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Oh the joy of college life: frat parties, co-eds, a band playing in the living room of your dilapidated house, and of course, more beer drinking than the average liver can handle before it develops jaundice. Many college students embrace the craft beer culture at their university, but few students actually major in making craft beer. The undergrad Fermentation Science program at Oregon State University in Corvallis has not only helped students become master brewers, but has also contributed to the craft beer industry since 1996. With all of OSU’s hidden influences on the SoCal craft beer industry, I decided to hit the books and register for an interview with head professor Tom Shellhammer.
The Fermentation Science Program includes enology and viticulture, an artisanal cheese program, and of course, brewing. The program lab has an end-to-end brewhouse that includes a two-barrel brewing pilot system and a packaging line. Shellhammer teaches all the courses in beer and brewing, and for the students’ final brewing class, they research a beer, develop a recipe, and conduct a brewing analysis. The beer is then presented to the class during a final presentation where they have a blind taste test with a commercial beer of the same type. I bet this class has several non-roster students showing up on presentation day. The students actually make high-quality beer and the program has had several brewing execs come through the lab that were very impressed with the student-made crafts. I can imagine an Anheuser-Busch’s equivalent to Mr. Slugworth from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory coming through and stealing some of the students’ recipes.
The lab is not bonded as a commercial brewery because the students can only do research, and the beer that they brew cannot be taken out of the lab. Instead of loading up the crafts into multiple beer bongs for a day of severe binging, the beer has to be poured down the drain. When I heard Tom say this, I had to quote Darth Vader in possibly the worst line of dialogue in the whole Star Wars franchise: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” The students do have an end of the quarter “gathering” where they drink each other’s creations. No frats are involved so no need to picture an epic party a-la-Animal House.
Unfortunately, there are also no brewpubs on campus. On rare occasions, OSU can have their beer on campus at social events, but the bureaucracy involved to permit this can be tiring and complicated. To avoid the loss of perfectly good beer, the students have formed a “Food and Fermentation” student club. The students use the lab’s equipment to make wort, which they take home to boil and ferment for some homebrewin’. This club sounds way better than the OSU Crochet Club: the “Beaver Weavers.”
The program lab also performs research on hops and other brewing-related topics. The USDA has had a hop breeding program on campus since 1934 that has created several of the popular hop varieties that IPA drinkers have grown to love, such as Nuggets, Cascade, and Willamette hops. The next time you sip that dry-hopped west coast pale, you can smile and say to yourself, “Thank you OSU.” Tom’s work is not in breeding, but in nonvolatile and volatile contributions of hops to bitterness and how bitterness quality relates to beer. I don’t exactly know what that means, but if it has to do with making beer taste better, then God bless you Tom.
The OSU lab has a big influence on the local craft industry, as well as on a national scale. Breweries such as Bridgeport in Portland run their pilot beers at Tom’s facility because Bridgeport does not have a pilot system. Students from the program have gone on to be brewers and researchers at Boston Beer, Deschutes, Bridgeport, and Widmer; even LA brewery Golden Road’s own Cole Hackbarth attended OSU.
If you’re like me, you probably want to pack your bags to start this program next fall. Then reality sets in because you realize you’re in your thirties and you’ll develop separation anxiety if you leave home for more than two weeks. No need to worry, because in addition to their Bachelor degree, OSU also offers Beer Industry Continuing Education Courses in Beer Sensory Testing, Brewing Analysis Course Series, and a Craft Brewery Startup Workshop. With these extension courses, you can learn from the world-renowned beer master Tom Shellhammer while still partying like the world-renowned beer drinker that you are.
