What's Brewing Winter 2019

COVER | breweries in profile
Continued from page 13
Is this lab a real Brewery?
Every Friday from 1:00-6:00 PM during the school term, you can
visit the KPU Brew Lab at Kwantlen’s Langley campus and buy
yourself a growler fill. It’s a bit odd to drive up to a university for
that weekend beer run, but it’s a great way to support the students
and find out if their beer is really good enough to win all
those trophies.
To get to the pouring station, you’ll walk by the brewhouse. With
its columns of tiny fermenters that accommodate multiple brew
teams, it resembles an alien laundromat. Given its modest capacity
(2 hl NSI system), some might question whether this lab could
properly be called a brewery. The answer: go look at the awards
shelf.
Building a teaching brewhouse isn’t the same as establishing your
typical science course. As Dean Betty Worobec recalls, “Our first
class began September 2014. I really thought the brewery would
be ready by then. But we had to do a lot of adjustments because
we couldn’t get into the brewery until February. So that first class
was different than the ones that came after.”
Delays in construction and launch. Sound familiar? If nothing
else, that should convince anyone familiar with craft industry
start-ups that KPU Brew Lab is a real brewery.
Student at work
During that building phase, the team
continued community outreach, meeting
many of the brewers Dominic knew
at places like Parallel 49, Coal Harbour,
Main Street and Strange Fellows. He and
Nancy also toured Delta’s Turning Point
Brewery (aka the Stanley Park label, now
owned by Labatt) as well. After the program
was underway, there were student
field trips to places like the Molson brewery
on Burrard, when it was operational.
That highlights something in KPU’s approach
that differs from the other BC
institutions that have explored the beer
education space. For instance, the Pacific
Institute of Culinary Arts (PICA) offers
a craft beer appreciation course, and
in 2020 Okanagan College will do the
same.
Then there’s Simon Fraser University, who actually beat KPU to
the punch when a Science of Brewing course kicked off at its Surrey
campus in January 2014. That effort was followed by a wider
Craft Beer and Brewing Essentials program targeted at homebrew
hobbyists and working industry personnel looking to brush up
on their knowledge. The name of the program reflects the obvious
current appeal of learning “craft” brewing, so the program wasn’t
conceived to train people who might want to work in a large-scale
commercial operation.
KPU wants no such limitation. Instructor Martina Solano Bielen
says, “Within the first month, some students might decide, ‘I
would like to work at Molson. What can I do to get there?’ Then
there will be students who would never want to work at Molson.”
Nevertheless, the goal of KPU’s two-year program is to educate
14 WHAT'S BREWING WINTER 2019-20
At the growler fill station
people—with hands-on training—to the level that they would be
seriously considered for work anywhere from an esoteric craft
outlet to a giant international brewery. For instance, one KPU
grad was hired as production manager at Granville Island, which
is a subsidiary of Molson Coors. That’s a respectable job.
The understanding that brewing jobs aren’t only out there in
fashionable micros probably stems from the experience of the
faculty, with BC Craft Brewers Guild leader Ken Beattie originally
coming from Molson and Sleeman, Nancy More from Labatt
and Guinness, and marketing instructor Stan Wong previously at
Labatt. They are all invested in the BC craft scene, but they also
recognize the technical excellence of many brewers at the Big Beer
level...and they’ve helped shape a program with the chops to vie
with the ones that inspired it in a relatively short time.
In fact there is one category in which KPU has indisputably
outdone the competition, thanks to their 2017 designation as a
Recognized Program by the Master Brewers Association of the
Americas (MBAA), for meeting its “approved guidelines and
learning outcomes.” As of this writing, only a dozen other US institutions
have met the necessary stringent requirements, leaving
KPU as the first (and so far only) MBAA-approved school in Canada.
That potentially makes KPU tough to compete with.
On that note, it so happens that there’s currently a notice on the
SFU brewing website that their brewing program is undergoing
a review “as part of SFU’s program renewal cycle.” It states that
“We are taking this opportunity to offer all courses within the
program one last time as we explore the program’s future.”
Sama Ghnaim, Associate Director of Craft Beer and Brewing Essentials
at SFU Continuing Studies, confirms that it’s too early
to comment on the future of the program. However, she notes,
“We’re proud to have played a role in supporting the local craft
beer community. Our instructors have helped our students to network
and connect with the brewing community, helping them to
accomplish their goals and become part of this tightly-knit family.”
About Kwantlen’s recent success at BCBA, she opines, “Awards
like this shine a spotlight on the craft beer community and what
it is capable of.” Yes, they do; they probably also demonstrate the
return on investment a serious teaching brew lab has provided
KPU.
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