Dan's Brew School Blog

Conclusion

2007-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

More narrative that I haven't posted yet:

After a night in Bamberg, we got on the bus in the morning and Kitzingen to visit Huppmann, the major competitor of Steinecker. While the design of their mash tuns, kettles and whirlpools were similar to those of their rival, the fabrication shop was smaller and seemed less oriented towards large equipment and more focused on customized orders. We saw a mash tun that was made with a polished copper interior, something that Steineker no longer offers as an option.
We then headed for Ziemann, the maker of the largest brewing vessels in the world. Their warehouses resembled aircraft hangars from the outside, and many of their machines that shaped the tanks together were one of a kind. The largest fermentation tank that they made was ten and a half meters across, and at least six times as long. With such a large interior surface area in each cylindro-conical tank, the entire interior is polished smooth to aid in cleaning and sanitizing. For the largest size tanks, the barge transport down the Mainz river requires them to be cut in half length-wise to allow them to pass under bridges along the way.
After our tour of the Ziemann plant, we checked into our hotel rooms and then went to have a quasi-Thanksgiving dinner at the porportedly oldest restaurant in Germany. Halfway through the meal, we learned that the Ziemann representative had graciously offered to take care of the bill for the entire class, and even left the tab open after he left. I had a few more beers and the best apple strudel I've ever tasted, and eventually wandered back to the hotel to get some rest.
The next morning we headed for Heidelburg to visit Wild, a flavor extract manufacturer. There wasn't much in the tour about beer, but it was interesting to find out that they produce Capri Sun drinks and own the patent on the pouch filling technology. After a long tour of the facility that involved long walks between buildings in a downpour, we arrived in Heidelburg at our hotel.
I had been to Heidelburg with my folks in the summer of 1998, but this time the rain made it a different experience. We went on a privite tour of the Kulturbrauerei brewpub that had been pre-arranged, and the beers were great. The dinner that I had there had three kinds of meat on the same plate, and I couldn't even come close to finishing it.

More soon...

More Touring

2007-12-02T03:48:00.000-08:00

Note to readers: I'm in Chicago, getting ready to fly back to Portland in a couple of hours. As soon as I get home, the floodgates will open and I'll be posting pictures of my trip as well as wrapping up the last week of my trip in a couple more posts. Thank you for your patience and interest, as well as your support during this last week of relative silence on my part.
After visiting the Bischofshof Brewery on Tuesday afternoon, our bus journeyed into northern Austria in white-out conditions, with all of us amazed at our bus driver's skills. He navigated the tour bus through switchbacks and small roads with only a couple of inches of clearance between buildings, leaving us in silent awe. We finally arrived at the Beerkulinarium, a restaurant in the small town of Shlagl where we were treated to a five course meal with a beer paired with each course. Besides being one of the best meals of my life, the night was capped off when the pale bock served with dessert had a heated iron rod dipped into it, creating a nice visual and a toasted marshmallow flavor.
On Wednesday morning, we visited the Aldersbach brewery, touring a mid-sized Steineker system and a small brewery museum where their old copper kettles were on display. Despite the tour going well at first, our moods soured when there was no tasting at the end or even a complimentary case for our bus ride. Our instructor told us flat out that a brewer that isn't willing to give some beer samples to a class of brewers is shooting his reputation in the foot. Needless to say, Aldersbach will not be included on the study tour for the next class.
After the letdown at the provious stop, we got the royal treatment at the Weyermann Malting Company in Bamberg. While we weren't allowed to take pictures of their facility, it was amazing to see how it's all produced, from the steeping and germination tanks to the roasting drums. Our tourguide even opened the kilning room door for a few seconds, with a blast of warm air giving us an idea of how hot it actually gets. A delicious dinner followed the tour, and the beers brewed at their pilot brewery were very well made. To cap off the evening, a few friends and I went to a beer bar in bamberg to try some smoked beer. I made it through about a liter before the place closed at eleven, but my bacon breath the next morning would have been much worse had I stayed any later.

