Beer brewing major at Eastern Michigan is training next generation of biermiesters

YPSILANTI, MI – If you thought organic chemistry was a dry subject, think again. A pair of Eastern Michigan University professors are taking dryness out of the subject in more ways than one.

Professors Cory Emal and Gregg Wilmes are the academic wing of a partnership teaching students and local Detroit residents the art of beermaking.

Emal and Wilmes’ run EMU’s “fermentation science” major program, which partners with economic development nonprofits, restaurant owners and brewers from Detroit and Ann Arbor on a comprehensive initiative to find and teach the next generation of “biermiesters.”

The demand for workers with beer brewing expertise is growing exponentially, Wilmes said, so public-private partnerships like the one with EMU are vital for the industry.

“At some point, the market is going to get saturated,” he said. “Our perspective is that what’s going to make the difference for a lot of places is whether they can make consistently excellent product, and our feeling is that by bringing brewing science into the fold is going to ultimately make the difference between the breweries that succeed and those that kind of dwindle away.”

Michigan as a state produced more than 900,000 barrels of craft beer in 2019, making up 3.5% of the national total and ranking 10th nationally in craft beer production.

Read more: Michigan beer production trending up, see how much was made and sold here in 2019

Both Emal and Wilmes were also looking for fun avenues to teach organic chemistry. Emal’s brother owned a small brewery in Nebraska, while Wilmes has utilized his fermentation knowledge in various hobbies such as cheesemaking and pickling. Beermaking became a way to make science fun, Emal said.

“Students come for the beer or stay for the organic chemistry,” he said with a laugh.

Since fall 2016, more than a hundred students have taken fermentation science courses, Emal said, including dozens in the introductory courses and classes of 10 to 12 in the more advanced labs.

In order for the program to grow, it required help. Enter Midtown Detroit, Inc., an economic development nonprofit in Detroit, and 3Mission, an Ann Arbor restaurant venture firm. Jon Carlson, one of 3Mission’s principals, wanted to start an apprenticeship program to increase diversity in the brewing industry, Emal said.

That apprenticeship initiative is now a 12 to 14-week opportunity for those interested in entering the industry. The program utilized Nain Rouge Brewing Company in Detroit as an area for students to train, as well as Detroit residents with at least a high school diploma.

“(The apprenticeship program is) reserving half of the seats for Detroit residents,” Emal said, “and thinking that’s going to be a really good way to to get typically underrepresented communities into this field.”

Midtown Detroit owns the property where Nain Rouge is located, paid for all the brewing equipment and was integral in providing funding and logistical support to make the program go, said Midtown Detroit President Susan Mosey.

“We were motivated to create a workforce program that we’re doing here in the city,” she said, adding that grants from DTE and other companies help fund scholarships for low-income Detroit residents.

While other universities across the state offer fermentation science or home brewing classes, the push to make beermaking a real profession through private partnerships is what makes the program unique, Mosey said.

For Emal and Wilmes, they have already seen results in their young program. In this year’s U.S. Open College Beer Championship, they finished fourth nationally out of 11 colleges. This included two gold medals and one silver in specialty categories that saw students make a kolsch and a pumpkin ale.

Those beers are complicated from a fermentation standpoint, so it showed off how advanced the students can be in the EMU program, Emal said.

“We really didn’t want them to make pumpkin ale, because things can go wrong in so many ways,” he said, “but they they rose to the challenge on both of those and brought us gold medals.”

The accolades are nice, Emal and Wilmes said, and the push towards a career in brewing is vital. However, the two chemists are just happy to get more folks interested in science.

“It’s been a good way of capturing students who might otherwise not have considered themselves potential scientists,” Wilmes said. “Yes, you really can use this to find what you’re interested in and your love of the science will grow from there.”

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