The Hop-Edition

By: Brady Glubish First-Year Brewmaster Student This past week, I had the pleasure of attending the annual Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting, hosted at Olds College. The purpose of the Committee is to bring members of the Alberta brewing community into conversation with college administration, faculty, and students regarding the Brewmaster program at Olds. Our round table discussion included an update on the industry from those directly immersed in it, and the expectations of employers upon student graduation. An overarching theme of the meeting was the drastic increase in breweries opening over the last few years here in Alberta, and the impact this new access to beer has had on a formerly established market. Statistics from AGLC indicated that 123 breweries are now licensed in Alberta, an increase of 22 from the previous IAC meeting. The sentiment was that the increase in businesses has greatly diluted the quality of beer t...

By: Adam Bereznicki First-Year Brewmaster Student Like many of my classmates and fellow craft beer enthusiasts, I find myself often casually scrolling through social media, searching for new beer releases from a multitude of my favourite breweries. Recently, however, I came across a picture that stopped my scrolling in its tracks. It was an advertisement for a new beer, of course, but not just any new beer. The label on the can featured a swirling background of sky-blue and lilac, with bold red lettering highlighted by a unicorn and a rainbow. As gaudy as the appearance of the packaging was, more shocking were the contents of a small glass next to it – a hazy, orange liquid filled with swirling motes of glitter.  Yes,  glitter . To be honest, even I had a brief flash of giddy excitement when I more closely inspected this sour ale (brewed with fruity breakfast cereal and edible glitter). After all, drinking craft beer so often means looking for new and exciting produc...

By: Keaton Erickson First-Year Brewmaster Student Since the earliest day of the rise of the craft beer industry, there was one word not even the most Urquell-loving brewer would utter to their sales and marketing team:  Lager.  The unjustly villainized lager was, for many years, the bane of the craft beer scene. Much as Hip-Hop was an answer to Disco, overblown IPA's were the answer to American style adjunct lagers. Over the past five or so years, however, brewers and consumers alike have grown tired of Bourbon barrel pop tart double dry hopped farmhouse breakfast session ales. Our palates have been over-saturated, and we crave the beer equivalent to a great pizza when your lazy ass is too tired to make dinner. This was predicted early by Joshua Bernstein, one of America's most prominent beer journalists in a 2017 article he wrote for Bon Appetit. Now as we are well into the new year of 2019, we are seeing his predictions become reality. More and more custom...

By: Blake Maitz First-Year Brewmaster Student Gone are the days of walking into your local liquor store and having the painstaking decision of choosing between the delicious, but not so creative offerings, of mega beer suppliers such as Budweiser, Bud Light, Kokanee and Coors Light. Yes, it is, at its core, the kind of beer that most people think of when you mention the name of the worlds favourite drink to them. But times are changing. And now, when you say the magical word 'beer' to even a passer-by, they should beam with sheer excitement!    From merely thinking of all the weird and beautiful ways creativity in beer has exploded in the last decade, it's enough to make one positively giddy. Indeed, we are in the golden era of innovation in the brewing world. Crafting the kinds of beers that would be unrecognizable to most, say twenty-five years ago, has become the norm and just another week for some breweries. The skills and knowledge master brewers have thes...

By: Austin Webb First-Year Brewmaster Student An interview with Jasmine Makinga,  on her experience being the lead Brewer on Blindman Brewing’s International Women's day brew, Sister’s before Misters DIPA. It seems like almost every brewery is brewing and releasing a beer for International Women’s Day. For the most part, these brews are to raise awareness and interest about the  women working in the brewing industry. Yakima Chief Hops, the largest grower-owner network of hop producers in the United States, has been releasing a Pink Boots hop blend annually since 2018. The mixture supports the Pink Boots Society, an international organization supporting women in brewing. In 2019, 438 breweries ordered the custom blend. Overall, fourteen countries participated in a brew using the YCH Pink Boots blend. At this point, there is no denying that this is a growing initiative To get some behind the scenes insight into how one of these International Women's Day brews go...

By: Gustavo Kramer First-Year Brewmaster Student In Brazil, behavior towards beer consumption has been changing. Prior to the 2000s, there were almost no options for people to consume different types of beer as the market was dominated by big corporations producing American Lager’s brewed with adjuncts. Those who wanted to drink something different had to seek out the very few establishments selling expensive imported beers. However, the new millennium saw a boom in craft brewery options meaning customers are now able to discover a multitude of styles, including the formerly unknown 100% malt-based beer. As customers started to seek out this particular beer style, the biggest corporation in the world AmBev, subsidiary of Anheuser-Bush InBev in Brazil, saw an opportunity involving malt-based beers and the potential for a niche market. AmBev invested years of research in developing a 100% malt-based recipe and in 2018 they launched two new brands in Brazil made with 100% malt: ...

