I drinking a pint of this stuff in the morning you ask? Because I could? Well yes, that is part of it! The other reason is that Steve and I could not bare the thought of wasting all the yummy beer that was leftover in our filter and lines after we were done kegging. We did what any respectable brewers would do and pulled out two pint glasses and slowly captured all the "waste" beer.

The rest of the day was very hectic. While cleaning tanks, brewing Lone Peak IPA, and finishing TJ's Old Fashioned Rootbeer, we also transferred yeast, dry hopped the pale ale, and worked on carbonating a different batch of IPA. This was all before 3 o'clock, I might add. At three Steve and I headed up the mountain to install a root beer system as fast as we could, and then back down the mountain to set up a beer tent for music in the park (a weekly local music event), and clean out the mash tun, wort lines, and kettle!

I am exhausted sauce. Thanks to all of you that have e-mailed me your beer story so far. I am still looking for more! Here is a picture Kelly and I took while we were at Yellowstone last weekend (I love buffalo!)


Oh yeah, and a photo of Yellowstone Lake, the most beautiful place in the world!!!


Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 28: Tinker Toys

What a day!!! It was 7:40 in the AM, I turned on my cell phone after its nighttime sleep, here is the text message I got: "Rafting today, bring Kelly to the brewery, see you at 8." Kelly and I have been hearing that the brewery staff was going to take a day off and go rafting down the rapids of the Gallatin River since the first day I stepped into the brewery. I would estimate that the trip has been tenatively planned at least 5 times since then. We have waited patiently, watching the river reach its peak (above 3500 cfm) and now is down to below 2000 cfm. The rapids are shallow and weak now. Nonetheless, we were excited to find out this morning that today was finally our rafting day!

NOPE!

Our group was stood up by our guide. No rafting today : ( Steve and I ended up back at the brewery at 9:15 AM to get a start on our day (of tinkering with our equipment) about an hour later than we usually would.... A new trip is planned for Monday though, cross your fingers!

Our goal today was to transfer 20 bbl of Lone Peak IPA from FV7 into the new brite tank (BT1). After quickly finishing the glycol (chilling) lines to the dimple jackets on the tank, we had to inspect the passified surface on the inside of the tank, and outfit the rest of the parts to prepare it for holding beer. Let me spare you all the gorey details, this process took about 3 hours and involved me inside the tank (sweating my ass off) scrubbing some scungy spots; fixing and rigging up a carbonating stone, fashioning a blank for a 2" opening out of a ball valve and some elbow grease, and lots of tank rinsing (and repeating of course!) Lots of tinkering!

We started transferring into the tank at about 2:00 PM. We had no idea what to expect for how long the transfer would take, and no "full" line to shoot for! The transfer took about 4 hours, it probably could have gone faster, but we didn't want to push our luck by pulling beer to fast and risking gunking up our "shit catcher." Consequently there was a lot of waiting to "see what happens." At about 6:00 PM the beer from the fermenter got so gummy with entrained yeast and dry hop residue we stopped the flow of beer. Tomorrow we will keg the IPA and find out what yield we got (I'm hoping for 39.5 kegs!). I will also have the opportunity to start cleaning FV7, my favorite! Below is a picture of the sight glass on the tank while it is filling for the very first time! Also visible is 1/2 of the tiny doorway that I had to use to climb into the brite tank while scrubbing it today.


Because we "wasted" most of our day tinkering with the tank, near the end of the day it was a scramble to finish all the of the other tasks we had planned. (I say wasted not because it actually was a waste, but just because it feels like one making such little progress all day) I got to harvest yeast from FV6 (Headplant Pale Ale) on my own! This was great for me because just last week I watched Steve harvest from another beer, and took notes in my notebook. Without any more guidance or practice I was able to do this task all on my own, just based on my notes! Here is a picture of the yeast harvest:


I also was fortunate enough to mill in the next batch of Lone Peak IPA that we are starting to brew tomorrow! This is the end of my day. Kelly showed up and we had a few beers in the taproom and now I am home, writing to you!

So far I have recieved two very insightful and interesting letters from you aspiring brewers out there! If you need some catching up, on Day 26 I asked for you, the readers of A Brewer's Journey, to write in to BeerTwinkie@gmail.com with your story about becoming a pro-brewer. I'm hoping to receive many more of these before I post my favorite of the stories in this blog. For those of you that have already e-mailed me, I am working on responding to you personally, but there are only so many hours in a day! Hopefully this weekend I will be all caught up. Thanks to all of you!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal