We're here to make beer that enhances people's lives

Beer school started today.

Technically, the program is called the "International Diploma in Brewing Technology," a 12-week intensive training course on all aspects of brewery operations, spanning two continents and now in its 17th incarnation. Day to day, we study the minutiae of beer production: today's principal focuses barley farming and steeping, for example, occur thousands of miles and (potentially) many months before the barely--then malted--makes its way to a brewhouse to become beer. A brewmaster who knows where his ingredients come from and how they come to be is, of course, both a better brewer and a better community member.

To spice the material up, as professors are wont to do, folksy anecdotes and "did-you-knows" abound. Some fascinating: ergot, a common pest on grasses and grains, had a role in the "lunacy" of some of the women accused in the Salem witch trials and continues to impact crop yield today. (LSD is a derivative of ergot, so its hallucinogenic reputation is well founded). Others, that flat-bottomed steepers are more air efficient than conical ones, take a true beer geek's palate to appreciate. But at day's end, this is beer school.

Even Mary Jane Maurice, our master maltster and first instructor, would agree. Mary Jane is one of 87 people in the world, and the lone American, to have passed the Malting Association of Great Britain Diploma exam. And yet, her lecture began with an image far from the technical slides that we'd see later in the day. Her opening image, Edouard Manet's realist painting Au Cafe from 1878, in which a man and woman relax casually at a bar and enjoy a beer. "This is what this is about," she said, "we're here to make beer that enhance people's lives." Indeed.