Craft Beer Goes to College

Photo credit: Eising Studio/StockFood

Inspired by the craft beer movement, some colleges are offering courses devoted to the sudsy libation, in turn helping transform the drink’s former reputation as second fiddle to wine and spirits. At Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York, students can even minor in craft brewing starting this January.

Joe Conto, director of the school’s Hospitality, Resort, and Tourism Management Program, designed the program. Lucky for post-collegiate beer lovers, Conto shared some lessons with us, no registration fee required.

Beer making is relatively simple. “It’s water, hops, barley, and yeast,” Conto told us. “It’s how those products come together that makes beer ‘beer.’” Differences in taste and style come down to how each of those four elements is tweaked: the strain of yeast, the degree to which the barley is toasted, the type of hops, and the ratio of water to other ingredients.

Pale ale is the best style for first-time home brewers. Unlike lagers, which must be brewed between 45 and 55 degrees, pale ales, a popular style made with lightly-toasted malt, ferment just fine at room temperature, between 68 and 72 degrees. Another check in pale ale’s column? It has a more complex flavor profile than lager, which, counterintuitively, means that a few mistakes won’t turn catastrophic. “Lager has a less complicated profile, and because of that, mistakes can be tasted more easily,” Conto said.

There’s a perfect glass for every beer. Knowing the right way to serve beer is nearly as important as the beer itself. For instance, “there’s a different glass that we use for a wheat beer as opposed to a stout,” Conto said. A wheat beer is typically served in a Weizen glass with a large mouth, which accommodates the beer’s characteristically large, snowy-white head. A stout is generally served in a nonic, which looks like a pint glass with a bulge beneath the rim. The shape helps prevent sticking when the glasses are stacked and also helps the glass avoid nicks, hence the name “nonic” (no-nick).

Ancient breads may have been little more than instant beer. Bappir, “a twice-baked barley bread” from the ancient Sumer civilization that dates to as early as 2600 B.C., ”was like an instant beer tablet,” Conto said. Suds-loving Sumerians could simply drop the tablet in water, let the mixture ferment, and voilà! One of the earliest beers known to man.

Intrigued? Conto hopes others are, too. “We used to think beer was lower class and wine was higher class,” he said. “But in reality, beer has so many variations and has such a long history. I’ve always thought it should be lauded more than it is.”