Student Brews Unique Education

When the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub opened last spring, it included an unmarked tap among the more recognizable beer names. Patrons had to know to ask for the honey lager, which had been brewed by several enterprising undergraduates with a keen interest in beer.

This limited edition beer was only the latest step by Philip “Beamer” R. Eisele ’08, one of the keg’s two undergraduate brewers, on his path to opening his own brewery.

Eisele’s life, both in and out of the classroom, has revolved around his interest in beer and his future career aspirations. During his junior and senior year, he developed two independent study courses at Harvard and pursued an internship at Harpoon Brewery, a Boston-based craft brewery.

Although a government concentrator, Eisele has brought his passion for beer to the classroom and molded a plan of study over the past four years that has enabled him to explore a subject not traditionally taught at Harvard.

WRITING THE RECIPE

Eisele says his love for beer dates back to his very first taste.

“My first beer was a Budweiser from my grandpa’s fridge when I was cutting the grass,” he says. “I think I was 13. It made me feel really cool. It made me feel more like my dad.”

Eisele grew up in a German family in the hometown of the Anheuser-Busch companies in St. Louis, MO.

He says his first taste of “good beer”—a Harpoon IPA—did not come until college. He further developed an appreciation for the beverage during his sophomore year abroad in Australia.

As an injured football recruit to Harvard, Eisele considers his time in Australia a turning point.

“It was there that I decided there’s not enough good beer in the U.S., or at least I hadn’t been introduced to it yet,” says Eisele, who says he cannot decide on a favorite beer.

Foregoing a return to the football field, Eisele instead turned his attention to crafting his new-found interest: beer.

FERMENTING DESIRES

After returning from Australia at the beginning of his junior year, Eisele approached his House master in Cabot House about crafting independent study courses on the beer industry. First focusing on the chemistry of beer-making, Eisele developed a syllabus for an independent study course on the mechanics of brewing and the metabolic aspects of yeast activity.

Under the tutelage of Senior Lecturer on Chemistry Gregory Tucci, Eisele began his first independent study course in the spring of his junior year, while also pursuing an unpaid internship at Harpoon Brewery.

Eisele’s mother, Anne Eisele, says she was supportive yet surprised by her son’s academic pursuit. “At first I thought he was joking,” she says. “I didn’t even realize that Harvard had an independent study program.”

During his internship at Harpoon, Eisele worked three times a week for 10 hours each day while rotating through several different departments, including brewing and quality control.

It was during his internship that Eisele, along with friend Christopher J. Benway ‘08, crafted the recipe for the Pub’s week-long special brew last spring.

Harpoon’s Quality Control Manager Jaime Schier instructed Eisele on ingredient selection and brewing methods.

“I spent several days talking to him about what sort of things to look for, how different brewing techniques would influence the final character of the beer, [and] ways you could tweak things to make the beer taste one way or another,” Shier says.

Impressed by Eisele’s enthusiasm and attention to detail, Shier notes Eisele was never without notebook in-hand.

“When I worked with him, he whipped it out at least 20 times to scribble something in it,” Shier says. “He kept you on your toes because he is inquisitive about basically everything.”

As Eisele’s thirst for beer had yet to be quenched, he pursued a second independent study course the fall of his senior year.

Craving a biological rather than chemical approach to beer, Eisele was directed to Lecturer on Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Berry to develop a reading list on food and taste pairings. Berry added a detailed review of the neurobiology of taste to Eisele’s sommelier literature on wine.

“Beer has been under the radar in the culinary front in the past,” Eisele says. “Not a lot of people in the U.S. would picture beer as being the perfect complement to a meal.”

The course focused on the physiological response when food is introduced into the mouth.

“As an Englishman,” Berry says, “I’m partial to my beer.”

Calling the course a “joint exploration,” Berry says he found the material fascinating, particularly as this was his first experience with the independent study program.

The independent study program reminded Berry of his undergraduate experience at Oxford under the one-on-one tutorial system for its personal approach. He says it surprised him because it required “a massively disproportionate amount of effort in terms of the number of students benefiting.”

Upon reflection, Eisele says he wishes he had considered applying for a special concentration to better tailor his academic work to his interests.

Yet Eisele says he realizes that such intensive independent pursuits require a “creative mind.”

“You have to have something completely out of the box that you want to take into an academic area,” Eisele says.

WHAT’S ON TAP

Pulling from his experiences as bar operations manager and bartender at the Pub, Eisele says he hopes to work in restaurant management for several years after graduation before opening his own brewpub—a restaurant that brews its own beer on-site.

“Opening a brewery like the Harpoon Brewery today would be nearly impossible, but when you start with your own microbrewery or brewpub it’s a lot easier to transition from small-scale brewing to industrial brewing,” he says.

Eisele says he plans to open his first brewpub with his longtime friend and business partner Nick Jenkerson, a junior at St. Louis University.

“We were sitting out on the porch figuring out what we were going to do with our lives, and we came to the conclusion that we wanted to create a product that we enjoyed,” Jenkerson says. “There is not really anything better than opening up a restaurant or bar.”

Eisele’s father notes that their family has a long history of entrepreneurship, and Eisele’s latest endeavor will fit right in.

After tasting her son’s homemade brew, Eisele’s mother says she was “surprised at how good it was.”

“I hope I can come and work for him one day,” she adds. “Maybe I’ll be the dishwasher.”

—Staff writer Laura C. McKiernan can be reached lmckiern@fas.harvard.edu.