Sensory Analysis

One of the new classes that started back at the beginning of the second module was sensory analysis. Basically analyzing beer with... your senses. Simple. You are probably thinking something like, "Ha! I knew they were just there to drink beer in class!" However, we didn't dive into beer tasting right away. So far we have been doing alot of training of the four basic tastes - sweet, sour, bitter and salty - to get everybody on the same page. So what's the training?

On a typical day we would have a selection of 4 to 8 numbered cups of water with unknown concentrations of sucrose (sweet), citric acid (sour), caffeine (bitter) and salt... (salty). In the beginning it was just a matter of identifying which cup held which basic flavor but things got steadily more complex. By the third or fourth class we had two sets of 4 cups, each set with a basic taste, and had to them in order of concentration. This meant identifying the taste and then figuring out the order. But the HIGH concentration cup was at the LOWER threshold of what people normally can taste, so that's where it turns into training.

Unsuprisingly it was we Americans that had the most difficulty with bitterness. Everyone blames this on the IPAs we drink in the States with bitterness so high we can't tell the difference between mild bitterness levels anymore. Whatever the reason, it all tasted like water to me!

Today we had our first class where we actually had some beer. That doesn't mean we were tasting different beers though. We had two sets of three cups of beer. Each set had had an additional basic taste added. Two cups were at a low concentration and one cup had a higher concentration and we had to figure out which one was not like the others. One set had 1.5 g/L and 3 g/l sucrose while the other had 0.063 g/L and 0.125 g/L caffeine. Luckily we were told ahead of time for this one which set contained which basic flavor added to it. Still, it is ridiculously more difficult to taste basic flavor differences of tenths of a gram per liter in beer than it is in water.

Try it sometime. Grab a beer from the fridge and add a little bit of sugar to one and a little more to another and then try and figure out which is which (Or lemon juice or salt, etc.) I was getting better at tasting the bitterness difference in water but now that we have graduated to beer... not so good.

Of course the only way to improve is to do some sensory analysis... homework. On that note, why not crack open a beer and analyze away. Cheers!

IPA Update

Recipes were submitted today for the IPA brew coming up this weekend. For hops we have our choice of Columbus, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, Mt. Hood and Willamette all in type 90 pellet form. For grains we have pilsner as a base malt and then roasted barley, carahell, caraamber, carared, munich I and munich II. The total grain bill will be 25kg and the total hops is up to us.

Our group is going to be using a mixture of cascade and chinook hops during the boil followed by some heavy dry hopping with centennial. As far as grain we opted for a mixture of pilsner, carared and munich I. This is going to be the first IPA brew for everyone in our group with the exception of Mike. I do remember a time that I brewed an IPA back home but that batch had some pretty nasty smelling contaminant in it after the primary fermentation and had to be put down.

In any case we are starting our brew saturday afternoon and probably won't finish until sometime after 10 at night so check back Sunday for an update. Cheers!

Back in Berlin

Okay finally back in Berlin after a week of traveling. We came back from Nürnberg last Wednesday which was probably the longest day of the whole trip or at least it seemed like it. But after only one day back in Berlin I left with some classmates for a weekend in Dublin seeing as how St. Patrick's day is this week.

In any case I am back now but swamped with a paper to write for chemical and technical analysis, classmates clamoring for copies of photos from the trip which I have to sort through, a recipe to formulate for the IPA we are brewing this weekend and of course some blogging. Unfortunately most of this has to come before I post some thoughts here for your reading. But fear not fair readers for I shall not abandon all... three of you... Hopefully by the end of the week I will have something for you detailing the congress in Nürnberg, reasons why you should get your passport stamped when you enter the EU so you don't get taken into the backroom of the airport in Berlin when you try to leave for Dublin and then maybe a bit about the upcoming brew this weekend in the pilot plant. I know it's an optimistic list of posts but we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, drink some water. It's been a long week. Cheers!

Off to Nürnberg

Today the class heads to Nuremberg for the 96th International Brewing and Engineering Congress. Along the way we are going to stop to see several breweries as well as Weyermann Malzfabrik, a stop I am looking forward to the most. Once in Nuremberg we will have two days of seminars on a variety of brewing subjects as well as visits to a few more breweries. In any case when I get back hopefully I will have a few stories and pictures to share. Cheers!

Brewing days 2-7

After the initial day of brewing each group sent a few people over to the fermentation room to take some measurements. First we took a sample from the fermenter as sterile as possible: we had to rinse the... ladle with water, spray it all over with ethanol and then burn off the ethanol with a torch. Then we took a small amount from our sample for a yeast count. Luckily instead of using a hemocytometer we used a handy machine that does it all for you. We also measured the pH and the filtered the sample so we could take an extract reading using a handheld reader. Other than those measurements we maintained the fermentation temperature at 9.6° C and that was that. Cheers!

