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Kenya: In Ruaraka, a New Brew Master Rises

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4 years ago

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While studying biochemistry in university, Monica Wambui Wamweya never thought she would ever hold any roles beyond the scope of her medical analytics field. And then she enrolled for internship at East African Breweries Limited (EABL) in 2017 after her third year of study and an entirely new world opened up before her eyes.

“I fell in love with the beer making process, and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else,” says the 25-year-old brewer who no works behind the scenes to craft EABL’s array of beers.

“All along, I thought all I could become was a biochemist. But this place blew my mind. Watching barley and sorghum turn into beer changed my perspective completely, and this became my first choice for work,” remembers Ms Wamweya. After her internship in 2019, an opportunity to join EABL as a brewing graduate came up. She applied for the three-year learning programme and was selected.

She started working at EABL in March last year as a trainee brewer and has been learning the science and craft of beer making, as well as beer quality testing. She sees herself growing into a fine professional brewer.

At the company’s brewery in Ruaraka where she works, there are often two brewing lines running concurrently and making two different beer brands. In a day about 24 brews producing about 500,000 litres per cycle are made.

The beer making process starts with the milling of the grain, followed by malting, mashing, and lautering, which is where the mash is then pumped into the lauter tun, where a sweet clear liquid (known as wort) is separated from the grain husks. The wort is then directed to a kettle where it is boiled for sterilisation, then the brewers add hops. Hops are flowers that help keep beer fresher for longer and helps the drink retain its head of foam. This foam is a key component of a beer’s aroma and bitter flavor.

After that, the liquid is cooled then collected in a fermenting chamber for packaging.

“You have to really monitor fermentation to make sure everything is going well. After fermentation, we are left with matured beer,” she notes. “When the matured beer is ready, we take it to filtration and then it is packaged.”

“When I am on shift, I oversee the whole process from when the grain goes into milling until the time it is released for packaging,” she says, adding that she does all this with the help of ground operators in the factory, and guidance from her seniors.

The most exciting thing, she says, is opening the tap to see and taste the end product–a beer awaiting bottling.

Ms Wamweya, who admits to not being “a beer person” before joining EABL, says tasting is important in making sure that what goes to the consumer is of top quality. “Tasting is very essential during maturation, filtration and during packaging–it is called in-process tasting–to ensure that what is going to our consumers is the best that we can produce,” she adds. “This is not to say that we drink entire bottles of beer while at work. No. we just sample the beer in tot glasses.”

“Before I came to EABL, I wasn’t really into beer. But once you taste the various brands you begin to appreciate them. We are not allowed to drink much while on duty, but we do get to enjoy our tipple after work.”

Ms Wamweya’s favourite beer is “the light, crisply refreshing and cleaner in-flavor Tusker lite”.

However, the young, upcoming brew master, admits that even after having been at it for the last one year, she is still honing her skills. She is, however, eager to improve her knowledge and become a master brewer by taking a master brewing course–the braumeister course in the German brewing school, like others before her.

She will then earn the title ‘brewmaster,’ an honour reserved for the brewers who are masters of their craft, who are capable of developing brands, recipes, and collaborations, and are authorities in matters of beer quality and consistency.

“I look forward to learning so much that I’m able to come up with new beer brands and other inventions,” she says.

In the first year of her job, Ms Wamweya learnt how to process and produce various beer brands in high quality. Now, she is undertaking an in-house team leadership training. This is important because in her work, she will never be called upon to brew alone. She will always have people in different segments managing different processes and she would need the leadership skills to be able to guide them on execution of the overall plan and resource utilisation.