[Hutch Kugeman] The school has been developing new
programs growing into a full-service
culinary college. But there was not a ton
of beer education going on, so a chance
to actually put in an operating brewery
that would function as a business just
like our restaurants, was pretty cool.
This brewery was built in partnership with
Brooklyn Brewery who helped design the
brew house itself, donated and supplied
the brewery, and helped design the
curriculum for the class. It is a brewing
class, not a beer class. So it's not just
beer history and appreciation - we can
cover that in other classes. So it is
more about operations and how beer is
made and the operations of running a
brewery. So we get students from all the
different bachelors programs in here. We
get culinary science students, we get
students in our entrepreneurship program,
which is cool for me because it makes
for better, more interesting
conversations. You know, culinary science
students love to talk about fermentation
and what's going on and how the yeast is
producing flavors and how we're
controlling that. The entrepreneurship
students are more business focused so we
talk about efficiency and making money
and all those things that go into an
operating business. You know, I've been a
brewer for a long time. It's really
exciting time to be part of craft beer
in New York I think we have more growth
ahead of us. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago,
we had to teach people what a brown ale
was and what a porter was and what IPA
was. Now we have to get them to teach
them about New York beer - that they
need to be drinking not just using their
you know their local dollars to spend in
their local towns, but supporting New
York breweries. You don't need to buy
beer from Oregon, you don't need to buy
beer from from California, like we have
the great beer here. People just have to
get out there and try it.
