Introduction to Craft Beer Production

Course Description

Introduction to Craft Beer Production is an introduction to brewing craft beer in a commercial setting. Students learn, in the classroom and in the laboratory, about ingredients and their selection, recipe development, materials handling, proper equipment usage, and commercial brewing methods, and prepare pilot and quantity batches of beer.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, FSS is the Food Service Systems prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered spring. The course description explicitly names a laboratory even though the number carries no C suffix — the same pattern this repository documented for AFR3221 — so contact hours are given as approximately 60, matching the college's published integrated FSS production courses at the same credit value.

Brewing sits at an unusual intersection: it is food manufacturing, applied microbiology, chemical engineering, heavy manual labour, and a regulated alcohol business all at once. Students arrive expecting a craft course and find a process control course. The single most accurate thing anyone says about the trade is that a brewer spends most of the working day cleaning, and a course that does not convey that is misrepresenting the job.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Apply sanitation and cleaning procedures appropriate to a commercial brewery.
• Distinguish cleaning from sanitizing and select appropriate chemicals for each.
• Apply personal safety practice, including chemical, thermal, confined space, and CO₂ hazards.
• Describe the four principal ingredients and the contribution of each.
• Describe malt types, the malting process, and the effect of kilning on colour and flavour.
• Describe hop varieties, alpha acids, and the effect of addition timing on bitterness and aroma.
• Describe brewing yeast strains, their characteristics, and their flavour contributions.
• Describe brewing water chemistry and the effect of ion content on the finished beer.
• Mill grain appropriately and describe the consequences of over- and under-milling.
• Conduct a mash, control mash temperature, and describe enzymatic conversion.
• Lauter and sparge, and evaluate extraction efficiency.
• Boil wort, manage hop additions, and describe the purposes of the boil.
• Cool wort rapidly and transfer it without contamination.
• Pitch yeast at appropriate rates and manage aeration.
• Monitor and control fermentation temperature and progress.
• Measure gravity and calculate alcohol by volume, attenuation, and efficiency.
• Condition, carbonate, and package beer, and describe oxygen pickup and its effects.
• Develop a recipe and scale a formulation between pilot and production volume.
• Apply basic quality control, including pH, gravity, and sensory evaluation.
• Identify common off-flavours and trace each to a process cause.
• Describe major beer styles and their defining characteristics.
• Describe federal and Florida regulatory requirements applicable to commercial brewing.
• Maintain accurate brewing records and describe why they are required.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe yeast propagation and repitching practice.
• Describe barrel ageing and mixed-culture fermentation.
• Describe brewery utilities, glycol systems, and steam.
• Describe waste, spent grain handling, and water use.
• Describe brewery business models and taproom operation.
• Describe laboratory microbiology and contamination detection.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Brewery sanitation and cleaning chemistry
• Brewery safety: chemical, thermal, confined space, CO₂
• The four ingredients
• Malt and the malting process
• Hops, alpha acids, and addition timing
• Yeast strains and fermentation character
• Brewing water chemistry
• Milling
• Mashing and enzymatic conversion
• Lautering, sparging, and extraction efficiency
• The boil and hop additions
• Wort cooling and transfer
• Pitching, aeration, and fermentation management
• Gravity, ABV, attenuation, and efficiency calculations
• Conditioning, carbonation, and packaging
• Recipe development and scaling
• Quality control and sensory evaluation
• Off-flavours and their causes
• Beer styles
• Federal and Florida regulation
• Brewing records

Optional Topics

• Yeast propagation and repitching
• Barrel ageing and mixed cultures
• Utilities, glycol, and steam
• Waste, spent grain, and water use
• Brewery business models and taprooms
• Brewery laboratory microbiology

