The transition from beer enthusiast to brewmaster

I was sixteen when I decided to become a brewer. Well, maybe we’d have to go back further to when I joined my mother on take your kid to work day. She happened to work at Waller Street Brewing managing their social media/barrel program, so at just thirteen I learnt about the process of brewing from grain to bottle in their small square footage. They have since closed, but it was there that I told my mom: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could go to school for this?” and she answered “Well, you actually can.”

Fast forward a few years later, on a family trip around southern Ontario. My craft beer loving parents were once again visiting every brewery they could manage. We’d grown accustomed to this over the years, but one stop was unique in the Niagara region. My parents had taken us to a college that had started teaching people about brewing and brewery management.

Jokes were thrown around: “Oh wouldn’t it be awesome if you got into this.” “We could retire and open a family brewery.” At the time, I was in high school, why would I care? I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to college. We went in and my parents started picking out things to try, while I looked around. I’d always loved brewing equipment and there was a little window that peeked into the teaching area. Kinda neat. As my parents were chatting away with the bartender, they started asking about the program and I found myself listening in. It actually sounded fun. I started asking some questions about what it would take to get accepted and the bartender explained that it was fairly simple. You needed a science, an english and a math credit. Plus, she added, I would have a slight advantage as they were looking for more women to participate in the course. I was sold.

I quickly made a plan to get into the program. I was accepted to start in September 2022, which made me nineteen and the youngest person in my class. Now, at this point I drank beer, but only really light beers or sours. I mostly liked the culture and community within the industry. The idea that I could create beverages and a space that would bring people together was my driving force to this career path, fueled by the idea that by just entering into this space I could be creating change. What the bartender had told me resonated; brewing was and is still a primarily male oriented industry and I could be a small part of the work being done to make a difference.

During my time at Niagara, I designed and brewed six original recipes for various occasions. My first beer was an orange coconut wheat beer written for the pairing competition Caps, Corks, and Forks. It was well received, but I was only getting started. The grand finale was my Project Brew. We hosted our winter beerfest, and I created an ancho pepper and cacao Wee Heavy. It was a slightly sweet, rich beer with a slight bite to warm you up and ended up receiving second in judging at the event.

I found that brewing is the perfect mixture of art and science. It combines the creativity of product design with the practicality of biology and chemistry in a way that fulfills every desire you could have in a career. Add that fulfillment to professors that have practical experience in the field plus a true care for student success, as well as an institution with an overwhelming amount of opportunities provided to connect with the industry, and you have a program that has produced some fantastic brewers and brewery owners.

By the end of the program, I felt ready to take the industry head on. Going in I knew I wanted to open my own brewpub one day, but you can’t do that right out of the gate. Best to learn with someone who’d been established first. So I started looking for somewhere that would foster the love I had for this from the beginning. Community matters to me, so I was looking for somewhere that would have a strong support system backing it. But honestly, it’s hard to find a brewery that doesn’t. So on top of that I wanted somewhere that would foster my creativity as much as possible. “The best flavor is new” is something my professor Nate Ferguson would often say, and a point of view I believe, so I knew I wanted a place with a similar mindset. With many successful brewers in Ontario already, it seemed like a competitive job market. So, I jumped on an opportunity that came up; a brewing position in Northern B.C. Now, with the endless support of my Ontario peers, my brewing journey begins.