Brewing Practical - Day 1

Well this last weekend we started our first practical work in the pilot brewery here at VLB. Unfortunately I don't have the hard numbers on things like the mash times/temps but I thought it would be better to get a post up about actually brewing sooner rather than later. This is, after all, supposed to be a blog about brewing school in Germany.

As with the malting practical work the class was split up into four groups. Each group was going to brew a batch of 150 liters (~39 gallons) using varying combinations of barley and pilsner malt. At the end of the project all of the different beers will be analyzed in the central lab here at VLB and we will each write a report covering the influences and consequences of the use of barley as an adjunct. Originally the plan was to have one group brew 100% malt, the two middle groups to brew with 50% barley and 20% barley and the last group to brew with 100% barley. To make up for the use of barley, the groups with the higher barley content were going to add enzymes during the mash (Glucanase, peptidase and α-amylase). But as can happen, plans changed. The percentage of barley in the three grist loads was reduced to under 20% so that we would not be needing enzymes but could still examine the influence of using barley as an adjunct.

We were the second group of the day with the brewing expected to last from 2pm until 10pm (Reminds me of Midnight Brewing...). When we got there the group before us was still there and just starting their boil. It didn't bode well for our leaving by 10. The seven of us trekked down to the malt storage area for our grains and the mill. In a classic scenario the malt had been almost totally emptied out of the first few cans but not completely. There was just enough in the bottom that it couldn't be written off as empty but rather could be a great pain to get at with a hand scoop. I did actually try to get one scoop but... couldn't reach. In any case, we used something like 15% barley out of our total grist load of 25kg (55 lbs). The barley had to be milled several times to give us a finer grist that the enzymes from the malt could get at. On a side note the mill was a two roller type which we set at a distance of 1.7mm for the malt.

This is the point where I would probably put a picture of the whole pilot plant up. Maybe I would point out all the different parts. You would ooh, you would aah, it would be great. But I forgot. Yep took something like 100 photos. Not a one of the whole plant. Oops.

So we loaded up our mash tun which was already stirring and heated to our mash in temp. The pilot plant is largely automated from a computer station controlling temperatures, stir speed, valves, etc. Since the computer seemed to be up to the task of keeping things going we decided it was time for pizza and a beer. After all brewing is hard work and you need a supply of fluids if you don't want to get dehydrated. Near the end of the mash we took a sample and a reading of the pH to be sure all the brews were standardized.

After the mash was finished (sorry don't have the times or temps in front of me) the computer kindly pumped the malt over to the lautertun. We had a bit more to do at this point. Every 10 minutes we took a sample of the runoff that was being pumped from under the false bottom to measure the extract. Sensors in the line were also taking readings of turbidity. It was simple enough. Take a sample from the port, slowly so as not to disturb the sensor that was hooked to the pump sending the runoff to the kettle. Then you had to pour the sample into a double walled cylinder. This thing was made completely of metal and not the light kind either. The wort sat in the inner cylinder and cold water from the sink was run through the outer cylinder to cool it as we vigorously mixed the wort with what I think is a recent advance in brewing technology: a screen on a stick. Okay it was more like a metal screen on a metal stick which wasn't really so much a stick as a thick wire that was designed for mixing wort in the cylinder. Really. Anyway my lack of imagination aside, you mixed until the wort temp hit 20 then transferred it to a glass cylinder to take a hydrometer reading. Same as homebrewing except a bigger hydrometer. But you know what they say.

As sparging was finishing up we measured out our hop extract into a cup. It was like using a knife to get honey out of a can and get it all into a small metal cup. Anyway after measuring out enough exctract we dropped it in the hop... infuser... box... thing. Hot wort is pumped through it during the boil to get the hop extract into the kettle. In the picture the cup is sitting upside down on top of a nozzle that sprays the hot wort out of the sides.

Speaking of hops, have you ever tried eating hop pellets (if you haven't you should)? I mean they are bitter right but not so bitter that you have to spit them out (or do you?). Hop extract is waaaay more bitter. I don't say this from experience but we did hear a story about a student in one of the past Russian courses that made some boast or another about hops not being so bitter or some such. Apparently Russian beers are not big on bitterness by the way. Anyway someone gave him hop pellets, okay no problem. Then someone gave him extract. He put just a little bit on the tip of his tongue... aaaaand vomited all over the sink. Sounds bitter. I am curious. It's like when someone leaves a sign that says wet paint. Is that paint really wet? Maybe the sign is lying to you. Maybe you should touch it just to see. I mean I know extract is really bitter. That story clearly shows it really is bitter. But... is it? There is only one way to really find out. Mike found out.

