- [Narrator] Support For
Kalamazoo Lively Arts
is provided by the Irving
S. Gilmore Foundation.
Helping to build and
enrich the cultural life
of greater Kalamazoo.
- Partnering with
Bronson Healthcare,
Kalamazoo Valley Community
College has embedded itself
in the community,
promoting health, careers,
and entrepreneurship.
See how the culinary
arts are making a wave
here in the Kalamazoo community.
- Okay Brian, let's talk
about the students first.
What brings a student
to your program?
- Well there's a big
need for education
in the brewing world as
this industry keeps growing.
It's a consumable product.
The higher sciences need
to be involved also,
and so students come here
to gain more knowledge.
They also just come here
to learn more about beer.
A lot of people just
enjoy home brewing
and are trying to take
it to the next level.
- Tell me a little more about
the actual artistic aspect
of making beer.
- Well with brewing
there's a whole variety
of different malts,
hops, yeasts even,
that go into making beer.
There's a lot of
different components
that can create
different flavors,
depending on how you produce it.
So when it gets to the
creative side of things
you can have chocolate malts,
you can have
different base malts.
Your yeast will give
you fruity flavors,
or sulfur flavors
or clean flavors.
Your hops, they really
impart different aromatics
in piney, or citrusy,
or earthy, or woody,
I mean there's a whole
bunch of different things.
And don't even get me started
on wild beer production.
Now that's when you're
actually inoculating
different organisms,
lactobacillus, pediococcus,
that actually can
give it a sour flavor,
and give like descriptors
like horse blanket,
or sweaty feet to a beer.
People love it!
Brewing has a very creative side
that people are really starting
to get into contact with.
- Okay Brian, we're in
the brewery lab here,
and we have a couple of student
creations during the process
and we're gonna take some tests,
but we gotta do
some things first.
- Yep, yep.
So during fermentation
we're taking sugar,
yeast is fermenting it
into CO2 and alcohol.
And so while that's
happening we're lowering
our sugar level and
raising our alcohol level,
so it'll give us different
readings on our hydrometer.
Basically the hydrometer is
taking the density into effect
on what's going
on with the brew.
So what we'll do, is we'll
take the smoked porter
that our students made,
and we'll degas it.
- You'll show me how to do that.
- Yep, that's removing
the CO2 solution,
so you dump it back and
forth about 30 times
is typically what I do.
- 30 times?
- We don't have
to do that though,
that's a little
excessive for this one.
The fermentation's finishing
up pretty much right now.
- Am I doing it well enough?
- Yeah, yeah, it's perfect.
You're not making a mess.
I usually pour it all over
myself when I'm doing it.
So once you're done,
that's probably good.
- Am I ready?
- You'll take that,
carefully dump it in.
- Tell me when.
- That's probably good.
- Okay.
- We'll take our hydrometer,
we'll drop it in nice and slow
and at the end give
it just a little turn.
- Like right now?
- Yep.
- Okay once that settles down,
it's got a little bit
of foam up there still.
We'll blow it off,
and we'll look at our reading.
So if you'll look, 1.00,
that's the specific
gravity of water,
that's your very top number,
and so you just count down
the amount of lines there
and it looks like we're
at about 1.015 gravity,
specific gravity.
So that tells us we're at
about 3.75 degrees plato,
so this beer is pretty
close to being done.
If we were at zero plato,
it would be complete water
at that point.
There would be no sugar,
no sweetness left in it.
So we're pretty
close to finishing up
the fermentation on this.
- And what do you see
the students doing
with this type of degree.
- We have such a
diverse student group
that's in this program.
You know we have some people
just wanting to get better,
but some people, you know
we have multiple students
that plan to open
their own brewery,
we have multiple students
that just want to
get into a brewery,
want to work it the environment
because it's a pretty
cool place to work.
- So John, let's talk
about the program itself.
Is it primarily for the
students to get a career,
or is there many reasons for it?
- Yeah there's many
reasons for our program
for our students.
This is an Associate's
Degree in Culinary Arts
in Sustainable Food Systems.
And it's that last half that's
really unique to our program,
where students actually learn
where their food comes from,
how it's grown, and
all the safety aspects
from the farm through processing
and into the kitchen and
onto our guests table.
- Why is it called
Culinary Arts?
- Well it's an arts program.
There's a base of
science and physics
that make up what cooking
food is all about,
but it's the art of
managing all that
and bringing in the ingredients
in such a unique way
that makes it an art form.
- Now what about this one?
- This is a completed beer.
This is an IPA that was brewed
by the Saturday
group of students.
It's very hop forward, they
went pretty crazy on it.
It's very good though.
- We're gonna try it.
- If you'd like to try it...
- Yeah I would.
I've always wanted to do
a spit take on camera so.
(laughs)
- Now at school here
we teach moderation.
(laughs)
- Good!
- We're not drinking full
pints in every sample,
about three ounces of
beer every single hour.
That's...
- Wow!
- Well not every single hour,
maximum of that per hour.
- Where do I sign up?
(laughter)
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
- What do you think?
- That's not bad at all.
That's very good.
Very nice.
- Cool.
- What flavor is this one.
What's in it, what did
the students come up with?
- So this is a very
hop forward IPA.
They use a very,
very light malt body
so you get more of the
hops showing through.
And they used a whole
mess of hops from Amarillo
to Centennial, to
Wakatu, Sorachi Ace,
these are hops that come all
the way from New Zealand,
that we use for brewing.
So it has a very, very
definite nose to it,
you can really pick up,
if you take that smell
and you can really
pick up the difference
in the hops there
versus the taste.
- Well I give them a
passing grade for sure.
- Sweet!
