Day 5 - The 6th Sense (January 31, 2014)

And you thought I'd be drinking beer. Guess what's in the "Bitter" cup? Caffeine. Yum

Yup. Drinking chemicals and doing math. That's beer school. To be fair, beer did follow.

The first half of the day today was going over yesterday's engineering problems. Thankfully, Ian the TA from Sac State, was there to help us through them. And we did get through all of them.

Finally went out to lunch today instead of sitting and working or reading during lunch. And it's the first time in my life I felt compelled, no obligated, to have a beer with my working lunch.

In the afternoon, we began Sensory Science. Which means how to we analyze beer using our senses? Sound easy? It's not. Trust me. You don't want a cup of sweet, sour, bitter (caffeine) and astringent (think about swallowing an extra strength aspirin and it gets stuck in your throat).

Day 4 - There's No Crying in Brewing (January 30, 2014)

Today was tough... again. It was all engineering. So at first it was basic metric conversions. No problem. Then the ideal gas law, conservation of mass, fluid statics, Newtonian fluids and viscosity, laminar vs turbulent flow and the Reynolds number, working with the friction factor and changes in pressure. At some point in there, I got totally overwhelmed and felt like I was behind the whole time. The professor was really fast and I was barely able to write everything fast enough, let alone think about it. There was a moment when I had a little talk in my own head about how much it was sucking and how frustrated I was getting and how stupid I was feeling. Then I thought I would cry and that would make me feel better.

Two things happened then: I remembered that I'm there ultimately for fun. This isn't because I have to. This isn't because my parents are making me or paying for it. This is because I want to and I love it. So I decided to get over it, relax and enjoy the challenge. I decided to trust that if I work hard and have patience, I will get to where I need to be when I need to be there.

The second thing that happened is that I decided THERE'S NO CRYING IN BREWING.

Day 3 - Into the Chemistry Deep End (January 29, 2014)

So today was all Dr. Bamforth, Charlie, as he asked us to call him. The best thing is he's a riot. I think I had a smile on my face the whole time. I truly am looking forward to every thing he says. The bad, well not bad, but challenging thing is the chemistry. It started off easy and I was feeling super confident because I knew it all. But it got hard... fast. We hit organic chemistry of amino acids, buffers, oxidation and reduction, alpha and beta closed ring forms of glucose, betaglucens vs starch, competitive vs non-competitive inhibitors for the active site on the enzyme for the substrate, etc, and it all got a little squishy, to say the least. But it was all great fun, truly. Time to go read!

Day 2 - The Hidden Perk to Brewer School (January 28, 2014)

After day 2 I could tell you about: the history of beer, the four phases of beer making, 2 row vs 6 row barley, enzyme vs extract, aleurone layers and endosperms, betaglucens and starch, viscosity, modification, steeping and kilning, germination in detail, the importance of the Kolbach index, diastatic power and the fine-coarse difference, milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, and cooling, grist size, Darcy's law, the protein rest and mashing off, the importance of differential pressure in the grain bed of the lauter tun, the Merlin vs the Stromboli, light and the skunky flavor in beer, bottle vs cans, harvesting of hop vines, the art of fermentation, yeast and sensory qualities (flavor) vs mechanical properties (flocculation), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ale yeast) vs Saccharomyces carlsbergensis or S. pastorianus (lager yeast), the importance of vitamins related to yeast in the biochemical pathways of amino acids, oxo-acids, aldehydes, and alcohols, secondary fermentation and achieving maturation, carbonation, filtration and clarification, and the importance of packaging...

OR, I could tell you that beer school is the first place I've ever been with a long line at the men's room and no wait at the ladies room. :)

Day 1 (January 27, 2014)

Today was the first day of the Master Brewers Program. It was a pretty basic first day: meet the professors, fill out basic paperwork, write a large check for tuition, get a big stack of books (see picture), go over the syllabus, take a class picture, etc. The fun part is the classroom is over Sudwerks Brewery in Davis, CA. So it helps make it feel more casual. But the gigantic stack of books reminded me that there is a huge amount of very technical information that I have to learn in a rather short period of time. The professors seem like a lot of fun and the atmosphere is friendly. I can imagine becoming good friends with a lot of the people in the room. There were only three females (including myself) out of a total of 36 students. I was happy to see two other ladies in the room with me. Everyone introduced themselves and after hearing a little about their backgrounds, I started to feel a little bit better about my preparation. There were a lot of people in the room with very little brewing experience. Most people came from far away, including: Venezuela, Columbia, Argentina, Japan and Norway. I think there were only two people in the room, including myself, that got to drive from home everyday and go home every night. The best part was when there was free beer with lunch. It was the first time at school or work when I was expected to drink while on the clock! Time to start reading. Click on the link below for an introduction to The Pope of Foam (one of our professors) and a great overview to the brewing process.

 The Art & Science of Beer with Charlie "The Pope of Foam" Bamforth

This was the stack of books waiting at each person's seat.

It Begins! (January 26, 2014)

Today is the day before everything changes. I've been a middle school science teacher for the last 12 years. Tomorrow I begin beer school. Officially, the Master Brewers Program at UC Davis. It's a long story to explain how I got from teaching middle school science to starting beer school and I'll share that in another entry.

The purpose of this is to loosely document the Master Brewers Program and what that experience is like and to keep my family, friends and coworkers in the loop as I take this journey. I'll try to blog at least weekly, but hopefully more often. Wish me luck!