The road to SoBe, Pt. 4

Jennifer Miller is working as a student associate during the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Feb. 25-28. Panthers such as Miller are keeping us posted on their experiences leading up to “SoBe” in this Blue & Gold Blog.

Week of Feb. 1, 2010

Jennifer Millers likens the road to "SoBe" to brewing beer: "It is a process that takes time and effort."

When I saw that I could take a beer class at FIU and get credit for it, I was hooked: The university’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management was the school of my dreams.

Coming into FIU a wannabe Indiana Jones with a bachelor’s in classical archeology, switching from digging into the dirt to making beer was a big change. I can tell you, though, that soon after earning my bachelor’s degree I realized that I wasn’t going to be the next Indiana Jones and that an office-type job was out of the question.

When my husband was accepted to UM, we moved from Tallahassee to Miami. He encouraged me to pursue my passion, but I wasn’t quite certain what that passion was. I did know two things about myself, though: I am great with people and I wanted to do something different.

I started looking at the hospitality program at FIU and was instantly captivated. The possibility of learning how to brew my own beer was unimaginable! My love of beer making started when I purchased a brewing kit for my husband. He has a strong background in chemistry and I really thought that brewing was a science. As we started to brew, I realized it was more like cooking – and that I was good at it. So when I walked into my first beer class at FIU, I knew I had hit the jackpot. Graduate school was going to be a breeze.

It turns out that graduate school is a little more challenging than I had anticipated. However, as I soon learned, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

I am now an assistant brewer, working with professor Barry Gump as his teaching assistant. I help undergraduates with their projects. They all thought the same thing I did: Brewing beer in class and getting credit for it? Score!

My goal is to help grow and develop a unique beer culture at FIU. I want the students with whom I work to walk away from our classes with an interesting cocktail party story about how they brewed beer in college – mine is that I took a bowling class – and that a good pint of beer can be as complex as a fantastic glass of wine.

An ‘astounding’ event

My first SoBe is just weeks away, and I am really excited. I love wine. I love food. I like to party with wine and food. It is the perfect combination for me.

As I watch the hospitality school start to swing into full gear to prepare for this event, I can’t help but compare it to brewing. To brew a quality beer, if it is at home or on the large scale, it is a process that takes time and effort to produce something that might seem very easy and simple to the consumer. A typical beer can take as little as four weeks to come together or longer than a year. If you rush at any point during the brewing process, you will have created a subpar product. And let me tell you, there is nothing I dislike more then a subpar beer.

The event that I am working on this year during the festival is the BubbleQ. After signing up for so many prep shifts, my husband will think I ran away for that entire week. But I understand what they want to accomplish.

The BubbleQ is a four-hour party for up to 3,000 people that takes hundreds of hours to prepare. How is this not like a brewing? The effort that the BubbleQ team is putting into this event to make it an unforgettable evening is astounding. I can guarantee that there will be no slacking off until that last rib has been consumed and that last glass of champagne has been imbibed.

I am also working on a beer that will be served at the School of Hospitality tent at the Whole Foods Market Grand Tasting Village Feb. 27-28. It is an American Amber with some Belgian overtones. As I watch it ferment away part of me does want to rush it. I want to taste and smell and make sure everything is perfect, but I know if I mess with it now my quality will not be what I want it to be.

So now I am keeping an eye on my beer and waiting anxiously ’til the festival.

And let me warn you, if I see Paula Dean, I might go crazy.

To read more blog entries from Panthers working on the 2010 South Beach Wine & Food Festival, click here.