Looking for a career that offers good pay in a fast growing industry where daily on-the-job beer drinking is not forbidden but compulsory? Starting as early as September 2010 Niagara College may help make that dream come true for two dozen people a year.
Photo by Daniel Munoz/Reuters
Photo by Daniel Munoz/Reuters
That is when Niagara, known internationally for training winemakers, launches a new brewmaster and brewery operations management course, complete with its own on-campus brewery and maybe even a patch of ground dedicated to growing hops and yeast.
Current plans are to turn out 24 graduates a year who not only understand the microbiology and chemistry of making great beer but have mastered the mechanics, sales and marketing aspects as well, says Steve Gill, manager, winery and vineyard, at Niagara College.
Graduates of the two-year diploma course are likely to be snapped up faster than free Muskoka Cream Ale by Ontario's 35 craft breweries or the estimated 200 others across the country, plus the 60 brew pubs that now provide comfort to beer lovers coast to coast.
"There is a tremendous demand for trained brewers," says Gary McMullen, chair of Ontario Craft Brewers and president of Lakes of Muskoka Cottage Brewery Inc. in Bracebridge. "Craft beers are the fastest growing segment of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's beer sales.
"Right now we account for 5 per cent of sales and 20 per cent of all jobs in Ontario breweries. Existing breweries are expanding all the time and new ones, including brew pubs, keep popping up.
"Today if we want a qualified brewmaster we have to either train them ourselves or go abroad. I have three assistants; two I trained here and one is from Taiwan."
Cameron Heaps, president of Toronto's Steam Whistle brewery, says he had to go to the Czech Republic to find his brewmaster.
"These days anyone who makes beer in his basement calls himself a brewmaster," he says. "What you really need is someone with a formal education and training not just in making great beer but how the entire operation works.
"I think this course is an absolutely wonderful idea. Tell students to come see us when they graduate."
The idea of lifting brewing to the same level Niagara College has raised wine-making may seem a natural progression. The college has a two-year wine and viticulture diploma course, which has taken in 35 students a year since 2000, a one-year course started last year in winery business management, plus its own 37-acre vineyard and a cottage winery that produces 4,500 cases and 16 different varieties of wine a year.
At last year's Cuvée, the industry's equivalent of the Oscars for Ontario wines, four graduates took top prizes. Moreover, teamed with the school's hospitality faculty, the winemakers-in-training also supply their own reds and whites to the college's critically acclaimed restaurant.
"What we want to do is parallel our success with wine and start training brewers who can then not only meet the need across Ontario and even Canada and the United States but also can work with local and regional restaurants to create brews that go great with various locally produced foods," says Mr. Gill.
But what may seem like a no-brainer needed an outsider to kick-start the process.
Jonathan Downing, who runs a one-man consulting company called Downing International Brewing Consulting out of Oakville, is a man dedicated to craft brewing and brew pubs. He started making his own beer in the family home in Birmingham, England, at age 14.
Trained at the United States Brewers Academy he came to Canada in 1986 to launch Ontario's first brew pub at the Atlas Hotel in Welland. Since then, by his own account he has started, managed or consulted on more than 100 brewing operations.
"I looked around and what I saw was too many untrained cowboys making beer," he says. "I thought maybe Niagara College could do for beer and it has done for wine making so I talked to my accountant and he knew the accountant for Niagara College and he introduced me to Steve Gill and others."
It took two years of discussion but the brewmaster course is now on its way. Mr. Downing has been retained as a consultant and is scouring the area around Niagara-on-the-Lake for a suitable site for the school's new brewery.
Mr. Downing shares with Mr. Gill, Mr. McMullen and Mr. Heaps a vision of hundreds of local micro-breweries, using locally sourced ingredients to create distinctive beers that are the perfect accompaniment for locally grown fruits, vegetables and meats.
"We might make fruit flavoured beers in Niagara as they do in Belgium," he says. "Wheat beers like German hefe weiss might be another."
Mr. McMullen is already doing just that in Bracebridge. This summer, on alternate weekends, his Muskoka Brewery is partnering with local restaurants to show how different beers go perfectly with different dishes: his dark ale with a stew, his hefe weiss with fish and his cream ale with bison burgers.
Starting salaries will not leave graduates crying in their beer either. Mr. Downing says an assistant brewer or a brewer in a brew pub can expect between $30,000 and $40,000 to start while brewmasters at large operations can command $100,000 plus.
"I know six breweries looking for people right now," he says. "These graduates will be snapped up in no time."
Special to The Globe and Mail
