Brewer Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This is a production brewer with nine years, moving from cellar work into brewing and quality. The name and the breweries are invented. Notice that the system size, batch frequency and quality numbers are all in the summary. A head brewer reads those first and decides in seconds whether you can walk into their brewhouse.

Craft brewing gets far more applicants than jobs, and most of them are enthusiasts. The people who get hired look like production workers who also know beer, not the other way round.

• System size and vessel count. A 7 BBL brewpub system and a 60 BBL production brewhouse are different jobs with different physical demands. Say the barrel size, the number of vessels and whether it is manual, semi-automated or fully automated.
• Batch frequency and annual volume. Batches a week and barrels a year tells a head brewer what pace you are used to.
• Quality numbers. Dissolved oxygen, attenuation consistency, brewhouse efficiency, package fill accuracy. This is the difference between someone who makes beer and someone who makes the same beer twice.
• Cellar and cleaning. Most of brewing is cleaning. Nobody who writes seriously about CIP, chemical handling and tank turnaround gets mistaken for a hobbyist.
• Safety and physicality. Confined space, CO2, caustic, hot liquor, forklifts, wet floors and 55-pound grain sacks. Say that you know it and can do it.

• Brewhouse: milling and mill gap setting, mash profiles, lautering and sparging, boil and hop additions, whirlpool, knockout and heat exchanger control
• Fermentation and cellar: pitching, temperature control, diacetyl rest, dry hopping, fining, crash cooling, transfers, carbonation, filtration, tank turnaround
• Yeast: propagation, harvesting, cell counting with a hemocytometer, viability staining, pitch rate calculation, generation tracking
• Quality: original and final gravity, pH, ABV, IBU understanding, dissolved oxygen, forced ferment tests, microbiology plating, sensory panels and off-flavor recognition
• Sanitation: CIP design and running, caustic, acid and peracetic acid handling, sanitation validation, ATP swabbing, allergen and pest control
• Packaging: canning and bottling lines, keg washing and filling, seam checks, fill levels, date coding, label application
• Utilities and maintenance: glycol systems, steam or direct fire, CO2 and compressed air, pumps, valves, gaskets, hoses, basic troubleshooting
• Compliance and admin: TTB records and excise reporting, brew logs, inventory and raw material ordering, HACCP or a food safety plan, OSHA safety programs

No license is needed to work as a brewer in the US, though the brewery itself holds federal and state permits. Formal brewing education is optional but it moves you up the pile, particularly for production and quality roles.

• Institute of Brewing and Distilling. The General Certificate in Brewing and the Diploma in Brewing are internationally recognized examined qualifications, and they are studied part time by working brewers.
• Master Brewers Association of the Americas. MBAA runs courses and a Brewing and Malting Science certificate, plus district technical meetings that are worth attending and listing.
• Brewing schools. The Siebel Institute of Technology and the UC Davis brewing programs are the best known US routes, and both have short and long course options. Name the course and the year.
• Cicerone. The Cicerone Certification Program is about beer knowledge and service rather than production. Certified Beer Server is quick; Certified Cicerone is a serious exam. Useful for taproom-facing roles and for sensory work.
• Safety and food. OSHA 10-Hour, forklift certification, confined space entry, CO2 and chemical handling, plus ServSafe or an equivalent food handler card. Breweries are food plants and the safety cards matter.
• Compliance training. Anything you have done on TTB reporting, HACCP or a preventive controls qualified individual course is worth listing if you will handle records.

Almost everyone starts in the cellar or on packaging. Those jobs are wet, cold, heavy and repetitive, and breweries have learned to screen hard for people who understand that before they arrive.

1. 1Apply for packaging operator, keg washer or cellar assistant, not for brewer. It is the normal route and taking it makes you look like you know the industry.
2. 2Get a forklift certification before you apply. Almost every brewery job posting mentions it and most applicants do not have it.
3. 3Put your physical availability plainly: lifting 55-pound grain sacks, standing 10 hours, working early starts, weekends and the occasional overnight brew.
4. 4Bring across relevant production experience: dairy, juice, food manufacturing, commercial kitchen, chemical plant. CIP and sanitation experience from any food plant transfers directly.
5. 5List homebrewing at the bottom, with the system size, batches a year and any competition results. Keep it to two lines.
6. 6Do the IBD General Certificate in Brewing or an MBAA short course while you are applying. It signals that you are serious about production rather than about beer as a hobby.

• One page. Plain layout, no photo, no date of birth. Breweries are small businesses and the head brewer reads the resume between brews.
• Put system size and annual volume next to each employer. It gives every number underneath it context.
• Larger regional and national breweries use applicant tracking systems. Mirror their words: BBL, brewhouse, cellar, CIP, dissolved oxygen, attenuation, yeast propagation, glycol, canning line, TTB.
• Say whether you can work the shift pattern the posting describes, including brew days that start at 4am.
• Do not send a resume built around beer opinions. A head brewer already has opinions and is short of people who will scrub a fermenter properly at 7pm.
• If you are applying to a small brewery, a short specific email with the resume attached, sent to the head brewer by name, beats an online form.

“Everybody says they are passionate about craft beer. Tell me your brewhouse size, your batches a week and your dissolved oxygen number. If you write about CIP and yeast generations without being asked, you have worked a real cellar and I will call you that afternoon.”