Anyway back to the story. We boiled for 60 minutes with the only hop addition at the beginning of the boil. The kettle system used here utilized an external boiler. The wort is pumped out of the kettle to the boiler before circulating back to the kettle. Like I said previously the hot wort is also circulated through the hop extract. Just before the end of the boil we took a reading of the original gravity to be sure we were in our target range for fermentation, I think it was around 11.5%. After the boil we ran the wort in the whirlpool for 20 minutes to let everything collect in the middle and then took samples from the wort as it was pumped to the wort chiller. The sampling was a two person job with one person on the valve at one end of the hose and the other person holding the oversized nozzle (I think it was for keg filling) over an undersized bottle. It kind of seemed like a recipe for Qi to get burned. But, I didn't hear any screaming or even loud swearing so I guess it went okay. So the wort was pumped through a plate chiller where it was cooled to 11° C before making its way to our open fermentation tanks. We pitched the yeast and the day was done by 10:30pm. Not quite to Midnight Brewing standards of lateness but we came close.

It was a long day but alot of fun to finally brew, especially on a scale I have never had before as a homebrewer. Trust me I was trying to decide if I could fit a setup like this in my garage.. or living room... or maybe it's own section of the house. It got me thinking again about which direction to expand my homebrewing equipment in. Pumps? Automation? An actual metal stand with separate kettle, mash tun, burners, fittings, piping, thermometers, etc? There is something to be said for systems like brew-magic but then again what is homebrewing without getting your hands dirty?

In any case, that was day 1. Since day 1 was actually 3 days ago I will post something quick about the daily stuff tomorrow. On that note, why not pop open a beer for yourself and dream of installing a nice big pilot plant in your garage. Cheers!

Post-Studyathon

Well readers, exams are over. In fact they were over last week but once again I put off posting to the blog. In any case the whole class did well on the Barley, Hops and Energy and Utilities exam. Some people (maybe a certain blogger) not so well on the Malting Technology. I have to say though Malting Technology was a lot of information. There were pH optimums and temperature optimums of enzymes; consequences of various alterations to steeping degree, withering time, withering temperature, kilning time and temperature; molecular composition of the various components of barley (cell wall, starch, etc.); processes for production of various kinds of malt; the list goes on. It sounds daunting and believe me it was. Okay sometimes studying the temperature optima of enzymes is a little boring BUT in the end to understand the reasoning behind all of the adjustments to time and temperature in malt production not to mention what a maltster can do with varying quality in barley to still make a consistent malt. More on malt analysis in the practical work later.

I think the majority of the class doing well really speaks to the quality of the teachers here. I came from a science background so I am used to all of the chemistry and biology jargon of enzymes and molecules and such, but I can't say that everyone in the class was used to it. Yet we all did well which shows how well the teachers can bring everyone up to speed. All brown nosing aside if there is anyone out there reading this that is considering the course but is worrying about how technical it can sound, I wouldn't worry.

On another note some of us decided to go to Köln this last weekend to check out carnival. One word: Awesome. Even though we didn't go at the high points of the festival (Thursday and Monday I think) it was still a lot of fun especially after taking exams. Eight of us rented a van and drove the six hours to Köln friday. We were treated to a private brewery tour at Erzquell Brauerei Bielstein, makers of Zunft Kölsch, courtesy of my classmate Dieter. It is only the second brewery I have seen in Germany and the first was a brewpub so I really don't have a basis of comparison but it was bigger than most craft breweries I have seen in the US but not to the scale of one of the major plants. In any case we had some beer, looked at a lot of the "behind the scenes" stuff you don't normally see in a brewery tour like walking down onto the bottling plant floor (Though it was at something like 9pm so no one was there...) and generally had a good time. When Saturday rolled around it was time for a hearty breakfast (You need a good base in your stomach for a festival like this) and then off to Köln.

One thing I should mention here is that the van we had rented, which I liked to call Supervan (R.I.P.), suffered some minor.. damage. When we picked up the spacious Fiat, that was most definitely a converted cargo van, we noticed a big big dent in the top. But hey the van ran fine and it got us to where we needed to go, well almost. Apparently when the rental company ran the van into the low ceiling of their garage not only did it leave a dent but threw off the alignment of all the paneling all the way to the back of the van juuuust enough to stress that back side window a bit. Only a bit. But it was enough that when we stopped for gas as we were nearing Dieter's flat outside Köln and someone closed the door the window... gave up... and shattered... into a billion pieces. On the upside it was safety glass so the window stayed in (for awhile) but was covered in a spiderweb of cracks. Oh and did I mention the door wouldn't close now either? So from this point on we had to drive with someone holding the door closed (More on this in a bit). The window lasted for a bit until it started to spontaneously shatter further, blowing glass all over the inside of the van and the people sitting in the back. This wasn't all at once either. We would be driving and every few minutes you would hear another CRACK and CRASH as more glass exploded inwards. Fun times. Seriously.

