Supporting Brewing Research and Education

In November the Advisory Committee to the Brewers’ Research and Education Fund met to review the latest reports from projects receiving funding.

Among the projects reviewed at the meeting were:

High impact technical content to support the UK Brewing Apprenticeship Programme – University of Nottingham

The UK Brewing Apprenticeship Standard was put together by an industry steering group with representatives from the small, medium and large brewing companies. The University of Nottingham, The Institute of Brewing and Distilling and a training provider HIT are all part of a consortium to deliver the apprenticeships against this standard. It was originally envisaged 1-2 cohorts would go through the program every year, however demand has been very strong and 4 or more cohorts are currently expected to start each year. The course continued to run online through the COVID pandemic and a number of catch-up session were run post COVID to try and make up for the loss of face to face teaching. The program has achieved wide support from across the industry with attendees from all sectors (Multinationals, Regional and Craft sectors). Many brewers are now sending the second and third sets of students and the apprentice program has become an integrated part of training strategy.

Development of online tools for brewers to measure, report and reduce carbon emissions to net zero – Zero Carbon Forum

The first step in developing a net zero strategy is to measure a brewery or pub’s emissions footprint and define the emissions activities to include in net zero targets. In developing an on-line carbon emissions footprint calculator, the project team have tried to remove barriers to data omission and therefore successful footprint completion. The calculator takes a brewer or pub through a series of grouped questions based on the emission sources, taking information in as much detail as available along the way. The process can be paused, saved, and returned to if required later. The results of the from the calculator produce a dashboard within the Net Zero Hub. It highlights sectors where carbon emissions are high through the traffic light system within the Net Zero Performance area. These can be examined in further detail through the interactive dashboard to establish changes in behaviour, initiatives and strategic longer term plans to reduce emissions.

Finding Beer – Ben Richards

Funding was provided for the creation of a second series of the Growing Beer podcast. Covering 6 episodes, the aim was to explore the wild ingredients available, how brewing has developed and the role beer has played throughout history. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic causing disruption to the planned schedule of travel and interviews, all episodes have now been recorded and released, with the final episode being a double-length feature looking at the current climate pubs and breweries are operating in and how the industry can move forward and tackle the challenges around sustainability and climate change. The podcast has seen just under 11,000 downloads and this is expected to reach 12,000 with the recent release of the final episode and ongoing listener discovery over the next year.

You can see details of all the projects supported by the Brewers’ Research and Education Fund, and find out more about applying for funding here.