The Secrets to Landing Your First Brewing Jobs | SevenFifty Daily

As head brewer at Austin Street Brewery in Portland, Maine, Marlee Gunn has specific advice for someone seeking brewing work. “I’d recommend they get a four-year bachelor’s degree in psychology, and then decide to start brewing,” Gunn says, laughing.

No two beers are identical, and neither are the pathways for entering the brewing workforce. In 2021, fresh out of college, they began as a packaging technician at Boston’s Trillium Brewing, before moving to Portland to work as Lone Pine Brewing’s cellar person monitoring fermentation and cleaning tanks. They shifted to Austin Street in 2022, rising from brewer to lead brewer and, finally this February, head brewer.

“I entered the industry without ever homebrewing,” Gunn says. “I was willing to learn and work in a fast-paced, maybe wet, maybe hot, maybe cold warehouse environment—and have a good time while doing it.”

For SevenFifty Daily, I took a look at what it takes to crack into the brewing industry.