Jump forward to the drive from Dieter's flat to Köln on Saturday. It's about a 40km drive and remember the door doesn't close. So someone had to hold the door almost closed the whole 40km as we hit speeds of 140kph+. I say almost closed because the door couldn't close all the way and we were left with a gap of about 5 inches. Poor Marcello holding the door closed at 140kph while the near zero air outside whipped through that gap right over his hand on the handle. He was a trooper though and made it the whole way. Once in Köln we swapped the van for a new smaller and less cool one and one of Dieter's friends drove it back.

To sum up the Carnival: there were a lot of people, a lot of costumes, a lot of Kölsch, and a lot of wandering Köln. Google Carnival and Köln and take a look. Though we started in this one square where there was music and a parade of sorts, we wandered to the Hohe Domkirche St. Peter and Maria in the afternoon and then to a big tent party. There must have been around 5000 people in there with beer served in tall tubes each their own tap and a stage for Carnival music. All in all a fun day/night and everyone survived to head back to VLB for class on Monday. I cut it short here because I can't think how to describe all of Carnival and not take up pages that you will surely get tired of reading. If you are in Germany during Carnival I highly recommend you travel to Köln.

Well that's the update for now readers. Check back later as we are doing a practical brewing this weekend in the pilot plant and I will try to put up a few short posts as the project moves from Day 0 on Saturday to Day End on... some other day later than saturday... In any case why not kick back and crack open a Zunft Kölsch. Cheers!

Study-athon

Well the first module is coming to a close already so we have exams coming up on Monday and Tuesday. This marks the end to our courses in Barley, Hops, Malting Technology and Energy and Utilities. Needless to say some people are getting a little... excited about the whole thing. One way or another it will all be over by Tuesday afternoon. After the dust settles I will hopefully pull together the rest of the pictures and finish my posts on our practical work in malting, chemical and technical analysis of malt and a speaker who talked about technical operations.

The next module will bring new courses in Brewing Technology and Sensory Analysis/Tastings as well as continuing our Plant Equipment class with a shift from malting plants to the brewhouse. Additionally there are going to be several special seminars and lectures throughout the module though I am not sure what the topics are going to be. I know that one seminar is going to be on US hops to prepare the class for the practical work in brewing in which we will be brewing our IPAs.

In any case, if you are one of my classmates reading this (do any of you read this?) why don't you take a study break and crack open a beer. To everyone else, why don't you take a break from... something. Cheers!

Superbowl Sunday/Monday

Just because you are in a foreign city with a 6-9 hour time difference to the United States does not by any means condemn you to missing the superbowl. Though I didn't really care about either team one way or another I wondered what it would be like at a bar in Berlin showing the game. Keep in mind the time difference so the game did not start here until 12:30am Monday morning.

In any case my roomate found a bar (Belushi's) that was showing the game only a few stops away in Mitte so we made the trek down at just before 11pm. My thinking was that no one here cares about American football so it wouldn't be very crowded especially on a Sunday night. One word. Wrong. Apparently there are more American tourists in Berlin than I thought and apparently they also wanted to watch the superbowl in what was apparently one of only a handful of places that was carrying the game. Needless to say the place was crowded. Oops. Well after standing at the bar for awhile scanning the room like chair vultures waiting for someone to get up we managed to grab some seats.

Once the game was in full swing you could definitely tell the Americans in the bar from everyone else (particularly the Steelers fans) what with all the shouting, arm waving, cursing, yells of "CRUSH HIM!!!", etc. Non-Americans mostly held blank stares, the likes of which I would probably have watching... cricket... or something... I did, however, find one German guy that liked American football after he spent time studying in the states.

Two things I missed about watching the game in Berlin vs in the US: #1 Snacks. It's one of the integral parts of any superbowl Sunday, a day second only to thanksgiving in overeating. No chicken wings this time. #2 Commercials. Okay who can say they don't look forward to seeing some of the commercials during the superbowl? Anyone? Anyone? What with talking investor babies, magic crystal balls and Richard Dean Anderson, the commercials always deliver some laughs. Our feed of the game was coming from Skynews (I think) so we didn't get any of the infamous commercials. Instead we were treated to repetative commercials about a bagel shop amoungst other things. And no it wasn't a good bagel shop commercial either. Not a single MacGruber.