Touring In Style

2007-11-23T06:26:00.000-08:00

I still don't know if I won't have to take an oral exam on the 30th, but I'm having a great time touring Germany and Austria this week.
On the first day, we saw the Steineker brewhouse plant, and it was great to see how all of the beautiful vessels are made. I wasn't able to take pictures in the plant, but it still was a unique experience that not many people get.
We saw Johann Barth & Sohn next, the largest hop processing plant in the world. If you buy hop pellets from Germany, they surely came from this plant. Their production was in full swing, and we saw the entire pelletizing process from hop cone to foil bag. All of the hops in the entire warehouse were already sold, showing clearly how tight the hop market is this year.
On Tuesday, we visited Krones, the parent company of Steineker and the largest filling line producer in the world. Their warehouses that we toured through were massive, and I will soon post pictures of the many types of filling lines that we had the opportunity to see.
We then went to a medium sized brewery called Birchofshof that had a nearly new Steineker system. They showed us through the entire array of vessels and processes, and their dunkel and bock beers were supurb at the end of the tour. The ultimate mark of a hospitable tour was the brewer bringing a couple of cases of his beer for our bus trip, and we seem to judge tours largely on this extra bonus. The brewery is actually owned by the local Catholic archdiocese, but it does nothing to hurt their beer quality if not improve it.

I'll recount the rest of my week later, but I'm now in Heidelburg and need to find a beer at the nearest brewpub before I'm the last one left at the hotel.

Feeling Better

2007-11-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

I'm finally done with my cold, and I had to rest up this weekend to get back to normal. Three of my roommates went to Pilsen and Prague this weekend--and I'm sorry to have missed it--but their getting back at 1am this morning gave me the impression that I was better off getting some rest for the upcoming week.
On Thursday, we'll take a short written test that encapsulates most of what we've learned over the last two months, and getting a B or better means that I'll be able to avoid taking the oral exam at the end of the two week study tour. I'm all for not having to worry about academics when riding on a bus for two weeks, and I imagine that a good portion of the class will be able to be in the same position.
Last Thursday, our main instructor invited the class to the Agustiner Braustube for dinner, and we had a fun time sampling their signature Edelstoff lager. The food was great, and I learned that the prices for food and beer were low because the place was a sort of cultural dispensation for the brewery. Having a few liters wasn't such a good idea the next day however, because my headache led me to believe that the beer had a decent share of higher alcohols.
On Friday, our class has the opportunity to go to a huge beverage trade show in Nurnberg, and I should have lots to report on all of the free samples and other things experienced there.

More Sights

2007-11-06T04:04:00.000-08:00

I’ve visited a lot of Munich in the past week, including a few beer halls and other locales. The Hofbrauhaus was just as advertised—three beers available in a huge place with lots of space. The fact that our waiter was Indian and male detracted from an already traumatizing experience that occurred when our party of thirty (most of the class) was cut off until we could pay the bill for the first two rounds of beer and food. Overall, this was my least favorite beer hall.
The Hirschhgarten was a little more authentic, but it’s reputation as the world’s largest beer hall was entirely based on overflow table space in the park that shares its name. During Oktoberfest, the place has outdoor tables as far as the eye can see, but visiting in early November meant that it was running on one cylinder for the off-season. The food was good, but the dark beers tasted metallic and the light beer was very sulfurous.
Last Friday, my roommates and I met a big group at Lowenbrau for dinner, and the beer was much better in general. I had a Franziskaner Hefeweizen and a Triumphator, and they both were memorable. Afterwords, I was able to swing by Schneider Weisse on the way home for an Aventinus, taking a long time to drink it before amazingly finding my train home just before the door closed on me.
My favorite beer hall that I’ve visited so far was the Agustiner Keller, with the combination of great food and a good selection of beer choices. For being located in the center of Munich despite being relatively small, it sure demonstrates that the biggest places aren’t always the best.
As for class, we have been learning more about the sensory perception of beer, and why certain tastes can be traced back to the raw ingredients used in the process. We are today filtering the beer that we made last week with a plate and frame filter with diatomaceous earth, so it will be interesting to see how difficult it is to balance the clarity and speed of the process. The perspectives of our German instructors are slightly different from our Chicago lectures, but their expertise in the field far outweighs any cultural or philosophical differences they may present.
I’ve had a bad sore throat for a couple of days, but it’s starting to get better and I’ll try doing something fun tonight after class. (Note: My Germany pictures are having trouble loading over the long distance, but I’ll find a way to post them soon.)