Resources & Tools

• The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (Papazian) — the accessible entry point.
• How to Brew (John Palmer) — the best technical explanation for someone learning the process; the water chapter is genuinely good.
• Principles of Brewing Science (George Fix) and Malting and Brewing Science (Briggs et al.) — the serious technical references.
• Designing Great Beers (Ray Daniels) — the recipe formulation standard.
• Yeast, Water, Hops, and Malt — the Brewers Publications ingredient series; each is the standard single-subject reference.
• Brewers Association (brewersassociation.org) — free: style guidelines, safety manuals, market statistics, and best-practice documents. The safety resources are genuinely good and free.
• Master Brewers Association of the Americas (mbaa.com) — technical courses and a strong podcast; student membership is inexpensive.
• BJCP Style Guidelines (bjcp.org) — free, and the reference point for style and for structured sensory evaluation.
• TTB (ttb.gov) — free: the federal Brewer's Notice, formula and label approval, and excise tax requirements. Authoritative; see the regulation flag.
• Florida DBPR, Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco — free Florida licensing information under Chapter 561–565, F.S.
• A hydrometer or refractometer, a pH meter, and a thermometer — the measurement set; brewing is a measured process.
• Cicerone Certification Program — the beer-knowledge credential on the service side; the entry level is inexpensive.

Career Pathways

• Brewery cellar worker and brewer's assistant — the realistic entry point, and it is mostly cleaning and materials handling.
• Brewer and head brewer — the progression, typically several years.
• Packaging technician — canning and kegging lines; a distinct and employable skill.
• Quality control technician — laboratory work in larger breweries; the best-paid technical role at many.
• Taproom manager and beer sales — where a Cicerone credential helps.
• Distributor sales and brand representation — Florida's three-tier system makes distribution a large employer.
• Brewery ownership — see the market flag below before committing capital.
• Adjacent fermentation industries — distilling, cider, kombucha, and commercial baking all use the same microbiology and sanitation discipline.
• Food and beverage manufacturing generally — process control and sanitation transfer directly, and the hours are usually better.
• Florida has a substantial craft brewing sector concentrated in Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Orlando, and South Florida, plus large-scale production brewing in the state.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Alcohol is regulated at every level — and the age requirement affects the lab

• You must be 21 to consume alcohol in Florida. Sensory evaluation is central to brewing instruction, so confirm with the programme how students under 21 participate before enrolling. This is a real scheduling consideration, not a technicality.
• Commercial brewing requires a federal Brewer's Notice from TTB before a drop is legally produced for sale, plus label and sometimes formula approval, plus excise tax reporting. The paperwork is substantial and is a real part of the job.
• Florida licenses through DBPR's Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco under Chapters 561–565, F.S., and Florida operates a three-tier system separating manufacturer, distributor, and retailer with limited exceptions. The rules on taproom sales, growlers, self-distribution, and container sizes have been amended repeatedly and are politically contested.
• Rule 11 applies with force. Florida beverage law changes nearly every legislative session. Verify current requirements with DBPR and TTB directly rather than relying on any course material, including this guide.
• Records are a legal obligation. Production, transfer, loss, and tax determination records are inspectable, and sloppy record-keeping is a licensing problem rather than a housekeeping one.
• Serving carries its own liability. Florida's dram shop provisions create exposure for service to minors and to habitually addicted persons; responsible-vendor training exists and is worth having.
• Never sell or give away what you brew in class. Educational production is permitted under specific arrangements; distribution outside them is not.

⚠ Sanitation is the job — and the second-biggest hazard is the chemicals you clean with