Still there was beer, there was yelling and there was football. All in all it was a fun, loud slice of home. Cheers.

The Challenge!

Alright readers, as I just posted about our hand hop analysis I thought I would also let you all know about the challenge that Burghard issued to our class. Well it's really more of a contest than a challenge I suppose but you get the idea. So here it is: IPA. India Pale Ale. Familiar with it? Personally it is one of my favorite types of beer to drink. I like Hoptical Illusion from Blue Point, and Longhammer IPA from Redhook. The sky high bitterness of anywhere from 40 to 100 international bittering units (IBU) makes for a very crisp beer particularly in the American style of IPAs which tend to use hops with citrus undertones.

Back to the challenge. The class will be split up into 4 groups, each of which must brew an IPA in the pilot brewery (1.5hL/batch). The best IPA wins... the pride of having brewed the best IPA. One thing to note is that most people in the class have never even heard of an IPA much less tasted one. Other than Burghard and we three Americans I don't think anyone else has ever had an IPA. On the one hand this could be an advantage for us as we know the flavor profile we are aiming for. On the other hand if the only people to taste an IPA don't win... ouch. I can see how no one else has had an IPA as I have yet to see one served here in Berlin so it's been awhile since I have had one myself. Hopefully I can remember.

Hand Hop Analysis

Welcome back fair reader(s?)! This week we had what was one of the most interesting practical workshops yet: the hand evaluation of hops. Not to say that the practical work in the lab doing water analysis isn't interesting but it was nice to get hands on with something that I can relate to a bit more as a homebrewer.

A portion of the two hour class covered hop anatomy like the different leaf types on the cones, location of the lupulin glands, structure of the sprig, etc. After breezing through that it was on to the hand evaluation. There were six positive factors and three negative factors to take into account when grading.

1. Picking: How well was the picking of the cones from the vines done? Are there any other unneeded bits of plant material like stems or vine leaves in the batch? Are the cones themselves whole or were some picked such that the cones are not fully intact?

2. Humidity: Do the hops have an acceptable moisture content? We were given the moisture content as measured by some instruments.

3. Color and gloss: Do the hops have a healthy color? Do they have a homogeneous color? Sometimes hops can pick up brown areas from the drying process. (Brown=bad)

4. Cone Condition: This character overlaps a little with the picking character. Are the cones closed or open? Open cones means more moisture could have gotten into the interior of the cones where the lupulin is contained (Bad). Are the cones relatively homogeneous through the batch as far as size, shape and coloring? Is the spindle (the stem on the interior of the cone) thick or thin? Thick spindles would mean that a greater proportion of a given batch of hops is useless plant matter as far as the brewer is concerned.

5. Lupulene: Apparently this doesn't really enter into hand hop analysis anymore as there are other methods of determining the alpha acid content of hops.

6. Aroma: This was my favorite part. You need to assess the purity, fineness and intensity of the aroma. To really assess the aroma you have to volatilize the aromatic compounds by taking a few cones in your fingers, tearing them vertically down the middle and then rubbing the pieces together right beneath your nose. Be careful not to get too much of it up your nose! Some people sneezed doing this part (By some people I mean me... it stings to get bits of leaf up your nose!). Does the aroma remain even after rubbing for a bit? If the heat generated from the rubbing is enough to eliminate the aroma then it surely won't last long when you put it into 100 ° C wort.

The negatives.
1. Pests: Is there evidence of pests like molds, or spots from an insect infestation?
2. Deficiencies: Were the hops damaged during drying?
3. Seeds: Seeds are useless to the brewer.

So after looking at all of these characteristics, each of which was graded either out of 5 or 15 points, we added everything up and got a total score out of 100. The picture back at the top of the post shows the four samples we graded. #4 was... not good. It smelled like an ancient, dirty, dusty, decrepit, stuffy, musty, cardboardy, moldy, (you see what I am getting at yet?) old basement. The instructor said that some breweries actually want the smell and the flavor from hops like this (they were a year old) but I definitely washed my hands after that one. Speaking of which, when you hand grade hops your fingers get really really sticky. Try touching your camera with fingers like that.

So how can this apply to homebrewers? Not a whole lot if you get your hops like I do in pellet form in one ounce nitrogen filled packets. Nonetheless it's an interesting exercise that I highly recommend trying (You obviously need to get whole hops not pellets) if for no other reason than to get more familiar with one of the basic ingredients of every brew. It would also be interesting if you grow your own hops, as we started doing last year, so you can compare across your individual plants and varieties.

