🔒Future brew masters: Sacred Heart finds increasing demand for state’s first brewing certification program

Sacred Heart University in Fairfield has tapped into the burgeoning craft brewing industry in Connecticut, creating the state’s first brewing science certification program.

The 11-month program began in May 2020, offering 22 credits with coursework both online and in person. The curriculum includes training in the science of ingredients, recipe design, and fermentation, as well as classes in quality control, operating and managing a brewery, sanitation and safety, and brewing law and legal compliance.

At $650 per credit, the program costs $14,300, not including books and materials, and you must be at least 21 years old to register.

The program is offered through St. Vincent’s College, which SHU acquired in 2018. St. Vincent’s offers associate degrees primarily in allied health careers, but decided to add the brewing science program to be “responsive to the needs of our community,” said Maryanne Davidson, dean of St. Vincent’s College.

“The average age of our students is 27 years old,” Davidson said. “We have adults coming in for re-skilling, upskilling, and we want to provide programming that would meet workforce development needs.”

Brewing boom

The craft brewing industry’s needs in Connecticut have changed dramatically over the past decade.

According to the Connecticut Brewers Guild, the state had just 16 breweries in 2011; 10 years later, there are 121 breweries here, with more on the way.

Brewers Guild Executive Director Phil Pappas said breweries in Connecticut employ about 2,000 people, and if you include distributors and related jobs, employs about 6,000 overall.

The COVID-19 pandemic stunted the industry’s rapid growth, Pappas said, but the sector still ended 2020 with a net gain of nine breweries.

He praised the SHU program, noting those interested in a career would try brewing beer at home or working part time at bars or craft breweries to learn the trade.

“This is the first program of its kind in Connecticut to provide a more traditional educational route,” he said.

Skilled help wanted

SHU cites more than 30 breweries in Connecticut that have agreed to offer internships and/or facility tours, and many have expressed interest in hiring graduates.

John Rehm, director of brewing operations at Two Roads Brewing Co. in Stratford, said his organization employs 130 people, including 28 in production.

Two Roads takes pride in training new employees, he said, but would prefer people with experience.

“It takes 18 to 24 months to be a competent, entry-level brewer,” he said. “That’s a long time to invest in somebody as an employer.”

Jason Sobocinski, of Black Hog Brewing in Oxford, said his company employs seven people in production and 16 overall.

He said SHU’s program makes sense, since the state has so many breweries with more on the way. He said his business partner and Black Hog’s master brewer, Tyler Jones, learned his craft in a program at the University of California-Davis.

“To have something that’s on par with that right here in our backyard, it gets me excited,” Sobocinski said.

The UC-Davis program, founded in 1971, is the country’s oldest. A search online found more than 20 schools, including the University of Vermont and SUNY Schenectady County Community College in New York, offering similar programs.

Brewing “is definitely a science, but it’s an art too,” Sobocinski said. “A brewer’s job is to make really great and consistent beer, no matter what you’re brewing.”

Mixing beer and science

That’s something Geffrey Stopper understands. An associate professor of biology at SHU with a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology, Stopper is the director of the Brewing Science program.

That’s not a surprise; after defending his doctoral dissertation at Yale University, he told the Ph.D. committee he “was going to start a brewery,” he said.

His science career got in the way, but Stopper already was well versed in brewing and fermentation. His father was a winemaker in southern Pennsylvania; Stopper was a home brewer and spent more than four years as an assistant brewer at BAR New Haven, known for its beer and brick-oven pizza.

He teamed up with Kirk Bartholomew, Ph.D., assistant chairman of SHU’s Biology Department, who created a lab to introduce basic biology concepts to students through making wine. Stopper said they “realized we could teach a lot more of our biology concepts in an engaging way by making beer.”

As they worked on that, Vinny Cataudella, the associate registrar for St. Vincent’s College at SHU, was traveling in the Midwest when he found a brochure for a brewing science program. He brought it back to Connecticut, and Davidson agreed it was worth creating a similar program here. That idea was combined with the work of Stopper and Bartholomew to create the new program.

Teaching from experience

Through his industry connections, Stopper arranged to collaborate with Two Roads; the company and SHU built a fermentation lab at the brewery’s Area 2 facility. For the program’s first cohort, the lab could accommodate 24 students; they began with 18, and 13 graduated, Stopper said.

For the second cohort that began in May, SHU acquired additional fermenters to allow the class to accommodate up to 30 students; 27 have enrolled.

“It’s clear the word is spreading about the program,” Stopper said.

In addition to Stopper, faculty includes Rehm; Dana Bourque of Firefly Hollow Brewing Co. in Bristol; Michael Teed of Black Pond Brews in Danielson; and Gordon Whelpley of the Twelve Percent Beer Project in North Haven.

Having instructors from the industry is a plus, Stopper said.

“I can teach students the academics of it all day long, but you can’t replace having teachers with practical experience,” he said.

Two scholarships are available for the program. One, established by the New England Brewing Co. (NEBCO) in Woodbridge, is the NEBCO African-American Brewing Scholarship. The other is the Athletic Brewing Co. Scholarship, provided by a Stratford company that produces non-alcoholic beer.

The scholarships seek to help diversify the industry, Stopper said.

“If you go into a brew house, it doesn’t look like a representative cross-section of society,” he said. “We can be a pipeline into the industry, and by putting people of color in prominent places it will make other minorities feel more comfortable to go there.”