Casey, Brewing Technician

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What I do

I help make beer, from grain to the finished product, that ends up in cans, kegs and glasses.

We brew around 5,500 litres in a single batch, and it’s got to be top quality, so small details matter.

My job involves crushing malt, adding carefully controlled water, monitoring temperature, sugar and PH levels, adding hops and yeast and making sure the beer ferments safely.

How I became a technician

For my GCSE options, I studied psychology, history and media studies. I carried on with history and media studies at A-level, but I still wasn’t sure what career I wanted.

I decided not to go to university because I didn’t want to commit to something when I wasn’t totally sure about it.

At 18, I needed to start earning money, so I got a job on the bar at Tiny Rebel. I became fascinated by the finished product and, since then, I’ve followed the process to learn about where it all begins.

How I became a technician

I moved from working at the bar, to the warehouse. I was there for three years, packing online orders and helping to distribute beer to bars around the UK.

While I was there, I’d always look through the window at the brewing area – I thought it looked really cool! When a job opened up in the brewing team, I thought, why not apply?

At first, I shadowed a colleague for a week or two, asked lots of questions and gradually started doing things myself.

How I became a technician

Tiny Rebel then put me through an apprenticeship, and I got a Level 2 diploma in brewing. My trainer came to the brewery for some one-to-one practical learning, and I also completed coursework at home.

At first, I shadowed a colleague for a week or two, asked lots of questions and gradually started doing things myself.

I knew nothing about brewing before I started. I learnt on the job – and I’m now a qualified brewer.

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A typical day in my working life

My shifts are either 6am to 2:30pm, or 9:30am to 6pm. A new brew starts by sending the grain through a mill to crush it.

It then gets mixed with water at 76°C, and this mixture is called the mash. It then sits for about an hour, so the sugars settle to the bottom.

A typical day in my working life

Next, I spray water over the mash, while drawing out the sugary liquid out from the bottom. We call this process sparging, and the sprayed water helps to rinse out more of the sugar.

I constantly check the sugar and pH levels, and I aim for around 4,000 to 5,000 litres of mash in the vessel.

A typical day in my working life

Then, I add hops, which are flowers that flavour the beer, and I boil the liquid for about an hour to kill any germs and sanitise it.

After it cools, it goes into a fermenting vessel. This is when we add the yeast, more hops, plus other ingredients to add flavour.

A typical day in my working life

For gluten-free beers, we also add a chemical that stops gluten chains forming.

The beer can stay in a fermenting tank for two to three weeks while it matures. During fermentation, the yeast converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

A typical day in my working life

It’s a live product during this stage, so the sugar levels need to be checked every day, even on the weekend.

We track the sugar levels to determine when fermentation has finished. Then, it’s ready to go to packaging.

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What I love about my job

I love ending the day with something tangible and thinking “I helped make that”.

We brew between 50,000 and 100,000 litres of beer a week. It’s brilliant seeing one of our beers somewhere and knowing there’s a chance I made it.

I also really enjoy monitoring a brew and watching the numbers fall into the right place. It shows that the process is working.

Recipe development is exciting too. I’ve been experimenting with a mango beer, trying different flavour combinations in small samples. The challenge is working out whether something that tastes good in 50 millilitres will still work when it becomes 5,500 litres!

The skills I use most

Attention to detail is really important. I constantly monitor things like temperature, pH and sugar levels, because a small change can affect the quality of the final product.

I also use problem solving. I’ve learned how a lot of the machinery works and I can troubleshoot many problems with our boiler and other equipment. I have even used what I’ve learnt at work to fix a problem with my boiler at home!

Finally, I use practical skills every day. Brewing is very hands-on. There’s plumbing, cleaning, moving ingredients and working with large tanks. I like physically doing something and seeing the result at the end.

One of my proudest moments was making a lager that I knew my dad would enjoy.

Brewing is essentially cooking and plumbing on a very big scale, with a lot of science and maths mixed in.

A little more about my everyday role

The best bits about working in a team

Brewing can sometimes be a solitary job when I’m concentrating on my own brew, but there are important moments when I rely on the team. Adding ingredients to large tanks can need more than one person and finished beers are checked by a tasting panel before they are packaged.

Some tasks also need another person to witness that they’ve been completed correctly. That matters especially when we make gluten-free beer, because the process needs to be carefully checked and signed off. I couldn’t do every part of the job on my own, so working together helps us make sure the product is safe and exactly what we were aiming for.

My favourite piece of equipment

My favourite piece of equipment is the mash tun, the tank where we hold the first mixture of crushed grain and water. At the end of each brew, once all the liquid has been sent out, we have to clean the grain from it with a big shovel.

It’s a physical job, but I find it quite therapeutic. Seeing the mash tun completely clean and sparkling again gives me that feeling that I’ve done a good job. I don’t need to go to the gym – I can just double my grain on it!

What I like to do in my spare time

I’ve recently had my first child with my partner, so I don’t have a lot of spare time at the moment!

I’ve always really liked history. I studied it at GCSE and A-level and I still read a lot about ancient history. I also enjoy going on holidays to places that have lots of history behind them.

My school days

At school, I hadn’t really found where I wanted to be yet. History was one subject that stuck with me and I enjoyed it enough to continue studying it at A-level.

I didn’t have a clear career plan when I left school, and brewing wasn’t something I had studied. My route came from trying different jobs, learning what suited me and being willing to have a go when an opportunity appeared.

The most exciting thing I’ve achieved so far in my job

One of my proudest moments was making a lager that I knew my dad would enjoy. On a boiling hot day, we sat outside together and I watched him try it without telling him I’d made it.

He said it was really nice and that he could have a couple of them. Then I said, ‘Guess what? I made that’. It wasn’t a complicated beer, but it made me really proud. I’d taken something through the brewing process and made a product that someone else could enjoy.

A surprising fact about my job

Brewing is essentially cooking and plumbing on a very big scale, with a lot of science and maths mixed in. I work with tanks, pipes, temperatures, sugar levels and pH. Tiny changes to these can make a big difference to the finished drink!

Another surprise is how much detail there is in tasting. We check the colour, smell, taste and even how a beer feels in the mouth before it is approved. Now, when I try a beer, I can start to understand how it was made and how it got its particular character.

The next steps in my career journey

I’ve finished my Level 2 diploma in brewing and my next step is a Level 4 General Certificate in Brewing. I’m hoping it will build my knowledge of the science behind brewing, including the technical processes that make the ingredients behave in different ways.

I can already use the kit and brew the product, so now I want to understand even more about why the process works.

The advice I’d give to someone younger

Don’t be scared of what you don’t know. Brewing can look intimidating because there’s science, maths and lots to monitor, but I learned on the job without a background in brewing. It’s hard, but it’s really rewarding.

Give things a go and ask questions. I wish I’d started sooner. You don’t need to know everything on day one – you can build your knowledge as you work.