A Study in the Skills Needed to Brew Beer
As part of a course for a Master of Education in Instructional Design degree, I am determining a need for instruction preparatory to designing said instruction. My chosen topic/subject is near to your heart: how to brew beer.
The scenario: In your role as an accomplished homebrewer you have taken on the task of teaching a friend how to brew beer. They want to learn, so motivational issues aren’t a concern, but they also know nothing of the task and haven’t observed you brew before.
Please take a few minutes to complete this survey. Your responses will be kept anonymous. The only data I’ll look for is your profile name so I can avoid duplication, but the profile names will be kept separately from the completed surveys. Demographics such as age or gender will not be used.
I would prefer that you PM me directly with your responses so that we can avoid responses posted here turning into discussions and potentially influencing responses from those that haven’t yet responded but intend to. If you don’t wish to PM, you may post your responses here and I’ll glean them from the forum. When complete (estimated two to three weeks), I’ll post a summary of the responses and data received here in the forum.
To make posting answers easier, you don’t need to reproduce this survey. For example, if you reply with “12yr, Y, AG, A436215” I can interpret this as you’ve been a brewer for 12 years, you have taught someone to homebrew, you are an all-grain brewer, and the answers in section A are the ratings in that order.
Thank you.
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How long have you been a homebrewer? _______
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Have you taught someone to brew before? ⃝ Yes ⃝ No
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Are you primarily an extract or all-grain brewer? ⃝ Extract ⃝ All-grain
A. Necessary or needed skills to brew a beer. Please rate the following skills in order of importance with 1 being most important for students to know before brewing that first beer:
_____ Measuring solids (malts, adjuncts, etc) by weight (pounds, ounces, grams).
_____ Measuring liquids (water, additives, etc) by volume (ounces, quarts/liters, etc).
_____ Measuring or reading the temperature of liquids.
_____ Measuring time remaining/time-to-go, e.g. hop additions time.
_____ Knowing the specialized vocabulary used in brewing (sparge, vorlauf, tun, etc).
_____ Another task or skill not listed:
B. Skills desired to brew a beer.
_____ Determine rate of temperature increase/decrease. For example, how long until a solution boils?
_____ Compile a shopping list from a recipe.
_____ Maintain freshness of ingredients (freezing, air-tightness, etc).
_____ Maintain sanitation (boiling, Star-san [or equivalent], washing/moping).
_____ Oxygenation, hot or cold side.
_____ Another task or skill not listed:
C. Looking back at your first attempts to brew, what do you wish you knew then that you only learned later? Please list tasks, skills or subjects as bullets or brief phrases. List as many as you desire (you don’t need to fill the list).