Why Brewing Innovation

Innovation is a valuable skillset that is widely applicable and transferable to nearly any discipline or career path. The innovation process involves implementing new ideas, methods, products, services, or solutions that have a significant positive impact and value for society. The Brewing Innovation minor uses brewing as backdrop for experiential learning within the innovation process. 

The minor uses design thinking as an approach to innovation that involves understanding and defining customer needs and the innovation challenge, generating many ideas for addressing that challenge, prototyping ideas, and evaluating possible solutions. The design thinking process is iterative with the results of each step feeding back to inform and improve ideas in the next iteration. 

Required courses in the minor will help you develop skills and offer an immersive experience to build your innovation skills in a rich, interdisciplinary setting that leverages science and engineering, history, innovation, and storytelling. You will tap the historical context of innovation, learn practical brewing skills needed to prototype their ideas, immerse in the innovation process, and gain experience communicating your ideas and innovations to broad audiences. With this foundation, along with the disciplinary expertise you develop in your major field of study, you will immerse in a capstone experience that provides them an immersive innovation experience.
 

Fermentation Innovation Lab

Brewing activities for the minor will be carried out in the Knight Campus’ new Fermentation Innovation Lab. The lab has a brewhouse equipped with a 1-barrel (30 gallon) electric brewing system and several smaller brewing systems for conducting smaller scale brewing and experiments. The lab has fermenters ranging in size from five to 15 gallons and glycol-based chilling units to maintain controlled fermentation temperatures. There is an analytical laboratory for monitoring the brewing process and analyzing finished products. A cold room is available for storing and conditioning beer and storing temperature sensitive ingredients. A servery is set up for educational tasting activities.
 

Contact Us

BRIN advisor (BrewingInnovation@uoregon.edu)