Education Update: September 2017

This week, we announce the creation of a new CAMRA Vancouver education initiative: CAMRA University, or as we like to call it, CAMRA U.  CAMRA U spawns from the education needs that have arisen over the last few years.  While CAMRA Vancouver has regularly operated a monthly education class, calls have been made for more in-depth classes on all sorts of topics related to beer.  These are topics that don’t fit within our historical education class model, or go above and beyond the detail of what some consumers are looking for from our usual offerings.  You might say we’ve been teaching beer at a high school level; well, you’ve just graduated, and consider this your acceptance letter.  Welcome to CAMRA U, where drinking in class is not only encouraged, it’s expected.

CAMRA U has been designed to mirror the University certificate model: we have a series of certificate programs that cover different educational groupings within the beer world, with more slated for release in the future.  Each “certificate” will consists of 4-6 courses in the range of 1.5 to 3 hours in length, held at varying locations across Vancouver as dictated by the needs of the class.  These classes will all be offered in succession, being taught in three-hour portions on the Mondays of Oct. 2, Oct. 23, and Oct. 30.  Finally, we are offering these classes as a package option where you purchase all the classes at once and receive a discount over buying each class individually.

Our first certificate is entitled the “Certified Beer Aficionado.”  This program is modeled to reflect the knowledge you’re expected to learn to pass the Certified Cicerone® exam.  Participants will cover everything in the brewing process from barley to bottles, and cover other aspects such as sampling and understanding off-flavours in beer, understanding and differentiating between similar beer styles, and the art of food pairing.  It consists of five classes: Brewing 101, On Flavours, Off Flavours, Comparative Styles, and Food Pairing 101.  Please see the full description on our Eventbrite page to learn more about the course offerings.

We are very excited to be working with Faculty Brewing Co. and Central City Beatty St. for two of these classes in particular.  Brewing 101 will be held at Faculty Brewing Co., where not only will participants learn about the brewing process, they will be able to not just observe but take part in brewing an all-grain brew on Faculty’s pilot system as part of this three-hour class.  Once the beer is ready, participants will be able to have a pint of the beer they helped create in Faculty’s tasting room, included in the cost of your ticket.  Central City Beatty St. will be hosting Food Pairing 101, where participants will learn (and taste!) extensively about the art of food pairing with different styles of beer.

We are overjoyed to be bringing this educational format to our members, as I know it is something that both you as a member as we as a board have been looking to do for some time.  I look forward to seeing you on your first day of class.  You can purchase your classes at our Eventbrite page here.

Your “Dean,”

Alastair Lindsay
Education Liason
CAMRA Vancouver
Certified Cicerone®


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