What do you do at brewing school?

The past week has been incredibly busy, as have the past four. While many people would assume that going to brewing school would be more like an advanced course in drinking, it has been far from that. Most of my nights have been spent studying. The demand I have put on myself to do well in school has certainly come at a cost. I haven't been able to explore Chicago as I would have liked. However, I can always come back to visit!

So what have I been spending all my time learning about? Well it hasn't just been brewing. The coursework is split up into 3 sections:

1) Raw Materials and Wort Production
2) Beer Production and Quality Control
3) Packaging and Process Technology

These three sections are two weeks a piece. The week consists of lectures from 9-5 with field trips and sensory analysis at least once a week or so. All of the lectures are done by industry experts from Siebel or other brewing related organizations.

The first week was all about raw materials and taught by a representative from Rahr malting. We started at raw barley in the field and went all the way through the base malting process: steeping, germination, kilning and storage. We went on a field trip to Briess Malting in which we learned about specialty malts which come from the same place as base malts but are kilned at different temperatures which give them their unique flavor, aroma and mouthfeel. We also covered brewing water (it is the largest percentage of raw material in beer), hops, and did a little work with adjuncts.

The second week was on the conversion of those raw materials into wort in the brewhouse. Milling to wort cooling, we covered everything on what is considered the "hot side" of the brewing process. This process includes milling, mashing, lautering, boiling and wort cooling. Most of the brewery tours you go on place emphasis on the brewhouse (where the "hot side" of brewing takes place) as it is the most impressive part of the brewing process from an aesthetic point of view.

The third week we started on the "cold side" of brewing which is where we actually make beer. We covered everything yeast in this week from applicable microbiology including yeast morphology, yeast metabolism, and yeast nutrition to genetic characteristics of yeast. "Yeast week" was probably the most difficult of the class because the information is so expansive.

The fourth week we covered filtration, spoilage organisms, beer haze, foam, and aging characteristics. This was also quite dense from a biochemical standpoint. The major takeaway is that oxygen is bad for beer. Make sure you buy local and buy fresh!

The fifth week was focused on the packaging of beer. It is safe to say that we covered anything and everything to do with the packaging of beer. Bottling, canning, labeling, kegging, we covered it all. Packaging isn't really brewing but we have to put our beer into a container and we should be as concerned with that container and how the beer gets into it as we are with the ingredients that go into our beer.

The upcoming week we are going to be covering topics like pumps, construction materials (stainless steel etc), production systems, brewery design, and tools in the brewery. We will finish off the week by having a food/beer pairing class taught by Randy Mosher!

That sums up the six weeks of theoretical class work that we have gone through. I hope it didn't bore you to death! All of the theory will be put into practice at Doemen's Academy in Munich where we will be working on a miniaturized production brewery. All the studying hours will be rewarded with some practical experience very soon!

On average I have been studying around 3-4 hours a night to prepare for our weekly tests on Friday morning. Combined with class it comes out to roughly 12 hours of school per day which can get taxing after a couple of weeks. Before I came, I was advised that the first six weeks would be a lot of studying and that has certainly been the case.

Location:Chicago, IL