Munich, First Impressions

2007-10-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Munich. It’s been a rough couple of days for me so far, between getting my bearings of the place and adjusting to a radically different time zone. I’m staying in a condo with five of my classmates in the southwest part of the city, but it’s only about twenty minutes to the city center from our place. I’ve hit a couple of the smaller beer halls already (Erdinger and another one I can’t remember the name of), and a few bars around town. On the first day, we had to take a nap from 8am-1pm local time to try to acclimate without feeling too out of whack. We then stumbled upon a small Hofbrauhaus affiliated brewpub in the south end of town and had a great meal. They brewed their own wheat beer, and the half liters that we had were probably the best beer of that style that I’ve ever tasted.
Doemens Academy—the school that we are attending classes at for three weeks—was bigger than I expected, and has lab facilities in addition to a 500L pilot brewery in the basement. Half of the class got to brew a pilsner on Tuesday, and the automated computer controls made it not laborious at all. While our brief three week stay means that the beer we brewed will not be coming with us on our two week study tour, it still was an interesting experience. We are working in the lab today with yeast and bacteria strains, as well as learning how to identify which ones can and cannot spoil beer.
Thursday is All Saints Day here, and that means that we have no class while the only things open will be the bars and beer halls. It looks like as good a time as any to hit the beer hall circuit on the east side of town, and I’ll be rested up by then after running on four hours of sleep per night for the first three days of the week. Tonight, we're going to the Hofbrauhaus to celebrate a classmate's birthday, and I should get some pictures of the place as well. There’s so much to see here, but I have to budget my time wisely.

Two days before the flight to Munich...

2007-10-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy last couple of weeks, finishing up the Packaging and Processing module last Friday. While we had styles tastings before of English and German beers in previous weeks, the Belgian tasting that we had last Monday was by far the highlight. Randy Mosher- the author of Radical Brewing and one of the world's true experts on beer styles- came in the classroom at the last hour of the day carrying boxes of Belgian beers and looking like some sort of beer Santa Claus with his white beard. While the seven beers we tasted were mostly the main representative of each style, the depth of background and information that he offered on each made the whole class happy to stay a half hour later and hardly use the dump buckets.
We learned about different packaging types, and were exposed to the possibility that high packaging costs may one day push most breweries toward using plastic PET bottles rather than glass or aluminum. While they may be cheaper, the oxygen that permeates through the plastic would give them a short shelf life.
After scoring a 96% on my last weekly test and finding out that my six test average was 90%, I'm happy that I was able to strike a balance between making this education worth my while and having fun in Chicago at the same time. On Friday we said goodbye to the four students that only were here for the first six weeks for the associate program, and we had a graduation party for them. That's the first time that it really hit home for me that my time in Chicago was drawing to a close, and I'm glad I was here long enough to get comfortable and meet lots of interesting brewers and instructors.
For Monday and Tuesday of this week, my half of the class did a profitability workshop that was a business simulation where each team's brewery competed against the others for financial supremacy. Because most of the six teams were overly aggressive in investment in the first round, everyone ended up near bankruptcy and it took us three rounds to get back towards a positive retained earnings. My team ended up gravitating toward the draft market that others had abandoned for cans or bottles, and we ended up in third place overall by the end of the second day. The fact that five of the six teams finished in the red shows that brewers should probably stick to brewing and let someone else take the fall for bad business decisions.
For today and tomorrow, our half of the class switched to group research projects that we'll present to the entire class in a ten to fifteen minute power point presentation on Friday morning. My group of four is supposed to weigh the benefits of mash filters versus lauter tuns, and decide if a 650 hl brewery is best served by one or the other. For my part of the presentation, I'll be attempting to show how the flavor of a beer would be significantly different when using the same basic recipe on a mash filter over a lauter tun. I'll be schooled-out
after seven weeks of classroom activities and ready for a beer after that's over for sure.
What I'm really looking forward to is moving on to Munich on our Saturday flight. Three weeks of brewing on the Doemens Academy system will be a great compliment to all of the information that's been thrown our way recently, and I'm looking forward to the transnational study tour for the last two weeks as is everyone in the class. I've had a big enough dose of Chicago to be ready for something different, but I'll probably have something else to say before I leave.

