With season two of Flights we were looking for ways to expand the scope of the series and tell different stories about the BC craft beer scene. With new breweries popping up every month, we started to wonder: where do you find new brewers?
Many of the industry’s best and brightest come from the home-brewing world where they developed their skills and honed their craft before pursuing a career in brewing. Others attended one of the few brewing programs in Canada or went South in search of training. Today there’s another option for prospective brewers and it’s the subject of our newest episode: KPU’s Brewing and Brewery Operations Diploma Program.
After spending so much time interviewing successful, established brewers it was very interesting to sit down with students working towards that same goal. It was also intriguing to learn how the program was developed with the guidance of local brewers, brewery owners and the craft brewing guild to create a program that works both for students and for their future employers. From the very start, KPU understood that it was necessary to find out what BC brewers needed from this relatively new workforce.
Exploring KPU’s brewing program was a different challenge for us. There’s a rhythm to each episode of Flights centred by interviews with brewery owners and brewmasters and moulded by footage of the brewery and tasting room. This episode was more exploratory. We moved between the state of the art teaching brewery and the laboratory where the students were testing their beer. We spoke with professors and students and even had the chance to sample some of the beer they’d been working on. We were given the opportunity to spend a day in the life of a KPU student and see what they were working towards.
As in the craft beer industry as a whole, we discovered an incredible diversity in the students of the program. We interviewed people from all walks of life with backgrounds in science, hospitality, commerce, the military and more. The common thread in each person was a passion for beer and a curiosity in the science behind it. KPU’s brewing program is so valuable because it takes students beyond beer, covering every aspect of the brewing process and more, from molecular biology to sensory training, from recipe development to packaging and distribution.
As a society we often overlook the care, thought and craftsmanship that goes into the products we enjoy everyday. With Flights our goal was to show where our beer comes from. Today we get to answer a new question: where do our brewers come from?
Without any further ado, here’s episode four at KPU. Cheers! - James Ryan