• Brewing is not sterile, it is sanitary, and the whole process is a race to give the yeast a head start over everything else. Post-boil, every surface the wort touches must be clean and sanitized.
• Cleaning and sanitizing are two steps, in that order. Sanitizer applied to a soiled surface does nothing — organic residue neutralizes it. Caustic and acid cleaners remove soil and beerstone; sanitizers kill what remains.
• The chemicals are genuinely dangerous. Caustic (sodium hydroxide) causes severe burns and blinds; acid cleaners burn; mixing caustic and acid, or bleach and acid, produces violent reactions or toxic gas. Read the safety data sheets, wear goggles and gloves, and never mix.
• CO₂ asphyxiation kills brewery workers. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it pools in tanks, pits, and cellars, and it is odourless — you do not feel it coming. Ventilate, use monitors, and never enter a vessel without confined-space procedure and a second person outside.
• Confined space entry has killed people who went in to help someone else. The correct response to a collapsed colleague inside a tank is to call for help and not enter.
• Thermal hazards are constant — boiling wort, steam, hot liquor, and hot caustic all burn badly.
• Slips and lifting are the routine injuries. Wet floors, fifty-pound grain sacks, and full kegs at over 160 pounds. Use the equipment, get help, and wear the shoes.
• The Brewers Association publishes free safety manuals written specifically for small breweries. Read them; the industry has a poor safety record and it is improving because of exactly this material.

⚠ Off-flavours are diagnostic — learn to taste backward to a process cause

• Every characteristic off-flavour points to a specific process failure, and learning the mapping is what makes a brewer able to fix problems rather than guess.
• Diacetyl — butter or butterscotch — usually means fermentation was cut short or the yeast was not given a diacetyl rest; it can also indicate bacterial contamination.
• Acetaldehyde — green apple — means beer taken off the yeast too early.
• Esters — fruit — are normal in some styles and a fermentation temperature problem in others; fermentation temperature control is the single biggest lever on flavour, and Florida's ambient temperatures make it a real engineering problem.
• Fusel alcohols — hot, solvent-like — come from fermenting too warm.
• Phenolic — clove, plastic, medicinal — is either style-appropriate yeast character or chlorine in the water reacting during fermentation. Chlorinated municipal water is a common cause and is easily prevented.
• Oxidation — cardboard, sherry, stale — comes from oxygen pickup after fermentation, and it is the most common commercial defect. Post-fermentation oxygen is the enemy; pre-fermentation oxygen is required.
• Sour or lactic where it is not intended means contamination, and the source is almost always a cleaning failure in a hose, valve, or fitting.
• DMS — cooked corn — comes from an inadequate or covered boil, or slow wort cooling.
• Taste deliberately and keep notes. Structured sensory evaluation against the BJCP framework is a trainable skill and it is what quality control actually consists of.

⚠ The market has contracted — go in with accurate expectations

• Craft beer's long growth period ended. After roughly fifteen years of expansion, the sector has seen flat-to-declining volumes, well-publicized closures, and consolidation. Openings no longer reliably outpace closures.
• Entry wages are low and the work is physical. Brewing attracts far more applicants than it has positions, which suppresses pay at the bottom.
• The paths that pay are the technical and the commercial ones — quality control, packaging engineering, production management, and distributor sales — rather than the romantic one.
• Breweries are small businesses with heavy capital requirements, thin margins, and regulatory overhead. The business skills in this repository's DIG2510 and HFT2454 guides matter more to survival than the recipes do.
• Broader beverage alcohol trends matter — younger consumers drink less, and hard seltzer, spirits-based ready-to-drink products, and non-alcoholic beer have taken share. Non-alcoholic brewing is one of the genuinely growing areas and it is technically demanding.
• The transferable skills are the point. Sanitation discipline, process control, fermentation microbiology, and food manufacturing practice are employable across the whole food and beverage sector, at better hours and better pay. Frame the training that way and it is a good investment either way.
• Florida's tourism economy helps. Taproom traffic in Tampa Bay, Orlando, Jacksonville, and the coastal towns is supported by visitors as well as locals, which is a real structural advantage over inland markets elsewhere.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

FSS1287 is 3 credits and approximately 60 contact hours, offered spring, with a laboratory component stated in the catalog description despite the absence of a C suffix. Expect brew days that run long — a commercial brew is a full shift, and fermentation does not wait for the timetable — plus sensory evaluation and record keeping.

Culinary and hospitality A.S. degrees are applied and do not carry the A.A.'s junior-status transfer guarantee. In this field the credential that carries weight with employers is demonstrated production experience, so treat any brewery internship or volunteer opportunity as more valuable than the transcript line.