UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Most people get to tour a brewery only once or twice in their lives. Fall 2015 graduate Andrew Glass goes to a brewery most days — brewing beer is his livelihood.
The Reading native scored his dream job as a brewing supervisor for the Samuel Adams Pennsylvania Brewery in Breinigsville, which is one of the biggest craft breweries in the United States.
It's his responsibility to oversee the production of the beer from raw materials to final product, which he sends to the packaging department.
"The raw ingredients arrive in our brewery, which are the grain, hops and spices," he explained. "From there, it's my job to coordinate all the parts of the brewing process. Our brewing team brews the beer, adds yeast to ferment it, and then adds additional ingredients or spices depending on the flavor of the beer. Then, after the beer is aged in our conditioning tanks, we filter and carbonate it. And finally the beer is off to be packaged into kegs, cans or bottles."
Glass supervises 20 production brewers during each 12-hour shift and works approximately four days, with the next four days off. Sometimes he works the night shift and sometimes during the day.
"We make beer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," he said. "It's a large-scale brewery and employs about 700 people."
Glass owes his quick success in the industry to the Food Science program in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. When he entered the workplace, he found he already had the skills needed for the job.
"I was required to take a range of engineering, chemistry and microbiology classes in my major, which prove useful when issues arise anywhere in the brewing process," he said. "We try to solve problems as quickly as possible to keep the pipes flowing. Production never stops!"
In addition, Glass said the professors he had in class really knew the industry in which he now works. "A lot of them have backgrounds in the food and beverage industry and told us how we could apply the knowledge to our careers as we were learning it," he said.
Glass really enjoys his job so far and hopes to stay at Samuel Adams for a long time. It's a growing company with cutting-edge technology, great people and even better beer, he said.
"I just want future students to know that there are cool jobs like this out here," he said. "Employers want Penn State Food Science grads."