Linus Hall says he was just a college kid, living out in the country and sick of driving five miles for a six-pack. So he and a friend ordered a homebrewing kit out of the back of Rolling Stone.
Twenty years later, Hall’s Yazoo Brewing Co. is one of Nashville’s most successful craft brewers, churning out cases of beer by the hundreds for sale throughout Tennessee and Mississippi.
The smell of barley mash fills the air. Stainless steel tanks — nearly two dozen of them — tower over the floor. Each cost about $100,000.
“I always say, we could have gone out and bought a Porsche for that money, but we decided to make beer instead.”
Making beer on this scale is as much about engineering and chemistry as knowing which hops to use, which is why colleges are starting to offer classes in beer making
.
Auburn University recently launched a program. Closer to home, Middle Tennessee State University is exploring one too.
There’s just one problem: The drinking age in most places is 21, three years after undergraduates arrive on campus.
So Tennessee lawmakers have
proposed a solution: letting student brewers sip-and-spit, like wine lovers at a tasting.
Critics call the idea nonsense.
But Sen.
Bill
Ketron
(R-Murfreesboro) says craft brewing is big business. Just as Tennessee used job-training programs to lure in carmakers
and solar companies, he believes colleges should teach people to make beer.
“You saw the expensive, stainless steel equipment. And in order to bring that into your science building, you’re going to have to raise some money somewhere,” he says. “Until you pass a law, you’re not going to be able to get donors.”
It’s a long way from how Hall learned to brew —
“probably did a little more sipping than spitting,” he says.
But he says the industry has grown substantially more complex, and harder to break into.
L
ots of people want to make beer. But few can operate his brewery’s massive machinery.
Learning that is a lot harder than brewing up concoctions at home.
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