Tuesday: I still feel horrible, but I came here for a reason so I made it class today. We studied Materials of Construction, and Insulation Properties with John Mallett from Bell's Brewery. This was hands down one of the best lectures in the whole program for me. I like this kind of material and John Mallet's a brilliant guy.
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| Hose cutaway showing bad seams |
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| A pinched hose section, that would be hard to clean |
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| Someone was not cleaning this properly |
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| Various polishes of stainless steel |
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| A pipe with a bunch of different welds (the second from the top is the best) |
We also studied Statistics today, which was kind of interesting, but pretty dry. At the end of the day there was a Styles Tasting of Belgian beers. I went home instead of doing the tasting. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love most Belgian beer, it's just that one, I had already tried all the beers they were pouring, and two, being sick I couldn't smell or taste anything anyway. Oh well.
Wednesday: I started to feel a little better today. We studied Compressed Air Systems, Brewery Process and Design, CO2 Collection, Refrigeration Principles and PID Principles. The weather was absolutely fantastic today and therefor difficult to sit in a basement classroom but I managed to make it all the way through the day.
Thursday: We studied Steam and Condensate Systems with Gary Troop. He was the most lively instructor yet. It was pretty much impossible to space out. After 5 hours of talking about steam and boiler systems we did a packaging related Sensory tasting. Then we did a taste test of 7 unknowns. Basically we had 7 cups of Budweiser and we had to figure out what was wrong with them or whether it was just a control. I got 5 of 7, not bad for someone who had a head cold and only one working nostril.
Friday: We took our test in the morning. I didn't do as well as I did on other tests, but I was gone for a lot of the lectures that the test covered. I still got a B and still kept an A average for this part of the course. We also had a few hours covering Process Control and Automation. At this point a lot people in the class were pretty spent and this can be pretty dry material. I thought our instructor, John Hall did a good job though at the end we had to rush and didn't cover everything. He did make an interesting point about automation in relation to craft brewing and basically said " automate the easy, mundane tasks so you can free up more time to concentrate on the art of it". After that we had Randy Mosher in to talk about Beer and Food Pairings. We then did 8 different food and beer pairings. Some of which were mind blowing. Some of my favorite's were The Bruery's Saison Rue with Capriole Farms goat cheese. Also North Coast Brewing's Old Rasputin with chocolate truffles...yum and.....
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| Stone Smoked Porter with Gruyère. |
Saturday: Sharif took off and I went had brunch with Jay, who then took over Sharif's room so he could get out of the hostile he has been staying at. The rest of the day was a pretty lazy one. For dinner we went to the Old Town Social. This place is incredible. We had Belgian oysters, smoked almonds,deviled eggs, assorted olives, 4 awesome cheese, and a charcuterie with homemade soppressata, summer sausage, chorizo, and one other that I can't remember.
Sunday: Another lazy day, mostly getting stuff ready to go to Germany...I can't wait. One more week.
We had dinner at Hopleaf, which consisted of musscles cooked in Wittekerke white all. They we fantastic. To drink I had a Cantillon Rose De Gambrinus, Urthel Saisonniere, a Goose island Pepe Nero, and finally an Allaghash/De Proef collaberation called Les Deux Brasseurs. After that we watched a lighning storm from our rooftop deck. Not a bad way to end the week.
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