Miller Time

2007-10-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

After that heat spell of a few days ago, it went from 72 on Tuesday to 52 on Wednesday, and I'm definitely ready for the cool weather. The new module on Packaging and Processing Technology is really interesting and informative, but the information tends to be very macrocentic, reinforcing my desire to avoid working in a large brewing operation.
The Miller Brewery in Milwaukee was indeed impressive, from the automated systems that they wouldn't let me take a picture of all the way to their vintage mash and lauter tuns. While they used to use corn grits for the majority of their fermentible sugars, they now use corn syrup that is added after the boil, making their barley mashes relatively small considering their production size. Their packaging lines were the most impressive part of the tour, stretching over multiple levels and encompassing more packaging types than any brewery I have ever seen. While I don't see myself working in a brewery of that size, I still enjoyed the experience of seeing the entire process of how such massive quantities of beer are brewed and packaged.
On the way back from Milwaukee, we stopped at a store called the Cheese Castle, and I had the good fortune of purchasing a bag of smoked string cheese, which I still am enjoying two days later. I tried some Sprecher Black Bavarian Lager, and it went great with the cheese on the bus trip back.
While the last two weeks had made me a bit nervous about securing accommodations for my three week stay in Munich, I was fortunate enough to find another classmate who is renting a five bed condo and only had three others signed on so far. Staying in a hostel would have been a unique experience, but having access to a kitchen to cook my own meals once in a while will definitely cut down on costs in the larger sense, and give me a reason to splurge on beer.
My biggest personal accomplishment of the week in a practical sense was making a keg tap out of a CO2 manifold. While my buddy had brewed some amber ale two weeks ago and force carbonated it in a five gallon corny keg last night, he forgot his picnic tap in Milwaukee and we were resigned to buying one at one of the two understocked and overpriced homebrew stores in the area. He had a beer-side ball lock hooked to the manifold from the last time that he had a carbonation stone hooked up to that side, and I somehow figured out that we could use the extra ball lock valve on the side of the manifold as a makeshift tap. I don't know what thought process led to my conceptualizing of that idea, but the beer tasted good and had a light carbonation level similar to a real ale.

88 in October?

