For a brewer, stepping into distilling can feel surprisingly familiar, right up until it doesn’t.

Dr. Jordan Ramey draws on his background as a brewing scientist, former Professor of Brewing Sciences at Olds College, Vice President of the Alberta Craft Distillers Association, and founder of Calgary’s Burwood Distillery to explore distillery operations through the lens of someone who started on the brewhouse side of the industry.

Distillers use many of the same raw materials, equipment and biological processes as brewers, but often approach each step with a very different goal in mind. Mashes may rely heavily on exogenous enzymes, some grain-in processes skip lautering altogether, fermentations are often hotter and faster, and flavour compounds that a brewer might work hard to suppress can become important precursors for the character of a finished spirit.

Starting with familiar concepts like grain handling, starch conversion, fermentation and yeast metabolism, Jordan will follow the process from mash to finished spirit and explain how a distiller’s priorities begin to diverge from those of a brewer. The session will explore wash production, pot and column distillation, reflux, heads-hearts-tails cuts, congeners, spirit flavour development and maturation, with an emphasis on why distillers make the process decisions they do.

Part brewing science, part distilling science, and part lessons learned from nearly a decade of commercial craft distilling, this session is designed to help brewers understand not only how spirits are made, but how familiar brewing processes are rethought when the final product is destined for a rocks glass instead of a pint.