One other thing I would like to mention. So every two people received a tray of each hop variety during our class. That's at least 14 of those trays for each variety. Remember the one I said smelled... not good? Well what do we do with all the hops when we are done? Why dump them all into a garbage can at the front of the room until it is nearly overflowing. Brilliant. Smelled great up there the next day. Oh I should also mention that as hops oxidize they start to smell like old gym socks so even though we removed the garbage the next morning there were still hop bits all over the floor in the classroom that probably won't get cleaned up anytime soon. Do the math.

In any case why don't you go do some hands on study of hop flavor and open up a beer (homebrew preferred). Cheers!

I do in fact have an apartment

I guess I will finish up some of the details about living in Berlin that I left hanging in that post a few weeks ago.

Not wanting to live in a cardboard box outside the U-bahn entrance I picked up the apartment search once again after the new years celebration was over. A few apartments had responded and so I set up times to look at two of the places and talk to the people already living there. All of the email conversations were in English so I had high hopes that it would be fine. Well let's say my German was just not up to the task in the end. Luckily for me my friend Sebastian who is originally from Germany happened to be in Berlin at the same time and I can't even begin to tell you how much he helped with the apartment hunting.

The first place I looked at was in a nice area of Prenzlauerberg. Almost right next to my building is what I can only describe as a mall, but a little different than a mall in the States. In addition to your usual clothes stores, shoe stores and a few small "restaurants" there were also several grocery stores and a bakery. It was like walking into Marketplace Mall/Bellevue Square and finding a Wegmans/QFC in the middle. So on the upside I wouldn't have to go far to get groceries. Also there were both S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations right outside but the apartment had enough buildings in between that it was still quiet. The bedroom was small but came with a bed, desk and shelf. What more do you really need? It could get the job done. There was a bit of a communication barrier with the guy showing the apartment as apparently his wasn't the perfect English responding to the emails he was here for his "friend" who I had been emailing. Thankfully Sebastian helped sort through with that. Well I didn't take that apartment right away even though it was in a great location I wanted to see some other places as well before I decided.

The next day I went to see one other apartment in Prenzlauerberg. This one was on a more residential street vs the hustle and bustle of the first apartment. To say this place was a bit messy is an understatement. I think I saw stale nachos in the shape of a bowl sitting on the kitchen counter. The room here was bigger, cheaper... and messier. Somehow no matter how much people tell you "The smell will be gone before you move in" it never really seems to change what you think of the place. In any case the three people already living here were about as eager to speak in English as I was to speak in German although Sebastian and his cousin helped here. It turned out to be a situation more like a job interview where they were interviewing people for the "position" and would choose who they liked best by the end of the weekend. This wasn't exactly what I expected and if I had to judge how my interview went I would say I wasn't getting hired.

After seeing that apartment I decided to go with the first one. Though a bit more expensive I knew the other two guys living in the apartment were also students from other countries and the area it was in was much better. On a side note about the expense of apartments, it is common for people to move into an apartment and then rent out the remaining rooms at much higher prices in order to pay the rent and make some money at the same time.

I had to stay in the hostel an extra day and it took me two trips across the city on the S-Bahn to move both my massive suitcases but I got myself moved into my new place on the 5th. I also met my roomates (American student and French student) after a day or two.

Well according to the good doctor here beer is good for you so why don't you have one, maybe something new (Unless you are at work. On the other hand if you work at a brewery then go for it). Cheers.

First Impressions

To just preface all this I actually started writing this post last weekend but didn't finish it. Point is that some of my first impressions of VLB were wrong. Very very wrong. But not in a bad way. Read on.

So it seems like I should probably make a post about the brewing school I said this blog was going to be about so here goes.

First off if you ever have to go to a class in a foreign city I guess it is probably a good idea to find out where it's actually located at some point BEFORE 8:15am on the first day of classes that start at 8:30. Just a thought. If you do that then you might not, say get off the subway and walk the complete wrong direction for about... half a mile before realizing hey, you are now even farther away from the school than when you started. Again, just a thought. In any case I made it a little late after asking directions in terrible German.

The class is made up of 31 people from USA (3), Canada, Turkey, China, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Austria, Germany and Lithuania. Nearly everyone has been sent by their brewery with the exception of all three Americans and the guy from Argentina. Some breweries even sent several of their people though they could afford to since most of the breweries represented had at least 200 employees if not several thousand. We have people from a wide variety of positions in the brewery from sales to R&D to raw materials specialist to junior brewmaster. After seeing some of the class pictures of previous VLB Certified Brewmaster courses I had assumed that I would be the youngest by ten years but there are actually several other people in their mid twenties though most are at least 30. Not that it has made much of a difference as everyone is ready to go out together for drinks outside of class.

