Safety First in Beer Land!

When I began in the brewing industry, safety was the first lesson I was taught. I tucked my jeans into my knee-high steel toed boots, donned my green high school chemistry class goggles, thick chemical resistant gloves that were four sizes too large and set out to work. I was a brewer! If my mind didn’t yet believe it, the outfit worked to convince me. So many beers, years, countries and traumas later, when I decided to write a beer blog, it just made sense that safety be the first topic.

I think back to some of the scarier places that I have lived and brewed. Safety was critical is these situations. In Vietnam, the brewery was on an island called Can Gio, in the Saigon River Delta. Two hours from Ho Chi Minh via motor scooter and ferry, there was no life flight helicopter to take anyone to the hospital. In fact, the hospitals in some places don’t even feed you food. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and the family of the person in the bed next to you (forget about private rooms, ha! Hahaha!) will feel sorry for your and share some of their food that they prepared on a charcoal grill on the front lawn of the hospital, with you. I just hope you’re okay with eating any creature that moves, through a straw. Siiiiiigh.

Having a firm grip on safety is critical in these places. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m in the western world! We have life flights and hospitals with food and private rooms here! We can be recklessly cavalier in the brewery. Eeeesh. Really?

Do everything you can to keep yourself safe in the first place and you can spend your time and energy making better beers. Instead of healing.

So that’s the focus of my first post and video. Safety.

Why is it important? Who’s role is what? What are potential hazards?

That’s what this first video that I created will discuss. Allison, it looks like a third grader made this silly video. I’m not a media professional. I’m a brewer and a biochemist. And you are in Beer Land.