CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF ROGER MITTAG
Instructor Roger Mittag will be offering the Prud'homme Beer Certifi cation program at Fanshawe College starting this week. A second class will be offered in November.

Fanshawe College will be offering the “sommelier-style” Prud’homme Beer Certification program starting this week through the School of Continuing Education.

The program will give students an in-depth look at one of the world’s most popular beverages, covering topics such as brewing processes, food pairing and the history of beer.

“A lot of people are really interested in understanding more about beer,” said instructor Roger Mittag. “The idea is that we need people in the brewing industry and then the distribution industry and retail and also in hospitality to be able to help consumers to pick beers appropriately.”

Graduates of the level three will receive the Prud’homme Beer Certification, the first and only beer certification program in Canada.

The certification opens a lot of doors to bartenders and servers who want to work in places that offer a lot of different beers, Mittag said.

“Learning a little bit more about beer helps you for your own personal enjoyment, but it also helps to get a foot a door within the industry,” he said.

Bruce Smith, the senior manager of Fanshawe’s School of Continuing Education, says the idea behind the beer program was that the school wanted to offer additional personal interest courses. The School of Continuing Education has offered tea sommelier classes and wine and spirits classes in the past.

“We thought it was the next logical step in that series of sort of hospitality-based personal interests courses,” he said.

He says Fanshawe has no plans to offer a full-time beer-brewing program, however.

“This is really a personal interest course for those people that range from just having a general interest to a desire to gave a greater understanding of brewing history and brewing ingredients and insights to all of those issues as opposed to actually offering an academic program,” said Smith.

The program starts on September 30 and will run for four weeks. Classes will be on Tuesdays from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., once a week, and they will be a mix of lectures, discussions and hands-on work.

A second Beer Enthusiast course will also be offered in November. The level two and three courses are planned for the winter 2015 and summer 2015 terms respectively.

For more information or to register, visit the Fanshawe School of Continuing Education website at www.fanshawec.ca/continuing-education.