As you have seen from previous post, I have been fortunate enough to have the experience of taking a class at Sudwerks via the U.C. Davis brewing program. Next on my bucket list was to attend a class at the oldest brewing school in the United States... Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago. Established in 1872, Siebel has a long history with the craft beer industry and many brewers choose to go through their program which utilizes classwork at their location, online, and satellite campuses in Germany.
I attended the Sensory Panel Management class, a course designed to teach individuals the importance of quality control, sensory analysis, and proper testing methods. An often ignored field, quality control and sensory panels are vital tools to successful breweries to prevent off flavors from going to market and also "flavor drift" which is the gradual change of a beer's acceptable flavors due to a lack of control and testing data.
Each of the three days we attended class we had a different instructor, each highly respected in the field. On day one we focused on training methods for flavor analysis with Mary Pellettieri, the Business Operations Manager at MillerCoors. On day two we covered methods of training and assembling a sensory panel (including proper facilities and incentives) with Lauren Salazar, Sensory Specialist from New Belgium who also works with blending and development of their sour beers. On the final day we went over specific types of test and statistics with Suzanne Thompson, the Analytical/Sensory Services Manager with MillerCoors.
I look forward to November when I will be attending the Master Of Beer Styles & Evaluation course instructed by Ray Daniels (creator of the Cicerone program) and Randy Mosher (author of Tasting Beer).
This short video will give you a little bit of the local sights as well as some video from inside Siebel. Enjoy...
Trip to Chicago / Siebel Institute from Tim Decker on Vimeo.
