Volunteering in Austin breweries.

It is actually not required for pouring, however, the liability shifts to the pourer rather than the license holder, when one has their TABC certification, so most folks require it so as not to take on additional liability.

 

Not sure why I'm having to explicitly say all this - I meant my initial "not requirement" in the sense of volunteering in general (ie if you just want to deliver or clean kegs etc). Now when it comes to volunteering specifically during a tour/tasting event to pour beer (the context of my second reply), I haven't encountered anyone who doesn't list the TABC cert as a requirement.

 

The plan when I graduated UCSB was to go back eventually. I moved to Texas for the chance to experience something different (and Austin isn't too 'Texan').
But it would be so different not to be an undergrad (and not living in IV); and even if I was an undergrad again, with all of the yearly changes to IV even that would be quite changed.

 

Yeah I can't imagine any brewer, festival organizer, or distributor not requiring it for their own release of liability, was just stating that it is not a legal requirement.

 

Interesting topic! I wanted to add a few things to what has been said already. I'll probably come across as a total dick, but I'm going to try to be as real about it as possible because I think people should know both sides of the coin.

1) I hate the idea of Volunteers in a brewery. Wait... whaaaaaaa? I hate them for a different reason than you think. My personal philosophy is that if you are going to come provide your time and labor to help my business make money, you deserve to be paid. With money, not with beer.
2) With that said, we have had volunteers. But we generally only take on volunteers we have known for awhile and who are friends of ours, and we don't do it because we need the labor - we do it because they really want to do it (someone in this thread volunteered with us just the other day). If we need the labor, we will pay someone.
3) In the vein of #2 - we get A LOT of people wanting to volunteer. I mean... A LOT. It is flattering, but it can be a liability. I tell everyone the same thing: if you want to volunteer, befriend the brewers. Is this snobby? Maybe. But I'm being honest here, we don't need the labor and often times having a volunteer makes doing the job more difficult. So if we're going to let someone do it, it's going to be someone we like, not a random stranger. No offense random strangers, but wouldn't you rather hang out with people you like rather than random people?
4) I tell people who want to WORK in our brewery the same thing: our head brewer, Jason Davis, started as a dishwasher at Waterloo Brewing Co. in 1994. Our assistant brewer, Nick Coelho, started was a dishwasher on our opening day at Freetail in 2008. These guys didn't aspire to be dishwashers, they wanted to be brewers. And today they are. You get in where you can, and make your own way.
5) There is another way to volunteer for us... we donate a "Brewer for a Day" package to local charities to auction off 2-3 times a year. We are actually pretty enthusiastic about letting strangers volunteer this way, since it raises money for great causes.

Lastly, I want to point out that not even operating a brewpub for 5-years has prepared us to operate a production facility. When we open our new brewery, we'll be hiring people experienced in the production side of things.

 

Have you looked into classes at Austin Homebrew (I forget if you're local to the area)?

They usually have a "beginner homebrewing" class once per month that teaches the basics. I believe it's $25 and is around a 3-4 hour class teaching a dual cooler method of all-grain brewing. I've never extract brewed, but I believe they have another class that teaches that method. They also have more intermediate/expert courses as well (on the page right now is "Beer recipe design"). Bookmark this page if interested:

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_324

It's worth mentioning that their more advanced courses are usually taught by actual brewers from local breweries. It looks like head brewer for Real Ale (Erik Ogershok) is teaching the beer design class, for instance. So you can befriend brewers at the same time! LOL.

 

Then lead the charge...

 

Now I can see why places are so reluctant to take in volunteers.