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Reverend Nat's Hard Cider started in my basement, quickly expanded to my garage, and is now transitioning to a 3500 square foot cidery and public taproom just blocks from the Rose Quarter in Portland. Along with this transition comes new fermenters, new brites, new apple handling equipment, new distribution expansion and new employees. Come join the team as a production cidermaker. We expect to produce about 500 bbl of cider in 2013 and 1500 bbl in 2014 and the sky's the limit beyond that.
If your passion for brewing requires malted grains then this isn't the place for you. But if you want to join a wild ride and get in at the start of a new revolution, then hard cider is the place to be. Those in the know (Boston Beer, former Goose Islander Greg Hall, Widmer), think that hard cider is now where craft beer was 20 years ago. In 20 years, we will be the size of those big guys.
It's nearly impossible to find a qualified unemployed cidermaker because there just aren't that many cidermakers out there, period. So we are hiring from the brewing world as our cidermaking style and work ethic (not to mention marketing and product taste) is more beery than winey.
Two years experience working in a commercial brewery, winery or cidery is required.
Qualifications:
1. Practical knowledge of and extreme attention to safety
Safe chemical handling
Safe lifting techniques
Material handling prowess (forklifts and pallet jacks)
Moving your body in relation to equipment which can pinch, crush, burn, fall over, cut or otherwise injure you
Use of personal protective equipment
Ergonomic body positioning to avoid repetitive stress injuries
2. Knowledgeable, capable and experienced in all aspects of commercial beer, wine or hard cider production including:
Cleaning & filling kegs
Counter-pressure filling bottles
Other packaging tasks
Manually/hand cleaning tanks and equipment
CIP on tanks
Filtration (lenticular, crossflow)
Safe handling of chemicals
Fermentation dynamics including yeast health & faults
Basic understanding of yeast strain characteristics: ale, wine, saison, etc.
Force carbonation dynamics
Forklift driving, not race cars but safe, slow, no bumping into things
Inventory management, production recordkeeping and tax reporting
Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning
Routinely lifting 50 lbs (like all day long) and occasionally 150 lbs (1/2 bbl keg)
Stooping, bending, crawling, etc
3. Extremely hard working and flexible in your shifting responsibilities
One day you'll be picking apples off the ground in an orchard and the next day you may be forklifting packaged cider onto a truck, all without supervision. 10 hour days are frequent and Saturdays are always a possibility. When we're pressing apples, 4-6 times per year, it's a bit like a winery crush operation with 12-14 hour shifts. You will be routinely asked to do a task you've never done before, or for that matter, has never been done before in our cidery. We are writing the book on cidermaking at this point, one day at a time.
4. Undying responsibility with a sink-or-swim attitude
One of our company's mottos is "its your problem now". If you don't like the way that sounds, this isn't the job for you. We hand over responsibility for a task and let the owner of that task determine the parameters for success and how to achieve them. We're a very flat organization with large swaths of the work completely delegated. You may be asked to develop a new technique or solve a problem with only a few sentences worth of explanation and no oversight. If you succeed, you will be lauded and compensated appropriately. If you fail, that's okay too, we all learn from our mistakes. But your attitude towards failure should reflect your sense of ownership of the task at hand. If you hate that your current brewery doesn't hand over responsibility and micromanages your day, then this might be the right place for you.
5. Excellent mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and plumbing troubleshooting skills
We use some DIY equipment and some extremely expensive industrial equipment. The industrial equipment uses high amperage 3 phase power and massive hydraulics. The DIY equipment can be finicky and occasionally needs McGyvering. You should be comfortable solving problems on the fly, anticipating potential failures and improving our processes and equipment as we experience phenomenal growth.
6. Ability to see the future and help us plan for it
If you've worked at a startup nano brewery, this isn't the job for you. We need someone with experience following brewing, packaging and processing SOPs and following quality control and lab analysis protocols. We will look to you to lead the charge in producing our extremely popular ciders consistently, with little waste and little inventory on hand in the most efficient and reproducible ways possible. We have been on an incredible growth curve and you must be able to adapt to changing forecasts and sudden spikes. Our cidermaking takes 8 weeks apple to bottle, in the best case, so if we discover that we're out of cider today, we're totally screwed. Can you help us turn that 8 weeks into 4?