Ah class. Boring list alert! These are the classes I am taking right now: Raw Materials: Barley, Brewery Arithmetics, Economics, Chemistry, Plant Equipment: Malting, Malting Technology (well this one should start soon), Water, Energy and Utilities, Microbiology, Raw Materials: Hops, Chemical/Technical Analysis and Process Control Engineering.

After the first week of classes I had thought everything was going to be a breeze. Coming from a science background a lot of the material in the chemistry, microbiology and chemical/technical analysis was very basic stuff that I remember from college and even earlier. It seemed like I could breeze right through this course and that it wasn't the in depth education I had expected.

Needless to say I was wrong. They aren't kidding when they tell you the first week that they are going to start slow to really be sure they can bring everyone to the same basic starting level before diving into more depth. Although that first week was no trouble at all, as we got to the end of the second week all of the aspects that I had pegged as simplistic were turning into anything but. For example, the biochemistry of barley is getting much more detailed. We going to cover things like amino acid structures (memorize them), the different protein fractions of barley (oh memorize those too as well as the overall percentage of each fraction), the other different macromolecules that make up barley and how those percentages change once barley is malted (memorize that too), characteristics and subsequent consequences of over modified and under modified barley, cytological modification vs proteolytic modification, etc. The list goes on.

So, to all those that scoffed "Oh he is going to BEER school to drink BEER" I say this, well of course I am drinking beer and let me tell you I have tried some good ones, but there is far more science and study than you could imagine in the process of brewing beer. From the raw materials used right down to the biological processes in individual barley kernels that can lead to particular off flavors in your beer and how to correct for them. More than anything else these past few weeks have showed me how pitifully little I truly knew about brewing beer. Sure I have read some of the brewing books and I thought I knew more about the biology and biochemistry involved in the process than your average homebrewer but that was barely scratching the surface.

So take away messages from my first impressions. This is going to be fun. A lot of fun, but a lot of work too. It's been awhile since I've been a student but not to worry I have note cards at the ready! I will try and post a little more often so I don't have to always have large posts. Well enough of my mundane, meandering... word things. Okay I couldn't think of another word that starts with M so sue me. On that note, relax and have yourself a beer (homebrew preferred). Cheers.

First week in Berlin pt 1

Alright this is most certainly not a brew related post so if you aren't interested flee, flee my friend.

I arrived in Berlin the Sunday afternoon after Christmas after a really uneventful flight. I checked into Jetpak Hostel in the Charlottenburg area of the city. I've never actually been to Europe much less stayed in a Hostel so I didn't know what to expect but it wasn't bad at all. I ended up with a bed in a 6 bed dorm style room with only one other person in there. On the upside of things the hostel had a huge plasma screen tv with 80 movies hooked to it and free breakfast in the mornings. On the downside... nothing. Decent place and great staff who pointed me towards a free walking tour of Berlin to get oriented to the city.

After sleeping the rest of the day Sunday I opted to check out the walking tour on Monday. Anyone out there familiar with the weather in Berlin this time of year? Anyone? I'll give you a hint. COLD! Very cold. I am talking snot freeze in your nose cold. I don't think it has gotten above zero (Celsius) since I got here! But that's the norm for Rochester too so life goes on.

In any case a walking tour of the city in sub-zero temperatures probably wasn't the best choice but it was worth it. Listened to about three hours of Berlin history (yes I saw the wall and ironically it has a fence protecting it from tourist "wall-peckers"), saw some of the sights, kept an eye on the gypsy pickpockets, you get the idea. On the pickpocket note it doesn't seem like much of a problem here, we were just told to watch for the gypsies by the guide. They are little girls that walk up to you all pitiful looking and ask if you speak english and ostensibly free you of your valuables while you read the little card they are holding with some sad sad story about dying kittens or something. Let's pause for a second though. If you are obviously, red flag on a white wall obviously a tourist who is going to have a legitimate reason for walking up to you and asking if you speak english? No.... one... On every occasion that I have been asked if I speak english it has been by either gypsies or pan handlers. Take from that what you will.

Moving on. So I saw the sights that day and returned to the hostel a bit burnt out from 9 hour jet-lag and all the walking so I watched a movie and went to sleep. Oh and btw I got out of the wrong exit from the U-Bahn (subway) station and had to wander around for about ten minutes before I found my way back to the hostel. Tuesday I decided to play the tourist again and went to see the German History Museum then slept some more. That day I also had two new roomates in the hostel, Australians from London traveling on holiday. Nice guys. I should point out that by the end of Tuesday I had been in Berlin for almost three days and I hadn't had a single beer yet. Strange isn't it?

