Equipped with aprons and white boots, six students crush 200 kilos of malt grains. Gathered since 8 am in the brewery of the agricultural school in Douai (North), they pour the grind into an imposing copper container. “Malleable, a good thermal conductor and bactericidal, copper was widely used in the pastsays David Lutin. You work with exceptional equipment: copper tanks, you can hardly find any more. When the Germans occupied northern France in World War II, they melted them down to make shells. »
The master brewer, with a physique as imposing as his speed of speech is fast, alternates anecdotes on the history of the profession, advice for installation, and technical details on the elaboration of beer. “If marbles form, crush them on the edge. The mash should be as homogeneous as possible. And for the temperature, we are aiming for 67 degrees”he slips to a student who mixes the ground malt with water, using a wooden shovel with a hole in the middle. “We call it a fourquetcorrects the formatter. Brewers have their own vocabulary, which must be mastered while being creative. The barrels, for example, always get nicknames. Generally, it is the name of the spouse or children, since a brewer spends more time at work than at home. The job is hard: in the past, we said that we brewed with blood and sweat. »
450 requests, 24 places
Today, the profession attracts many candidates, and the market is growing. France is the European country with the largest number of breweries: 2,300 in 2020, compared to 200 in 2009. Launched in 2019 by professional organisations, offered in three centers to date, the new certification preparing for the professional title of brewer is fully booked until 2023, enthuses David Lutin: “In Douai, for 24 places per year, we receive 450 requests. For my part, when I looked for training as a brewer in the early 2000s, I had to go to Belgium because there were no more in France! I returned empty-handed. Due to a lack of applications, even the training offered in Louvain-la-Neuve had closed! »
The CAP brewer indeed disappeared in France in the 1980s, with the closure of many breweries, recounts Daniel Thiriez, vice-president of the National Union of Independent Brewers and brewer in Esquelbecq (North): “Since then, there were still a few courses, but there was no longer any training base for this craft profession, no more diplomas… And yet, the sector is experiencing a new boom. » Hence the idea of developing a professional certification of one hundred and forty hours, with four weeks of internship in a company, validated by a national exam. The first promotions started in 2019.
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