A Yale-educated evolutionary biologist and a member of the faculty at Catholic, liberal arts-focused Sacred Heart University, Geffrey Stopper also oversees one of its newest courses: Advanced Craft Beverage Brewing.
Sacred Heart is launching career-focused programs like this to give its students vocational credentials that can speed them into their first jobs while expanding the university’s market to older adults who are hoping to get new ones.
After all, there are 115 breweries in Connecticut, according to the Connecticut Brewers Guild, employing about 6,000 people. But there are no other formal training programs in the state to cover such things as brewery management and brewing theory.
“You need to know how enzymes work and how acids work and apply equations to what you’re doing,” Stopper said of the program, standing on a catwalk overlooking fermentation tanks and repurposed wine and whiskey barrels filled with beer in the cavernous warehouse of Two Roads Brewery, where the course is taught.