The Brief

Campus administrators may cringe when they see the words beer and college next to each other.

But in late 2014 Cal Poly Pomona leaders opened Innovation Brew Works to change the relationship between those two concepts.

In addition to a beer brewing operation, IBW also has an Assistant Brewer Training Program, a seven-week Cal Poly Pomona professional development course that offers a certificate for people who want to enter the brewing economy. The program helps people find jobs in a $117 billion industry.

“This is a college pathway,” said Eric Bassett, production manager at IBW and an instructor for the training program.

Diversifying the brewing industry

There’s a stereotype of the microbrew brewmaster.

“It's a white male with a beard,” Bassett said.

But Innovation Brew Works is helping to change that.

A student in the Innovation Brew Works certificate program at Cal Poly Pomona learns how to use brewing equipment.

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Courtesy Cal Poly Pomona

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The training program enrolls about six students, who bring their varied backgrounds into their learning.

Kevin Limón took the Cal Poly class in 2019 while finishing his geology-geospatial analysis bachelor’s degree.

“[Growing up] we had a little lemongrass plant and my grandma would always make her little tinctures and teas with it,” he said.

His parents and grandparents were born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico.

Now he works at Highland Park Brewery, where he proposed and made a ginger and lemongrass saison beer as a tribute to that cultural experience.

Other efforts to diversify the brewing industry have come along since Cal Poly Pomona's program began. San Diego State University, for example, offers a Diversity in Craft Beer Award that includes free tuition and a brewing internship.

More Latino-themed breweries have opened in recent years across the country.

“The brewing community was one demographic for so long, but we're starting to break that wheel and get more representation out there,” Limón said.

Making beer as an education pathway

The idea for Innovation Brew Works was crafted by G. Paul Storey in 2012. He’s former executive director of the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation and sought to create a “learn by doing” educational laboratory that included a microbrewery and cafe. The university said Innovation Brew Works is the first brewery-restaurant on a college campus open to the public in the United States.

For some graduates, the training program came after working in very different industries.

Shaun Eozzo grew up in Butler, Pa., where he got an associate’s degree in computer forensics from his local community college.

Eric Bassett, right, teaches the Innovation Brew Works class at the program brewery facility at Cal Poly Pomona.

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Courtesy Cal Poly Pomona

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“I ended up kind of transitioning to IT consulting for roughly 15 years and kind of went through the ranks in that industry and just kind of found that it wasn't very fulfilling,” he said.

He wanted to find something more hands-on, more creative, he said, something that engaged the senses. He liked the vibe in microbreweries. So he took the course and is now working at Campsite Brewing Company in Covina, Calif.

“When you go there, you feel like you're transported to a campsite,” he said, and that makes him feel like he’s creating a product people enjoy while being connected to the environment and the earth.

“I'm from Japan. I just moved here three years ago,” said Yuki Endo.

She took the course that wrapped up this month. In Japan, she worked in logistics for a shipping company.

“I just decided to move here to go to school, get [a brewing] certificate and start my career as a brewer here,” she said.

Her previous work was not satisfying, she said, and the Innovation Brew Works program’s hands-on approach to learning the craft gave her satisfaction away from a computer and a desk.

Yuki Endo moved from Japan to the U.S. to learn how to become a brewer. She enrolled in Cal Poly Pomona's brewing certificate program.

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Courtesy Cal Poly Pomona

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For others, the certificate program provided training that opened big opportunities within their current company.

“I've always been really big on continuing education,” said Michael Zalapa, who earned his associate’s degree in business at Orange Coast College in the early 2000s.

He’s worked for 12 years for a Southern California company that manufactures and sells pomade products. The owners of the company bought a brewery in Santa Ana in 2020, he said, and hired a brewer to develop the beers. That brewer left to strike out on his own.

“That's when I started considering going back to school,” Zalapa said.

He had lots of experience in sales and other aspects of business but knew nothing about brewing beer or running a brewery, so he enrolled in the Cal Poly Pomona certificate program last year to learn how a microbrewery works top to bottom. Now, he’s the general manager of Cerveza Cito Brewery in Santa Ana.

