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.