I should point out that during this time I was also looking for an apartment in Berlin. Everyone keeps asking "Didn't the school help you find a place to live?" Well yes and no. They sent links to several websites that offer fully furnished apartments for people looking for a place to stay for under a year but they were all fairly expensive. I found out later that almost everyone else in the course ended up renting one of these apartments but I also found out that almost everyone else in the course had been sent by their brewery which was paying for their apartment. Lets just say that Midnight Brewing Co does not really have the funds for this sort of thing. So I ended up searching for a shared apartment, a place that already had people in it that just needed roomates, on the german website www.wg-gesucht.de. It was slow going. The site is entirely in German with no English translation. I took German for four years back in High School but that was five and a half years ago now. I knew enough to muddle through the descriptions of the apartments and sent out at least 20 messages to different listings. By Wednesday I had yet to receive a single response. I was encouraged by a fellow in the hostel from Australia who was also moving to Berlin who had managed to find an apartment through this website but the lack of responses was definitely discouraging.

As New Years Eve rolled around I decided to put the apartment search on hold and enjoy the celebrations in Berlin. It sounded like the biggest celebration was going to be at the Brandenburg gate with an expected turnout of 1 million people. The two Australian-Londoners in my room Andy and Ben invited me out with them so after some napping we joined up and headed off into the city. The first stop was a restaurant that served only Paulaner beer where we managed to get a table (Though we could only have it for an hour until they were going to give the table away). After a 1 liter stein of beer each and some Curry Wurst we moved on to try and find the Brandenburg gate.

One thing I should mention about New Year's in Berlin is the fireworks. They are EVERYWHERE. I am not talking sparklers and fountains either. I am talking about big rockets and firecrackers the size of M-80s. So do you think if you had fireworks available on every street you would just sit calmly and safely launch them into the sky only? Okay, maybe you would but not everyone else. People were launching these things all around in the middle of a major city even with the crowded sidewalks. Big firecrackers were exploding every few minutes, some thrown at trains or cars. It wasn't quite mayhem yet since it was still a few hours to midnight but you could feel it coming. We tried to find fireworks ourselves to no avail.

As we got closer to the Brandenburg gate all the roads in were fenced off and from what little German I know the polizei said that no one else was allowed in. I think. Well no problemo, we just wandered around until we found an U-Bahn station and headed off to find a street that supposedly had some good bars in Prenzlauerberg. After getting just a bit... lost we decided to just walk into the next bar we found. It was a decent small bar with everything we could need, ie beer. Although Germany supposedly has a law against smoking in bars not many places honor it so you usually end up smelling like smoke which I am not really a big fan of. As midnight rolled around the entire bar emptied out into the streets. Apparently we were right across from a fire station because they rolled out all their trucks and fired up their lights and sirens. Add to that fireworks going off left and right, people yelling and screaming, it was loud, it was noisy, it was new years! After a bit of this outside we headed back in. Does the mayhem end here you ask? No. No it does not.

We decided to check out another bar and wandered on. Firecrackers and rockets were still flying everywhere. At the next bar one of the guys I was with decided it was time for Jager shots. I passed on the shots but he kept offering about every five minutes or so for at least half an hour so I am sure he had his fair share.

Around three in the morning, after enough celebration I decided I was going to head home, left the other two at the bar and headed into the streets. It was at this point that I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was. Let me tell you firecrackers don't help when you are trying to get your bearings after... a few beers. It seemed like the "best" idea was to just wander around until I found an U-bahn station. Okay maybe not the best idea but it worked. I jumped on the next train that I thought was going in a good direction and ended up at Alexanderplatz. Probably not the train I should have taken but at least I was less lost now. Alexanderplatz is a pretty major station so there were trains going all over the city from here. I switched trains and promptly fell asleep. Yes. I passed out on the train at something like 3:30 am in a foreign city still going crazy over new years. Well by some miracle of luck I happened to wake up when the train was at the station I needed to switch at. I managed to jump out just as the doors were beeping that they were closing. Whew.

I won't bore you with further details of my journey home, but I should mention one more thing. So mr. Jager shots came back from the bar a little after I did. Let's just say he was regretting those shots at this point. Regretting them all over the sidewalk.

Well thats enough of my first week in Berlin pt 1. I will write a bit more later but the next post will focus more on my first impressions of VLB. Cheers!

Blog Online

Alright so I had hoped to get this blog online much, much... much earlier but unfortunately I have been without internet for my laptop since I got here almost two weeks ago. In any case here it is and here I go.

I was thinking that on the offhand chance that anyone interested in brewing/homebrewing/brewing school reads this that I would just tag the more "Brewing" related posts as "Brew School" and then my ramblings about life here in Berlin for people like... anyone else who reads this as "Berlin Life". There is going to be overlap but let's just see how things go. Sound Good?