Growth in the craft beer industry has slowed in recent years as sales flatten out and some microbreweries close, though several have opened in downtown Los Angeles. There are more than 80 locally based breweries in L.A. County.

“Beer is very high profitability for cost of goods,” Bassett said. At Innovation Brew Works, he said, it costs from 50 cents to $2 to make a pint of beer that sells for $8.

Entry-level jobs offer the grunt work of cleaning vessels, tubes, kegs and all other aspects of the brewing process. Assistant brewers help brewers come up with beers that are consistent in taste and quality.

Limón brewed and worked on beers that won four gold medals last year and led some to say the brewery is the best in the country. He and other graduates say they are very satisfied and did not struggle to find jobs in the industry.

Pay, though, is still an issue.

“I've heard some of my students out there getting about $17 to $20 [an hour] for entry level jobs. Up to $22 bucks, $23 for the brewing positions,” Bassett said.

Give me a flight of beers with Lunch Lady, Study Buddy, and Home Ec.

On a visit to Innovation Brew Works, this LAist reporter tasted a flight of four beers made by Bassett and his students. The ube extract used to flavor the Home Ec. beer gave the brew a purple color, and the smooth taste of the purple yam melded well with the alcohol in the beer.

Reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez sampled the beer that students helped make at Innovation Brew Works

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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Bassett at times uses produce grown on the Cal Poly Pomona campus farm to flavor his beers. He used campus-grown Meyer lemons with ice tea hard seltzer for the beer named Study Buddy. He’s used orange juice from the campus harvest and combined it with pineapple juice for a Lunar New Year beer.

Innovation Brew Works celebrates its 10th anniversary on April 26, 2025 at Cal Poly Pomona.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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This reporter even lifted his pinkie as he brought the 5 oz. glasses (one at a time) to his mouth to savor, because this is not a beer to be chugged a pitcher at a time at a Friday afternoon college party.

A decade of experience shows that beer on a college campus doesn’t have to be crude — it can be an art to be appreciated.

As Los Angeles homeowners grapple with the expense of rebuilding after last year’s devastating fires, an L.A. City Councilmember is putting forward an idea that could lower some costs.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, has introduced a motion to explore waiving part of the city’s portion of the local sales tax for fire victims who purchase rebuilding materials in the city.

The 1% of the local 9.75% sales tax that goes into the city’s general fund would be given back to consumers under the proposal. The waiver could apply to lumber, appliances and other rebuilding goods purchased within the city.

The motion, introduced Friday by Park and seconded by Councilmember John Lee, says: “The City should do everything within its power to alleviate the financial burden for these residents and businesses in order to facilitate their return and stabilize the Pacific Palisades community.”

Would it make much of a difference? 

Economists told LAist the proposal could help many homeowners mitigate the high cost of rebuilding, but likely wouldn’t tip the scales for under-insured, under-resourced property owners.

“It wouldn't hurt if it's very well designed and easy to use,” said Alexander Meeks, a director at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “But I'm not sure if it's really going to tackle the scale of the financial challenge that survivors are facing.”

Meeks noted that the tax waiver wouldn’t lower up-front costs such as environmental testing, architectural design and permitting. And it may not help homeowners sourcing raw materials from outside the city.

Zhiyun Li, a UCLA Anderson School of Management economist, said the waiver could help some homeowners justify the additional cost of rebuilding more fire-safe structures.

“Homeowners must typically pay out of pocket to upgrade to IBHS+ standards, which are more stringent,” Li said. “The tax waiver could encourage upgrading to IBHS+ standards or investing more in mitigation, thereby reducing future risk and improving the likelihood of maintaining insurance coverage.”

What’s next for the proposal? 

The proposed tax relief would not be available to properties that have been sold since the fires started in January 2025.

The motion has been sent to the City Council’s budget and fire recovery committees. If approved by the full council, it would require the city administrative officer, the Office of Finance and the city attorney to report back to the council within 60 days on options for crafting a tax relief plan.

The motion calls for the report to consider factors such as how to minimize the burden of administering the tax relief, what documentation homeowners would have to submit and what it would cost the city to oversee the program.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.