2007-10-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sweating and wearing shorts here in Chicago today, and it almost makes me miss the rain. The Chicago Marathon went right past the front of my building, and I bet no records will be broken today with this freak weather. It looks like it will be down to 60 by Thursday of next week, and I can't wait for it to actually feel like fall for once.
I enjoyed the trip yesterday to Saugatuck Brewing in Saugatuck, Michigan and Three Floyds in Munster, Indiana. Saugatuck was in the process of opening a pub in a huge warehouse-like building in a small town on the southeastern part of Lake Michigan. The owner, Barry Johnson, used a brew-on-premises system as an extra source of income while finishing up the brewhouse and bar sections of his new location. They still have a long way to go, but he has enough space in the building to make a Munich-style beer hall room for events and still have space for a ten barrel system in the back side of the building.
The trip to Munster Indiana brought us to Three Floyds Brewing Company, a hugely successful microbrewery in the Midwest area that specializes in highly hopped and high alcohol beers. From seeing their beers on store shelves in the Chicago area, I was under the impression that they were slightly larger- their brewpub and production facility were squeezed into a small warehouse building in an industrial park. Both their IPA and Imperial IPA were great, and the artwork on their labels and brewpub walls really add to the ambiance of the place. The tour was alright, but the brewer wasn't prepared for such a knowledgeable and scrutinizing audience. They were in the process of bringing in a larger brewhouse for more production, and the whole room was crammed with equipment and supplies due to their keeping up with consumer demand until that happens.
On the way back, the professionalism of the group devolved into a more relaxed atmosphere, and we still weren't able to finish all the beer that Siebel graciously provided for us. On Monday we'll start the packaging and serving module, and Tuesday will involve a bus ride north into the belly of the beast- Miller Brewing Company. I've never seen a macrobrewery before, and I'm interested in seeing just how sophisticated their equipment is.

Almost a Month Along

2007-10-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

The lectures of the last few days have been more informative and practical than much of the material we've gone through so far at Siebel. After learning everything I've ever wanted to learn about yeast last week, we've moved on to the maturation and conditioning of beer into a finished product. While some of the information is geared more toward a macrobrew audience, it was great to explore some common problems concerning finished beer and the solutions needed to prevent them. The main message that's been hammered home is that oxidation at any stage of the brewing and fermenting process ruins beer flavor and shortens a beer's shelf life. While the yeast needs oxygen to replicate itself three times over to ferment the beer, it only needs 8-9 parts per million of dissolved oxygen, meaning that adding too much is just not that smart in the long run.
Another thing I've learned is that the old English system of measurement is much more difficult to deal with than the metric system, and If I were buying brewing equipment I would seriously consider hectoliters over barrels due to the ease of mathematical conversion factors if nothing else. From mixing up a cleaning solution to calculating the amount of yeast cells needed in fermentation, it just makes no sense to deal in barrels in gallons when the whole rest of the world has an easier way to do it.
I've got another test tomorrow morning, and a field trip on Saturday to Saugatuck Brewing Company in Michigan and Three Floyds Brewing Company in Indiana. I expect the same rowdy bus atmosphere, and hopefully I can take some more pictures along the way. It seems like I haven't been in Chicago that long, but it's been almost a month, and I'm not homesick yet.

Lots to Say

2007-09-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy week since I last posted, learning about yeast, fermentation and how to increase or decrease the amount of certain flavors in a beer by manipulating certain fermentation variables. It's amazingly interesting stuff, and the ability of yeast to create such a variety of beer flavors is something else. I scored a 95% on last week's test, but the increased difficulty of this week's test last Friday will probably mean that I will have a slightly lower percentage this time around.
I went with a few people to Piece Brewing last Wednesday night, and I'd highly recommend is as a Portland-esque brewbub in Chicago, besides the fact that they won the small brewpub of the year award at last year's Great American Beer Festival.
The highlight of my week by far was the arrival of two boxes of homebrew on Friday that my dad had shipped from Portland. I brought out my AHA Gold Medal Schwarzbier and some of the PDX Brewers club Barrel Brew for the students and staff to try after class, and everyone loved them both. Lyn Kruger liked them as well, and she had taught the sensory perception of off flavors workshop that we had earlier in the week. From the brewing professionals from outside the US that didn't have much experience with tasting homebrewed beer, I was shown some particular enthusiasm for giving them the opportunity to taste it. As for my own opinion, telling someone about a beer is like telling them about music or food- there's no description that can substitute for experiencing the real thing. Every once in a while, people need a justification of purpose to boost their self esteem, and having everyone repeatedly compliment me on my beer really felt good. I didn't dare take credit for the barrel brew, and instead wore my PDX Brewers t-shirt and gave the club some recognition.
I've been hanging out with Jacob Leonard, the head brewer for Walking Man, who is here for the beer production and quality control module after winning the Glen Falconer Scholarship. I keep telling everyone that he makes great beer, but I guess they'd have to go to Stevenson to find out for themselves.
Congratulations to Megan Flynn on the first issue of Beer Northwest Magazine being available, I'll have to check it out when I can get a hold of a copy.
Since class on Monday will be starting an hour late, I'm going to try to utilize Sunday night as best I can and meet a bunch of people at the Hofbrauhaus restaurant near Wrigleyville for dinner and a few beers tonight. I kind of see it as a preview of Munich, and I'll see if I can drink one of those liter mugs before the beer gets too warm.

