Craft beer is one of the fastest growing sectors of the global food and beverage industry, which means that a solid, knowledgeable brewmaster is a hot commodity right now.

We’ve already told you the basics you need to know to become a brewmaster and gave you a look into what it’s like to work as a head brewer in your own brewpub. Now, let's go a step further.

While you will need to learn many things first hand on the job, Hosco’s here to help give you as much support as possible. That’s why we’ve come up with what we think are the three most crucial tips you need to crush it as a brewmaster.

Be a strong communicator 

You should be able to summarize quickly and succinctly, communicate results or activities, and summarize the needs of your department and communicate with others.

In a professional brewery setting, there are a lot of moving parts, both literally and figuratively. To make sure you and your team don’t get caught in the weeds, it’s important that you communicate in a clear, efficient manner.

You should be able to explain recipes, timings, ingredients and other important parts of the brewing process with concision and confidence.

It’s also important to be able to communicate with your customers and other figures in your local beer scene.

If you want to succeed, you should be your brewery’s biggest advocate and salesperson. You must be out there engaging with the people drinking your beer. It’s crucial that you can tell your brewery’s story in a compelling way and proudly represent the brand wherever you may be. 

You need to be out in the brewpub or taproom, at beer festivals, or at special events talking to people and learning what the public think of your product. Listening to customer feedback is incredibly important. After all, it’s not about what you want to brew, it’s about what people like to drink.

Always be studying and doing research

Food & beverage trends move incredibly fast and beer is no different, especially if you’re talking about craft beer. If you want to be a great brewmaster, you’ll need to spend as much time studying and researching as you do making beer.

However, this isn’t your typical research and studying. Yes, you’ll be doing some traditional types of study–you better be a fan of chemistry–but a lot of it will be more unconventional. 

In this line of work, unconventional research means trying as many new beers as possible, having friendly conversations with a pint in hand, and getting to know as much about your local craft beer scene as possible. You have to be out there drinking with the people if you want to make beers that the people will drink.

As a brewmaster, you should also be keeping a close eye on trends in as many markets as possible. It’s important to find out what’s going on in other cities in your region to see if there’s something missing in your market. 

You could even take trips to other parts of the world to see how they make beer and borrow some of that knowledge to incorporate into your recipes. There’s always something new to learn if you’re willing to seek it out.

Let your creative juices flow

Once you’ve followed the previous tip and you’ve gathered knowledge from your time spent researching, it’s time to apply it. 

Craft brewing is a growing market so that means there’s a lot of competition trying to cash-in on this new trend. But, the breweries that tend to stick around are the ones that not only knock out the traditional styles, but innovate as well.

To be a top tier brewmaster, your creative brain should be engaged at all times. You need to be coming up with new beer ideas constantly and new ways to iterate on your old ones. Complacency can be a killer in the craft beer world, so you should always be thinking about how you can offer something new.

A brewer with a strong creative vision can take a company from just another brewery to the talk of the town. There are numerous different competitions, such as Barcelona Beer Festival or The Great American Beer Fest, that award prizes for the best beers in the world. Winning one of these honors will bring prestige to not only the brewery where it was made, but also the brewer made it.

That doesn’t mean you can go absolutely crazy with the experimentation. No matter the style, your beer should make sense and be palatable. You should use the different beer styles like a poet uses the different poetic forms: as a structure to guide you or to fight against. Regardless, you can’t properly break the rules without knowing them well in the first place.

Hosco is here to help!

The world of hospitality includes everything from professional wine lovers to beer aficionados. With all these different career paths to choose from, you’re bound to find one that’s a proper match for you. At Hosco, we have hundreds of open hospitality jobs for you to apply for, so check out the current listing of available positions to find your dream job today.