Hi Friends! I'm Jen Rogers, Co-owner, Brewmaster and Chief Awesome Officer of Wild Winds Brewery. My husband, Tim and I were sitting on our patio on a beautiful summer day in 2016 drinking some craft beer. We were chatting about how we were tired of “the corporate grind” and investing so much time working for someone else and not 100% enjoying what we were doing. At that moment, we decided we wanted to start our own business. But what type of business? A gym? Although we both have fitness backgrounds, it didn't have the right appeal. Then I had suggested a brewery! YES!! Where do we start? We love drinking craft beer, but neither one of us knew how to brew it!

We started looking into opportunities to formally learn. At the time there were only two schools in Canada that offered technical brewing education and training. One in Niagara, Ontario and one in Olds, Alberta. Olds is only a one hour drive from Calgary and the Olds College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management Program has a great reputation, so we started looking into the application process. We set our alarms for 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 1, 2016 to send in our applications. By November, we had both been accepted to start in September of 2017. When it came time to choose who would take the plunge to go back to school, we decided it would be best for me to pursue the program. The Olds College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management Program is a 2-year program that provided me with valuable technical knowledge, practical experience, industry relationships and lasting friendships. 

In my first semester I was learning to brew on the Olds College pilot system and homebrewing at home. This was a good experience, but I wanted more opportunities to brew. To really hone in on developing and brewing recipes for our future brewery, I purchased a Sabco Brew Magic brewing system. We set-up the Sabco system in our garage. Having this system really helped me gain further practical experience and now we have our pilot system for Wild Winds Brewery.

While attending school, I worked at Village Brewery. At Village, I really got to learn and appreciate brewery quality assurance and quality control, brew small scale pilot batches, feel a sense of community and work with some very amazing people – they are my Village people! I also had the opportunity to develop my first commercial recipe that was brewed for Don Tse’s 20,000th beer. During this time, I organized the Olds College Brewmaster Dinner in March of 2019 where we raised over $8000.00 for Olds College Brewmaster Students. This was a great opportunity to network with various people in the industry. I also volunteered to support the Alberta Small Brewers Association’s Alberta Craft Brewing Convention in 2018 and 2019 which was another great networking opportunity. 

I graduated with Distinction from the Olds College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management Program in April of 2019. Now it was time to find full-time employment. Fortunately, I was approached by Last Best Brewing & Distilling for a brewer position. Once again, I forged some amazing relationships at Last Best, learned to brew on a large scale system, gained some valuable experience including the principles of hard work. It was physically demanding, but it taught me how much could really be accomplished in the run of the day. While employed there, I decided to pursue obtaining my Certified Cicerone designation. I have completed the written and practical portion, but am waiting to take the tasting portion (due to the pandemic, the tasting exams have all been postponed). Then the pandemic hit and like so many people, I was laid off from Last Best. Approximately six weeks into the initial lockdown, I was approached by Railyard Brewing who were hiring for a Brewers position. The position was focused on research and development. In the span of three months I developed and brewed over 20 recipes. I was then promoted to the position of Production Manager after four months. We put our house up for sale and it sold! Now, here we are! Ready to get this brewery off the ground! It’s been 4 years in the making!