Moving on to Fermentation

2007-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

After I took my test on Friday, I was officially done with the first two week module on raw materials and wort production. My first two weeks have gone really fast, but I still have another five to go until I leave for Munich, giving me plenty of time to get comfortable here.
On Friday afternoon, Lyn Kruger, the President of Siebel and a world renowned yeast expert, led a tasting of off flavors that had been spiked into bottles of Budweiser. While I had tasted diacetyl(butterscotch) and DMS(creamed corn) in a few beers before, the taste of isovaleric acid(cheesy or stale hops) was by far the most pungent. Maybe the fact that I'm from a place where hops are local and plentiful saved me from ever smelling it before.
After class was over for the week, I headed up to Halsted street with a friend to see some blues at a place called Kingston Mines. It had two stages in parallel rooms so that the music was constant, and I had some breaded catfish from the kitchen in the back that was quite tasty. After being there for about three hours, I think we got enough out of it to make up for the fifteen dollar cover charge.
After taking it easy on Saturday and cleaning up my place today, I'm just about ready to start the next two week Siebel session on beer production on quality control. I'm really excited to learn more about yeast, as that's what the majority of this section will be focused on. The microbiologists and yeast experts who will be giving the lectures should have a wealth of information, and I'm going to keep taking good notes throughout their presentations as best I can.

Field Trip

2007-09-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted, but that's due to my activities of the last three days. My first week exam of the malting process and hops went fine, as I scored slightly above average for the class. We're moving on to water treatment and mashing this week, so I'll be busy trying to memorize the functions of enzymes and their optimum temperatures. Yesterday, we went on an all day field trip around the lake to Kalamazoo Michigan, where we saw Kalsec (Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company) and Bell's Brewing. Imagine a tour bus with over forty occupants over a six hour round trip, and imagine if the organizers provided five coolers full of imported and microbrew beer to drink along the way. Needless to say, that was one of the most interesting road trips I've been on in a while; it was more like a traveling party.
Kalsec was interesting, but they wouldn't let me take any pictures of the facility. The hop extracts that they produce--while they are reason that MGD tastes like it does--don't truly make up for the flavor of actual hops in my opinion. We were able to smell a few of the extracted oils from Hallertauer hops, and the pine aroma seemed to come out more than anything floral. Did you know that there are over seven hundred flavor and aroma compounds in hops that give them their unique varietal flavors?
We also had the opportunity to tour two locations of Bell's Brewing, the oldest craft brewery east of Boulder, Colorado. I was able to take a few photos of their operation, and I'll post them soon. Their brewmaster and whole crew were very hospitable, and even gave us some free beer for the trip home. For a brewery with only regional distribution, their setup was probably the largest that I've seen so far on this trip.
I'm trying to check out as many of the local pubs and taprooms as I can, and a few of them are really something. The Map Room on Armitage has thirty taps, with most of them Belgians. They even serve you a beer in its specific glass, and the macros are few and far between. After a Beamish stout, a Lagunitas Saison de Sonoma and a Duvel, I was ready to call it a night.
I'll be without any trans-state field trips for a while, but I'm trying to see if I can make it up to Wisconsin some weekend to pick up some New Glarus beers.

