The Hop-Edition

By: Ben Christian Former Olds College Brewmaster Student Berlin: the capital city of Germany. A city with a distinct history and a unique culture; there really is nowhere else like it on earth. Of the forty-one countries and countless cities I have visited, Berlin stands alone as my favourite city on the planet. It was a no-brainer to commit to spending my summer there. The E3 Berlin program offers three opportunities and allows students to pick and choose what they would like to do. The first option is a German language course, the second is an internship, and the third and final option is an academic course.  Being bilingual, the chance to begin learning another language, was alluring. In fact, the German language course was the main reason I participated in the E3 program. The course was incredible! Our teacher, Helga, was an energetic, engaging, frizzy-haired marvel! Perhaps the best teacher that I have ever had. The days learning German were long ...

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: ...