‘Man, what a cool job!’

Goat Island Brewing kicks off Cullman Oktoberfest with announcement of Wallace State Brewery Technician program partnership and scholarship

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Goat Island Brewing and representatives of Wallace State Community College celebrate “Goatoberfest” at the brewery Saturday. Left to right are John Dean, Christina Holmes, Jamie Blackmon, Mike Mullaney and Gery Teichmiller. (W.C. Mann for The Cullman Tribune)

CULLMAN, Ala. – Cullman’s Goat Island Brewing officially kicked off Cullman Oktoberfest 2020 Saturday with its own “Goatoberfest” celebration at the south Cullman brewery, and was joined by Christina Holmes and Jamie Blackmon of Wallace State Community College to announce a new partnership to offer brewery technician apprenticeships. Goat Island launched the project by offering a $500 scholarship to be given to a selected candidate.

Goat Island’s marketing director John Dean, who came up with the idea for the scholarship, told The Tribune, “I want to challenge the rest of the breweries in the state of Alabama- we actually have a good friend of ours, Eric Myer from Cahaba Brewing Company, which helped us when we started this thing five years ago; that’s what it’s all about, is helping each other- he’s going to come up here and he’s already talked to Christina, and he’s all about it. We’re going to challenge the other 37 breweries in the state to do the same thing and start this thing at Wallace, and hopefully it’ll go real well.” 

Said Holmes, “Wallace State is very excited about this partnership, and we feel like if there’s someone who just loves beer and wants to understand the science behind what it takes to brew a good beer, man, what a cool job! So please take advantage of this opportunity.”

Goat Island brewer Gery Teichmiller added, “It’s just hard to find anybody in this area that has any expertise at all, except for maybe home brewing, so it’d be really good to get young folks into an apprentice program that would help them find a job, because brewers are always looking for help in breweries. I think it’s a great thing, and I think it’ll work great.”

For more information on the program, contact Christina Holmes at 256-352-8120.

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W.C. Mann

craig@cullmantribune.com