2007-09-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just about getting into the swing of things here, and the first three days of class have been an overview of the entire malting process by Mary Jane Maurice of ADM Malting. Did you know that roasted barley is toasted so thoroughly that keeping it in the roasting drum longer than necessary could reach the combustible temperature of the barley and cause an explosion? That's the kind of appreciation I'm hopefully developing for maltsters in general.
Today, Mike Babb of Kalsec introduced us to the chemistry of hop extracts, and why he thinks that brewers should consider using them over whole and pellet hops. I'll be touring the plant on Monday, so I'll try to keep an open mind and hopefully get to sample some of the beer made with these synthetic alpha acids and hop oil extracts. They supposedly are what enable Miller to use a clear bottle without skunking, but they don't bring a lot of the varietal hop flavors with the bitterness.
I've so far tried both a Chicago dog and a deep dish pizza, and I've been impressed by both. For a place with sales tax, the food is relatively affordable. I'll cut this one short because I'm studying for a test tomorrow of all that I've learned so far, or at least the important stuff.

My First Impressions

2007-09-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

After finally fixing my internet access so that I can post, I have to say that it's been a busy first couple of days for me in Chicago. My small apartment is on the corner of the fourth floor of my building, but the window view of alleyways gives me a greater excuse to spend less time there then I absolutely need to. My class at Siebel has forty two students (their largest class ever), with most of them in the twelve week program that includes the trip to Germany. The few guys that I hang out the most with are from Madison, Des Moines and Milwaukee, and they have been helping me to acclimate to an entirely different variety of microbrews that I've tried few of so far. There is a large contingent of the class from Grupo Modelo, hopefully to learn how to develop better recipes. Amazingly, there are even a couple of guys from Turkey in the class. The impression that most of the students would be experienced brewers is simply a facade- about two thirds of them are homebrewers with no commercial experience.
The coursework for the first two days involved learning more about barley and the malting process than I ever thought that I would need to know, but it is thoroughly interesting nonetheless. Since the Siebel classroom is located at the Goose Island brewpub, we have access to our own Bierstube where we have freely available beer from a couple of kegs during lunch and immediately after class ends at five in the evening. What other class not only lets you drink but also provides the beer?
The best story I have so far is what happened tonight- the VP of Siebel recommended a bar called the Lion's Head Pub to a few of us, so we checked it out after class. Three out of five of us ordered Stella Artois, St. Pauli Girl and Sierra Nevada pale from their limited selection, only to get a nasty buttery diacetyl flavor in all of them. The aforementioned instructor showed up at the place a few minutes later, and we began to give him our honest opinion about his recommendation. He explained that the first pint could sit in an infected tap line, and the rest of the beer could taste normal as long as it doesn't come in contact from the infected line for very long. Needless to say, we informed the waitstaff that their tap lines were infected and needed a good cleaning.

I just found out a couple of the breweries that we'll be visiting on the European study tour for the last two weeks of the course- Stella Artois, Cantillon(!) and a few in Germany. So far, I have every reason to stay excited.

Introduction

2007-09-04T12:09:00.001-07:00

Hello.
My name is Dan, and I've been homebrewing with my dad and his friends for about five years while finishing my history degree at Portland State University. After learning a lot about making beer and becoming more interested in the brewing industry in general, I have decided to dive in head first and sign up for the International Diploma in Brewing Technology program at the Siebel Institute of Technology this fall. As the premier brewing school in the United States, Siebel has been educating brewers since 1872, making it extremely important to the success of the American brewing industry over the past century.
When my friends, family and brewing buddies found out that I was going to Siebel, I felt that I had no choice but to share my experiences over the next three months in blog form. I'll be in Chicago for seven weeks at the Siebel Institute, where I'll be attending classes forty hours a week and exploring the city in my free time. After that, I'll be flying to Germany for the final five weeks of the program: Three weeks at Doemens Academy in Munich and two weeks of travel to different breweries and malt producers. I'm really excited about the next three months of my life and hope to relate many of my experiences through this blog. I'll be leaving on Sunday for Chicago, so check back next week for my first impressions of Siebel.