Thesis is done!

Thesis has been printed, accepted, and submitted! 

I had some doubts about finishing in June but I managed to pull through with some planning, organization, lots of coffee, and unmentionable amounts ofTurkish pizza. In 5 months, I managed to write a literature review, learn how to brew on a new system, develop a recipe, produce trial batches, run a battery of analytical tests, and write a technical evaluation. Definitely I would not have been able to do this without the support of the engineers and researchers at the Enzyme, Fermentation, and Brewing Technology Lab! 

Glad to be finished with thesis. Two years in the BIFTEC program are finally coming to a close... what's next?

Belgian beer festivals

First beer festival in Belgium! 

It's surreal to find myself in the Brussels. It's a city that I only used to hear about in the news. To be here because of beer is another story... it almost always sounds like a joke when I tell people that I'm studying how to make beer.

There's not a lot of beer festivals in the Philippines so I thought to check this one out to get a feel of Belgian beer culture. It's too bad I missed a summer full of beer festivals! But there was no way to arrive in Belgium sooner so this will have to do.

New beginnings

Just landed in Belgium. Here's where I'll be studying for the next two years of my life.

I never thought I'd have the chance to study and live in Europe. Coming from Asia, I think of it as the land of fancy beers, wines, and cheeses that I can't even pronounce. I'm here to study about brewing, fermentation, and just everything related to alcoholic beverage production.

I start this journey as an amateur brewer whose experience with brewing has been playing with an Igloo cooler and a couple of kettles, and seeing all of that go from 20 L to 200 L in just 6 months. Sure, I have a lot of pride in teaching myself to brew. But it's a totally different thing to learn how to brew from masters who have been brewing for centuries.

Of course, I'm not here just to study about brewing. I've signed up for a Master's in Food Science, Technology, and Business (BIFTEC) so I'm really interested to learn all about food processing issues and technologies. As an Erasmus Mundus student, I'm also eager to meet and learn from people around the world. I'll be living "out of my skin" for a while and I'm quite anxious and excited about it. So let's see where this adventure takes me.