By: Elliot Johnson First-Year Brewmaster Student, 6th cohort Elliot Johnson is a first-year brew student, currently working at Legend 7 Brewing in Calgary, Alberta. 

By: Josh Kostelnyk First-Year Brewmaster Student Mainstream beer is almost universally viewed as a masculine beverage. Various ad campaigns in the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s were specifically targeted towards men. Somewhat understandable, given that market research showed that men comprised about 90% of their market. Naturally, after throwing huge amounts of money into these campaigns, advertisers were successful in their efforts. Curently, our industry is presented with a rather unique opportunity. Today's younger generations (myself included), seem to be less influenced by significant marketing campaigns. We are turning away from large chain stores/brands in favour of locally produced or even artisanal products. We seem to respond more to commercials representing inclusivity and community rather than something that is portrayed as a status symbol. Herein lays our path to greater market share. While macro has an advertising image to rehabilitate, we rogue, i...

By:  Casey Staple First-Year Brewmaster Student I find that a constant topic and debate in the craft brewing industry is, when is it ethical to sell a soured contaminated beer? It has been known that some small local breweries try to bluff it through the markets to make a dollar and salvage what may have been lost in production. It is very understandable as to why an operations manager, or even an owner, would do this. Who wants loss? No one new to the industry can afford to dump beer because of a little tartness in the batch. There are bills to pay, and in a situation of being in a current state of catch up because of sold out product, how can a manager justify empty shelf space in the busy, booming, cutthroat industry we are in today. As professionals in the Alberta brewing world, this is a legitimate problem we may face at some point. How we deal with this crossroad is up to us as brewers and managers. I believe that the first step towards releasing a consistent qualit...

By: Taraya Middleton First-Year Brewmaster Student, 6th cohort Olds College Brewmaster Students at Origin Malting & Brewing for a collaboration fundraiser, 2019. The Brewmaster and Brewery Operations program has been teaching and training upcoming generations of inspired brewers since 2013. And although there have been changes and updates to programming needs since the beginning, up until now there has been nothing as amazing at what the current cohort – number 6 – will be able to experience.  In the last semester of the two-year program, students will come full circle with their brewing and beer-making education by learning the History of Brewing and Beer. This class investigates the earliest recorded origins of beer, and with it, the evolution of the various roles within the industry that have been played by individuals, organizations, and governments.  The History of Brewing and Beer class is focused less on the history of traditional styles of beer, ...

By: Wyatt Langille First-Year Brewmaster Student 6th cohort Wyatt Langille is a first-year student in the 6th cohort, currently working at Belly Hop Brewing in Red Deer, Alberta. Upon graduating in 2020, he will open Detention Brewing in Rosalind, Alberta, located in the former Rosalind School (1954 to 2013). 

By: Taraya Middleton First-Year Brewmaster Student The rolling prairie farmlands of central Alberta are a lovely shade of golden straw brown mixed with plots of green. The land is slowly coming out of the long winter hibernation and farmers are working long days to prep the soil for seeding. It would be best if you cared about the state of Alberta's farmlands because nearly half of the yearly Canadian export of 620,000 tonnes of barley comes from Alberta farms. The impact of all this hard work is showcased by brewers both local and international, at the micro- and macro-levels.  It's early May, and heavy rain, snow, and hail have moved through the Calgary-area around noon, tracking east towards Strathmore. For those in the farming industry, it's another Alberta weather pattern that requires patience as it will eventually blow over. It might push seeding schedules back by a few hours, or days, but hopefully not much longer. For everyone else, well, it’s a minor ...

By Jasmine Makkinga First-Year Brewmaster Student A brief write up and background on the Blindman Brewing Double India Pale Ale produced for the 2019 Women's Day Brew. Back of Can Descriptor ABV: 9.2% IBU: 55 OG: 1.077 FG: 1.010 SRM: 5.4 On March 8 th , the Pink Boots Society organizes a very special international collaboration brew day. By drinking this beer, you're supporting women's success in the brewing world, as well as raising funds for powerful influential charities. This year, we are donating to the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter as well as to scholarship programs for women in the brewing industry.  A team of sixteen women joined forces and brewed this bright, hoppy Double IPA. Double dry-hopped with a special blend chosen specifically for this event, each sip will be as bold and uncompromising as the women who crafted it. Brewery Notes (Panel consisted of trained and experienced Blindman Brewing staff members)  Visual: golde...