7. Excellent driving record
No speeding tickets in the last three years
No DUI
Valid Oregon drivers license
To apply, send resume and cover letter with compensation history to nat@reverendnatshardcider.com with the subject line "probrewer cidermaker".
No relocation allowance, sorry. And you must like cider.
If your passion for brewing requires malted grains then this isn't the place for you. But if you want to join a wild ride and get in at the start of a new revolution, then hard cider is the place to be. Those in the know (Boston Beer, former Goose Islander Greg Hall, Widmer), think that hard cider is now where craft beer was 20 years ago. In 20 years, we will be the size of those big guys.
It's nearly impossible to find a qualified unemployed cidermaker because there just aren't that many cidermakers out there, period. So we are hiring from the brewing world as our cidermaking style and work ethic (not to mention marketing and product taste) is more beery than winey.
Two years experience working in a commercial brewery, winery or cidery is required.
Qualifications:
1. Practical knowledge of and extreme attention to safety
Safe chemical handling
Safe lifting techniques
Material handling prowess (forklifts and pallet jacks)
Moving your body in relation to equipment which can pinch, crush, burn, fall over, cut or otherwise injure you
Use of personal protective equipment
Ergonomic body positioning to avoid repetitive stress injuries
2. Knowledgeable, capable and experienced in all aspects of commercial beer, wine or hard cider production including:
Cleaning & filling kegs
Counter-pressure filling bottles
Other packaging tasks
Manually/hand cleaning tanks and equipment
CIP on tanks
Filtration (lenticular, crossflow)
Safe handling of chemicals
Fermentation dynamics including yeast health & faults
Basic understanding of yeast strain characteristics: ale, wine, saison, etc.
Force carbonation dynamics
Forklift driving, not race cars but safe, slow, no bumping into things
Inventory management, production recordkeeping and tax reporting
Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning
Routinely lifting 50 lbs (like all day long) and occasionally 150 lbs (1/2 bbl keg)
Stooping, bending, crawling, etc
3. Extremely hard working and flexible in your shifting responsibilities
One day you'll be picking apples off the ground in an orchard and the next day you may be forklifting packaged cider onto a truck, all without supervision. 10 hour days are frequent and Saturdays are always a possibility. When we're pressing apples, 4-6 times per year, it's a bit like a winery crush operation with 12-14 hour shifts. You will be routinely asked to do a task you've never done before, or for that matter, has never been done before in our cidery. We are writing the book on cidermaking at this point, one day at a time.
4. Undying responsibility with a sink-or-swim attitude
One of our company's mottos is "its your problem now". If you don't like the way that sounds, this isn't the job for you. We hand over responsibility for a task and let the owner of that task determine the parameters for success and how to achieve them. We're a very flat organization with large swaths of the work completely delegated. You may be asked to develop a new technique or solve a problem with only a few sentences worth of explanation and no oversight. If you succeed, you will be lauded and compensated appropriately. If you fail, that's okay too, we all learn from our mistakes. But your attitude towards failure should reflect your sense of ownership of the task at hand. If you hate that your current brewery doesn't hand over responsibility and micromanages your day, then this might be the right place for you.
5. Excellent mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and plumbing troubleshooting skills
We use some DIY equipment and some extremely expensive industrial equipment. The industrial equipment uses high amperage 3 phase power and massive hydraulics. The DIY equipment can be finicky and occasionally needs McGyvering. You should be comfortable solving problems on the fly, anticipating potential failures and improving our processes and equipment as we experience phenomenal growth.
6. Ability to see the future and help us plan for it
If you've worked at a startup nano brewery, this isn't the job for you. We need someone with experience following brewing, packaging and processing SOPs and following quality control and lab analysis protocols. We will look to you to lead the charge in producing our extremely popular ciders consistently, with little waste and little inventory on hand in the most efficient and reproducible ways possible. We have been on an incredible growth curve and you must be able to adapt to changing forecasts and sudden spikes. Our cidermaking takes 8 weeks apple to bottle, in the best case, so if we discover that we're out of cider today, we're totally screwed. Can you help us turn that 8 weeks into 4?
7. Excellent driving record
No speeding tickets in the last three years
No DUI
Valid Oregon drivers license
To apply, send resume and cover letter with compensation history to nat@reverendnatshardcider.com with the subject line "probrewer cidermaker".
No relocation allowance, sorry. And you must like cider.