Overview
3 or 5 Day Course (individual day bookings available). Various locations.
Brewing Skills Development is an ideal course for those with basic brewing experience who are seeking a deeper understanding of fundamental principles and to perfect skills in daily operations.
The five-day programme is delivered at various locations around the UK with each day focusing on a different sections of the brewing process. Individual day bookings are possible.
By the end of the course, you’ll be confident in managing your own operation, solving typical production problems and have a keen knowledge of how important quality control can be in improving your product.
You will receive a certificate of attendance for use in your brewery quality assurance programme.
Here are the subjects we cover:
Day 1. Brewing Liquor | Recipe Formulation | Malt and Malting | Sparging
Day 2. Hops | Boiling and Cooling | Yeast | Fermentation | Maturation | Packaging
Day 3. Beer Spoilage | Microbiological Assessment | Quality Control | Due Diligence
Day 4. Professional Flavour Evaluation | Tasting Techniques and Beer Profiling
Day 5. Practical Yeast Management
The class size is limited to 12 places.
Access to our online learning platform is included to assist learning.
The course fee is £750 for all 5 days or £495 for 3 consecutive days. Individual days are £225.
A £100.00 non-refundable deposit is required to secure a booking. Price includes VAT.
When booking please email richard@brewlab.co.uk to confirm which days you would like to attend.
Topics
Day 1. Processes and Raw Materials
This session provides you with knowledge and skills to assess raw materials and construct recipes for a wide range of beer styles including managing liquor treatments. Mashing and sparging are fundamental stages in brewing and are outlined with examples for mash and lauter tun operations. Data from your own mash system can be used to illustrate efficiencies and best practice.
Topics:
- Brewing Liquor
- Recipe Formulation
- Malt and Malting
- Milling and Mashing
Day 2. Processes and Raw Materials
This session provides you with knowledge and skills on hop selection and management in boiling. It covers how to optimise your boiling for clarity and flavour balance. Yeast is an essential ingredient for successful production and details of management and assessment are outlined with reference to live examples and case studies for different beer styles. Finally, preparation methods for cask, keg, can and bottle packaging are detailed in the light of shelf life targets.
- Topics:
- Hops
- Boiling and Cooling
- Yeast
- Fermentation
- Maturation
- Packaging
Day 3. Quality Control
This session provides an extensive and practically focused outline of developing a quality assurance programme to provide consistent products and identify faults before release. Examples of beer spoilage are used to illustrate poor practice along with identification by flavour analysis. The session will give you skills in microscopy and microbiology to allow you to develop control over your products and a due diligence programme to minimise losses.
- Topics:
- Beer Spoilage
- Microbiological Assessment
- Quality Control
- Due Diligence
Day 4. Professional Flavour Evaluation
Our Professional Flavour Analysis programme provides progressive, long-term development of staff skills in tasting techniques and application. Starting with an on-site introduction to basic techniques and terminologies, the programme then enables staff to hone flavour identification skills and apply them to your quality assurance system.
Topics:
- Tasting procedures and assessment of individual sensitivities.
- Beer flavour terminologies and recognition.
- Beer profiling and style identification.
- Fault identification.
- Taste panel operation.
- Individual certificates of attendance provided.
Day 5. Practical Yeast Management
Take a day to deep dive into yeast management and understand how to work with liquid cultures in a brewery. This practical workshop will demonstrate how to store, handle and pitch liquid yeast so you can maximise flavour profiles and reduce costs. We’ll also get the microscopes out so you can see yeast on a cellular level, evaluating how healthy your yeast is and identifying common contaminants.
Topics:
- Yeast Selection
- Yeast Features and Characteristics
- Yeast Handling and Problems
- Yeast Storage and Maintenance
- Yeast Culturing and Assessment
- Microscopy, Viability and Yeast Counts
- Wort Composition and Health Effects
- Fermentation Flavours and Contamination Faults
