Beer Scholars, Go Forth and Brew!

The sun is shining over our fair campus, our pretty trees can’t decide between pretty flowers and new leaves, the whole campus is gearing up for Fred Fest weekend and I’m on my deck drinking my brother’s homemade dark German lager – life is good. But while most of campus gears up for a fun weekend listening to bands in the sun (and hopefully not the rain), I will be writing papers, building presentations and grading, grading, grading. It’s been a while since our last chat about beer, Fredonia, and you might be wondering why. No, I haven’t skipped the country and moved to the Hofbrauhaus in Germany, my fantasy though it may be. The reality is, the English MA program has been whipping me into shape and there has hardly been time to stop and smell the (hop) flowers.

For a while, I had decided to bring “The Week in Beer” to a close; for a while I contemplated summing everything up and leaving you all with some bit of wisdom about the fight against big companies for quality beer. I just can’t do that. For one, there is still so much left to say that my closing article would have to be 5,000 words long – and I don’t have time to write another one of those! However, I have learned valuable lessons about time management this semester, and what is certain is that until we integrate a Zymurgy major into the sciences or a World Beer Studies major into the humanities, beer is secondary to study in a college student’s life.

As incredible as that statement must read coming from the campus’s top beer zealot, it must be so or beer, not success, will be our tradition. Therefore, next year, this column will appear every other week instead of every week as it now does. This arrangement will give me more time to taste my beer, swill it and ponder it, all before I have to tell you all what I think about it. That seems much better than saying goodbye and it will be so: as long as I am here, I shall write about beer!

All that said, there are ways to study beer, so let’s make sure you know about them before you go too far with majors that have nothing to do with barley malt and hops.

The American Craft Brewer’s Guild offers a 28-week long intensive program in Craft Brewing Apprenticeship, twice a year, for candidates, according to the Web site, who:

• Intend to establish a career as a working brewer
• Feel the need for practical brewing education and training as part of a plan to open a brewery of their own
• Wish to advance to a higher position in the brewing industry.

Apprentice brewers in this program study at a real craft brewery, usually one on either the East or West Coast. The July to December term this year, for example, takes place at Harpoon Brewing Company in Windsor, Vermont.

“We have participating brewers in every State,” brags the guild on their homepage. In this long semester, students learn practical brewing science and engineering in a small class size, get five weeks of real hands-on experience in a Guild-approved working brewery, get brewery and laboratory experience at a brewpub or microbrewery, and receive job placement assistance upon graduation. It looks like a pretty thorough program.

Not just anyone can waltz into this program, though. “While a degree is not required for acceptance to this program,” explains the Guild, “successful completion of at least one college level math course and a college level science course in the subject areas listed below are required. “Applicants must be able to provide transcripts documenting the math requirement [pre-calc or algebra] and at least one additional subject area.” Those subject areas include Biological sciences, including microbiology, cell physiology, or biochemistry; chemistry, which must include organic, inorganic and analytical; Physics, specifically in heat and mechanics or process control and engineering, focused on topics in mechanical or chemical engineering.

Those readers currently majoring in one of these areas may witness light bulbs going off at this point. If you love beer like I do, but you know that you must pursue a career in science, perhaps attending such a brewing school would be the way to integrate your two loves. Also, let this presentation not undermine our programs here at SUNY Fredonia; the prerequisites section stated that basic math and at least one of the other areas were required. Furthermore, this program is exclusive and the classes are booked until the January-August semester of 2012, so a BS from our lovely college may be what is needed to be a cut above other applicants.

Now, say your interests lie more in communication, or critical, more language-based areas of study. There are plenty of opportunities for such a student, if also obsessed with beer, to tie together some or all of these areas under the banner of beer. Possibly the greatest example of an accomplished beer scholar and author is Garrett Oliver.

Garrett Oliver is a great many things. A graduate in Communications and Broadcasting from Boston University, he began brewing as an amateur when inspired by beers he tried while in England for a year. He then began working as an apprentice for Manhattan Brewing Company in 1989 and was appointed Brewmaster by 1993. That didn’t mean Oliver would waste his degree, though. He is now the author of two books: The Good Beer Book, co-written by Timothy Harper and published in 1997 by Putnam/Berkley and the 2003 Harper/Collins release, The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food. This book explores in detail the subtle, critical practice of pairing beer with food, and in doing so, won a 2004 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Book Award.

On top of these achievements, Oliver is now the Brewmaster at The Brooklyn Brewery, is a judge at the Great British Beer Festival and makes countless public appearances advocating for good beer. He gives talks at tastings, restaurants and festivals, writes for beer and food-related periodicals. He has appeared on, according to his Web site, “NPR, CBS,CNN, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, WB, The History Channel, The Travel Channel, A&E, Emeril Live, Sarah’s Secrets, Roker on the Road, Bobby Flay’s Food Nation and Boy Meets Grill, CBS’ Martha Stewart Living, Fox & Friends, the WB Morning Show, and Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Garrett’s profile was featured in Gourmet magazine, which referred to him as ‘a passionate epicure and talented alchemist.’ A recent two-page profile in The New York Times Dining Section referred to his ‘brilliant’ ability to match craft beer with great food.”