Make beer, taste it, clean up. What's not to like?
In our new 'Maine at Work' series, writer Ray Routhier pays a visit to Portland's Shipyard Brewing Co.
By RAY ROUTHIER, Staff Writer
October 12, 2009
Ray Routhier takes a break to help as a tester of a recent batch of Shipyard Export Ale at the brewery in Portland.
John Patriquin/Staff Photographer
Mark Boissonneault, right, senior brewer at Shipyard Brewing Co., shows Ray Routhier how to take a beers temperature.
John Patriquin/Staff Photographer
EDITOR'S NOTE
TODAY marks the beginning of "Maine at Work," a new weekly series that takes an interactive look at iconic, visible or just plain interesting jobs done by folks in Maine. Reporter Ray Routhier will shadow the worker, report what he sees, and try his hand at some of the job duties himself.
IF YOU'D like to suggest a job to be explored in this feature, please e-mail Ray at rrouthier@pressherald.com or call him at 791-6454.
THIS WEEK'S JOBTITLE: Senior brewer, Shipyard Brewing Co., Portland
WORKER: Mark Boissonneault, 31, of Casco
HOURS: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday
DUTIES: Measuring and moving ingredients, operating brewing equipment, quality control, some tasting and lots of cleaning up.
SURPRISING FACT: The position calls for a good deal of math, calculating the amounts of ingredients and figuring in variables like "bitterness values."
PERKS: Employee allotment of two cases of beer per month.
PORTLAND Mark Boissonneault is standing about 20 feet from a giant brick tank of boiling beer as wide as your average one-stall garage, but taller and there's a roaring flame, visible and audible, underneath.
Boissonneault, a senior brewer at Shipyard Brewing Co., has been kind enough to let me follow him around during part of his 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. shift.
But at the tank, he stops me cold.
"It's really too dangerous to bring you over there. You never know what boiling beer might do," said Boissonneault, 31. "I was standing up there (overlooking the tank's opening) when a freak air bubble popped up and the hot foam got me on the arm, right between my glove and my shirt sleeve. It wasn't too bad, basically like a bad sunburn. But it could have been worse."
I went into Shipyard brewery thinking that brewing beer must be all fun and games, as any beer fan would logically do.
I found out that besides the dangers of boiling liquid, slippery floors and low-hanging beams, the job entails lots of climbing up and down stairs, unloading 50-pound bags of grain, lots of waiting for ingredients to be ground or water to be boiled, and good old-fashioned clean-up with a long-handled broom.
And, to my horror, there was math.
Boissonneault showed me his recipe sheet for the day's batch of Shipyard Export Ale, and I instantly had a flashback to high school algebra. There were numbers with six or seven numerals after the decimal point, and equations where "bitterness values" are assigned to various kinds of hops. (The bitterness value is calculated by multiplying the alpha acids by the weight of the hops, by the way.)
This is way too much math, I thought. I need a drink.
Luckily for me, Boissonneault later checked on the sugar content of a batch of Pumpkinhead Ale that was fermenting. He kindly let me take a few swigs of it out of a mixing cup.
There are times, Boissonneault says, when it is necessary to taste a batch to make sure everything's coming out according to plan.
"We get paid to make beer; how bad can it be?" he said, hoisting a 50-pound bag of pale malted barley.
"We're sort of like custodians. A lot of the work is just cleaning up after the beer."
3,100 GALLONS OF BEER
Boissonneault knows there are lots of people especially young males who think it would be cool and fun to work in a brewery. He's seen new guys come on at Shipyard and be full of energy and enthusiasm at the start of the day, but exhausted and a little brain numb at the end.
He says it takes about three to four weeks before a new brewer can do most of the job alone. "They'll still have questions, but they can work on their own."
It's also a more solitary job than one might imagine. There are only two or three brewers working at a time, although brewing shifts go around the clock. Boissonneault is responsible for brewing one whole batch of beer from start to fermentation. The beer then ferments for three days and goes through various conditioning processes for another four days. A brewer at Shipyard will make about 3,100 gallons on a single shift.
When Boissonneault came in on a recent Tuesday, the day I followed him, he had a pallet of ingredients for that day's batch of Export Ale waiting for him. During his shift, he'd prepare ingredients and equipment for the shifts following him as well.
The brewing process takes place on two floors, so Boissonneault was constantly going up and down stairs. Since most of the dozens of tank-like vessels used for boiling and fermenting the beer are taller than some small houses, there are ladders and catwalks to allow workers to get to the top of them. When you first walk into the "cold room" for instance, where fermenting happens, it looks like a slightly smaller version of one of South Portland's oil tank farms.
The brewing process on Boissonneault's shift began with the mash grains and water. For that, I helped him lift eight or nine 50-pound bags of wheat and barley onto the rim of a little hopper, four feet off the ground. Then I borrowed Boissonneault's box cutter, cut the plastic bags open and spilled the grains into the hopper.
We also weighed out smaller amounts of ingredients on a scale and added those. At one point, Boissonneault ground some hops into his hands and smelled them to make sure they were right for his brew.
After about 90 minutes enough time for the starches to be converted to sugars the contents of the mash tank are transferred into the giant boiler for an hour of boiling. Later, the in-process beer goes to the fermentation tank.
At some point, Boissonneault operates a device that transfers the heat from the hot water in the kettle and replaces it with cold water so the hot water can be used for another session of boiling.
A FEEL FOR THE PROCESS
There was a lot of checking on things during the shift. Boissonneault had to eyeball the mash as it was being mixed to make sure it was not clumping up. He checked the temperature of a batch of beer at one point to make sure it was cold enough to ferment properly.
"A lot of this is getting the feel for how it should look or smell," Boissonneault said. "They say cooking is an art and baking is a science, and this is sort of a combination of those."
Boissonneault should know, as he worked in restaurant kitchens before becoming a brewer. He grew up in Arundel, and as a teen, got a job at the upscale White Barn Inn in Kennebunk. Chefs there encouraged Boissonneault to attend culinary school. He was accepted at Johnson & Wales University, a prestigious culinary program in Rhode Island.
After graduation, he got a job in the kitchen at Federal Jack's, a Kennebunk brew-pub owned by Shipyard. After a while, there was an opening on the brewing side, so Boissonneault took it.
But cooking degrees are not necessary to become a brewer. In fact, the folks at Shipyard don't really have a set of specific experiences they look for when hiring a new brewer, said Alan Pugsley, the master brewer.
Shipyard wouldn't disclose what it pays brewers, but was willing to talk about what makes a good brewer.
"We look for someone with an interest in beer who is enthusiastic and has a strong work ethic. Prior qualifications aren't as important to us as someone willing to learn and wants to be part of a team," Pugsley said.
He added that making beer is probably not as "glamorous" as some might envision. "About 40 percent of a brewer's time is spent brewing, and the other 60 percent of the time is spent cleaning."
Sadly, it sounds like "interest in beer" is probably not enough to do this job.
If it was, we'd all be brewers.
At least I would.
Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at: rrouthier@pressherald.com
