Expanded manufacturing program opens doors for local brewers

For a lot of people, manufacturing conjures images of operating heavy machinery inside bustling factories. Something as casual as drinking a beer—or brewing a batch of it—doesn’t quite fit this picture.

But in the Flathead Valley, craft brewing is a steadily growing sector of the local manufacturing scene, and there are a lot of resources in place to help this trend become even more popular.

Flathead Valley Community College introduced The Brewing Academy in 2015 under the tutelage of Director Joe Byers. The two-year program offers an A.A.S. degree in Brewing Science and Brewery Operations.

By this time next year, Byers hopes FVCC will also be in its first semester of a simplified certificate course option. The alternative program would be a hands-on opportunity for students to get the formal training to operate brewing machinery. Byers is hopeful the program could start accepting applications as soon as next month.

“We feel that it’s going to be a lot more approachable for the non-science minded person to come into the program and learn how to make beer,” said Byers.

A chemist by training, Byers cut his teeth at Tamarack Brewing Co. in Lakeside and most recently served as the head brewer at Sacred Waters Brewing Company until April 2020. He’s aiming to use his experience working in laboratories and professional breweries to help make brewing a more accessible career option.

Although craft brewing has turned a pastime into a potential career path, Byers said many aspiring brewers don’t appreciate that concocting a quality craft brew is a lot harder than drinking it.

“That’s the industry that we’re in, is manufacturing beer,” Byers pointed out. Like any form of manufacturing, brewing requires plenty of hands-on training and technical knowledge.

RIGHT NOW, the first year of the program at The Brewing Academy involves a rigorous course load of biology and chemistry classes. The idea to add in a certificate option at FVCC emerged because Byers learned potential students were shying away from the program due to its daunting scientific components.

The goal is to give students a more accessible alternative, while at the same time filling a pressing need for a qualified workforce at local breweries.

“Right now our goal and our job is to support the existing infrastructure and create jobs,” Byers stated. “We get more solicitations for grads than we can possibly fill,” he added. Every month, Byers said he receives at least one request from employers looking to bring on new hires from The Brewing Academy.

But that demand currently outpaces the supply of graduates from the program. The Brewing Academy’s four-barrel brewing system could accommodate up to approximately 15 students, but in its first few semesters, the course has only had a handful of graduates.

One of those graduates is Marty Vollmer, who now works as the assistant brewer at Sacred Waters Brewing Company since completing the FVCC program a few years ago.

Like a lot of his classmates, Vollmer got into brewing by drinking his fair share of beer during college. Unlike many of his colleagues, Vollmer had the opportunity to experience formal brewery training at FVCC. Few similar programs exist in the state, and Vollmer said most Montana brewers are self-taught home brewers who managed to go pro.

“It was a super worthwhile program,” Vollmer recalled.

For Vollmer, professional brewing has lived up to the hype. He said it’s fun pumping out about 700 gallons of beer every week at Sacred Waters, and he has even more to look forward to.

SACRED WATERS is gearing up for its second-ever canning run in late October. Owner Jordan Van Eimeren decided to start canning Sacred Waters’ beers in the initial business shutdown period during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Montana, since cans made their products easier to distribute for curbside customers. At the time, Sacred Waters was recycling cans from the recently shuttered Great Northern Brewing Company in Whitefish, but now the Kalispell brewery is set to go with its own custom cans.

As business slows down going into the shoulder season, Vollmer said Sacred Waters is also looking into developing more “collaboration brews” with other breweries. The Bitter Unknown experimental IPA currently on tap at Sacred Waters, developed in partnership with Spearfish Brewing Company in South Dakota, is an example of the kinds of cooperative efforts the brewery hopes to undertake. It’s only a taste of what’s to come for the Flathead Valley’s craft brewing industry.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.