Week 7

Monday: Week 7 is my final week in Chicago. My time here has flown by. I really can't believe I have almost been here two months. Today the class was split into two different groups. One was doing a Case Study, and the other a segment called The Business of Brewing. In our groups we were further split into smaller groups of 3-4 people. I was in the half doing The Business of Brewing.

Tuesday: Today we wrapped up theThe Business of Brewing. Basically what that is is a game of sorts where your group is given chips and a game board and you have to essentially keep a "brewery" afloat by borrowing money and producing beer lines and marketing/advertising them. Mostly it is a budgeting drill and a lesson about the woe's of borrowing money. My team did alright for awhile but in the end we did not win...oh well. Later me and my friend Fred who lives here in Chicago and I, went to an old Chicago standby called The Twin Anchors. I guess Sinatra used to hang out here when he was in town. They had a ridiculous plate of ribs and a halfway decent beer selection. It was a cool place to check out.

Wednesday: The half of the class that I am in started our Case Studies. We were again further split into groups of 4 and given a scenario to which we were to come up with a solution. We were given access to the Siebel library as well as encouraged to do plenty of internet research. On Friday we will all have to do a Power Point presentaion of our findings to the whole class.

Thursday: Today we finished our Case Study and and ran through our presentation. Our group was given the scenario that we were a large brewing company looking to build another brewery in a place where hydroelectricity is cheap and the government encourges us to use it. Oil and gas are very expensive in this scenario, but that is all our company is used to using. We needed to come up with a way to run a large all electric run brewery. In the end we came up with running electrode boilers and the Merlin wort boiling system. We also recomended using alternative energy sources to suppliment the hydroelectric power. All in all this turned out to be a fun project and I am on a team with some great guys.

Friday: We gave our presentations and got out early. A group of us went down to Piece Brewery for lunch then headed over to our apartment for a bit. We went to Local Option, had dinner and a few beers and generally had a great time.

Rick Nelson from Cheap Trick has part ownerdhip in Piece Brewery. Here is one of his axes'

Saturday: The day was mostly spent finishing packing and getting the apartment move-out ready. We got back to Siebel around 3:15 and hung out for awhile. After a  final meal at the Goose Island Clybourn we hopped on a bus and headed to the airport for a 9:50 flight to Munich.

Sunday: After a pretty comfy plane ride in which I managed to get some sleep, we landed in Munich at about 1:30 in the afternoon. The school had van cabs waiting for us, so we pilled in and they took us to our apartment building and others to their hostels. We got settled in and a couple of us decided to get on the train and check out where the school was. We found it and also found an Italian restraunt that had some pretty good pizza and Augustiner Wiess beer...all in all not a bad week. Tired and ready to brew some beer.
Prost!!!!