When the program began a couple months ago, the option of doing an internship during our two week break was presented to us.  Since I have no professional brewing experience, I knew right away that I wanted and needed to do one.  In fact, I made multiple attempts to arrange an internship for myself back in November with the Stone Brewing Co. before getting the call that I was accepted into the program.  I only lived 8 miles from the brewery, which would have been very convenient.  Unfortunately, they had just hired a handful of assistant brewers and were busy training them at the time.  

Fast forward to a couple months later.  As fate would have it, Mitch Steele, the Head Brewer/Production Manager at Stone had been a student of Dr. Lewis in the Fermentation Science program a while back.  While I was diving into the first few weeks of the program, he and Dr. Lewis had been working on putting together some internships for the class. Once again the famous cliche “it’s not what you know, but who you know” has been proven to be true.  All it took was a couple emails and voila!  I’m heading there next week.  I moved 600 miles just to get an internship back home.  Oh the irony.  Regardless, I’m pretty excited to have an opportunity to learn from them.  Did I forget to mention they are going to throw in a pair of brewing boots and pay me for my time there as well?  (Don’t tell anyone, but I’d totally do it for free.)

In class this week we received a visit from Dr. David Hysert. He’s a former employee of Barth-Haas Group, one of the largest hop producers in the country. During his tenure there, he helped them with product analysis, development and the cross breeding of new hop plants to increase yield, disease/pest resistance, etc.  Calling this man a hop expert is probably a huge understatement.  He brought us samples of various alpha acid extracts, hop oils, bricks of pellets and loose whole hops.  I could probably homebrew a new batch every weekend for the next 5 years with all of the stuff he brought in.  Basically he took us through the journey of the hop plant from the dirt it grows in, to the fractionated resins and various chemical compounds that can be isolated for use in brewing.

When we discussed bitterness potential of the various alpha acids, a question was asked about cohumulone’s harsh bitter flavor and the need to breed plants that had low levels of it.  You could tell it wasn’t the first time he had been asked about that.  From the many brewing books and publications I have read, I believed that this was indeed true.  Dr. Hysert wasn’t buying it.  According to him, there was only one paper written a very long time ago that made this argument, but provided very little evidence to support it.  Despite there being no concrete facts on the matter, most breweries still insist on lower levels of cohumulone in the hops they purchase.   Whether right or wrong, the all mighty dollar has spoken and the I'm sure hop producers will continue to listen.

I bet some of you over the course of the last 9 weeks have wondered what the heck is all the fuss over this Institute of Brewing & Distilling (IBD) - Diploma in Brewing exam and who are these people anyway?  Well, here’s the skinny on that.  The IBD is an educational charity and a private company that promotes “the advancement of education and professional development in the sciences and technologies of brewing, distilling and related industries.”  They’re based out of London and provide certifications in the areas mentioned above.  

The curriculum for the Master Brewers Program at Davis is geared towards the subject areas focused on in the Diploma in Brewing exam.  The exam is divided into 3 modules: 1) Materials & Wort  2) Yeast & Beer  3) Packaging & Process Technology.  On the final week of the program, we’ll be tested on them individually over a 3 day period and answer 6 essay questions within 3 hours each day.  If you pass all 3 modules, then you are a certified member of the IBD.  If not, then you can retake whichever module(s) you didn’t pass at a later date.  

One thing  I should mention is that instruction on recipe formulation is not part of the curriculum.   Thankfully homebrewing has been there to provide me with some knowledge in that area.  What began as a hobby will now be an important cornerstone of a well rounded brewing education.  Hopefully I’ll get to use that skill set sooner rather than later.

Next Week:  Cliff Notes on the Stone Experience

Questions or Comments?  Feel free to email me at beereaucrat@gmail.com