Shelby Ziegler was among the first cohort of fermentation science majors at Middle Tennessee State University, graduating in December 2020. After graduating, she turned down offers from microbreweries near her home north of Nashville and took an "enticing" job with a distillery 70 miles away at Tennessee Distilling.
Ziegler said it took time to learn the equipment unique to each distillery, and that’s something that can’t be taught in class. But thanks to her academic training, she walked into the job as a whiskey distiller, knowing how to monitor and troubleshoot the organic process.
"I knew what the different pH means, the sugar content, what a healthy fermentation should look like, what could be off-flavors produced from whiskey, and what bacteria could produce those off-flavors," she said. "I learned how to solve problems with the mash or the distillate, and I knew how to track the process to see if it was fermenting correctly."
Ziegler is one of several MTSU Fermentation Science majors Mike Williams has hired since he and his business partner launched Tennessee Distilling eight years ago. As a master distiller, Williams said he values MTSU students' skills because so many things can go wrong during fermentation.
"You know, you don't inherently need a degree to run a still," he said, "but they understand the problems in our mash-making. They don't just know what they're doing; they know why they're doing everything, so they tend to move up in the company to roles with more responsibility after starting as a brewer-distiller."
As an MTSU alumnus himself, it's natural that Williams would be quick to hire from his alma mater. But his professional investment in the fermentation science program also speaks volumes. He's so impressed with its graduates that he's begun reimbursing his distillers who get a master's degree.
This is how Ziegler ended up back in school. She'd been employed at Tennessee Distilling for about a year when she began mulling the idea of getting her master's degree. She wanted to expand her knowledge but not her student debt, so an offer from Williams sealed the deal.
"That's what got me to apply to grad school," she said. "I didn't want to take out a big loan to get my master's, but Tennessee Distilling Group paid for it, and they've been super."
After completing two semesters of graduate-level fermentation science coursework, Ziegler switched to biotechnology to get broader training in food science protocols and experiments—knowledge she can apply in the lab side of the distillery. She was also promoted from whiskey distiller to quality assurance manager before finishing her master's in December 2023.
For Williams, investing in his employees' advanced education is a way to build institutional knowledge quickly and stay on top of his company's success.
"We've grown fairly rapidly," he said. "Fast growth is a good problem, but it's still a problem. I've felt like I've been riding a bull all this time."
MTSU's fermentation science program has also grown quickly. From its initial cohort of 17 undergraduates in 2017, it's now holding steady with 35 undergraduate students, plus 12 to 18 students in the two-year master's program.
Fermentation science majors don't just come from Tennessee. They've come from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, and South Carolina. Students are taught in partnership with local companies and receive hands-on training sessions at industry sites.
Ziegler, an Alabama native, was initially attracted to the bachelor's degree because it's on the Academic Common Market, which lets college students in the southern U.S. pay in-state tuition for degrees not offered in their home states.
She said her favorite part of the program was the hands-on aspect. In one class, they made cheese and sausages. In another, they tended a vineyard and later harvested and crushed the grapes to make wine.
The master's degree has drawn even more widespread interest, with a quarter of the graduate students being international.
MTSU fermentation students have also interned with wineries, distilleries, breweries, cheese-making operations and state governmental agencies within Tennessee, the U.S. and around the world.
While some fermentation science graduates stay in Tennessee, like Ziegler, others have landed all over the map, including Wyoming, Oregon, Texas, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Tennessee Distilling Co. is located in Columbia, Tennessee, and bottles some of the biggest whiskey labels in the world. With another campus in Centerville, the distiller also supports Tennessee farming. The vast majority of grains, including thousands and thousands of pounds of corn every year and some local rye, are purchased from within 100 miles of the Columbia facility.
They don't just know what they're doing; they know why they're doing everything…
We've grown fairly rapidly. Fast growth is a good problem, but it's still a problem. I've felt like I've been riding a bull all this time.