I am working for St. Austell Brewery in the "process" part of the bussiness. Process work is basically centrifuging and filtering beer that is destined for bottles or pressurised kegs, as we need that to be "bright" (free of suspended yeast/solids).

Brewing is pretty much the traditional definition: mixing malted barley and hot water to convert starches to simple sugars (mashing), boiling the resulting sugary liquid (called "wort") with hops, cooling it, adding yeast, leaving it to ferment the sugars into ethanol.

I'm also working towards my brewing qualifications with the IBD (Institute of Brewing and Distilling), which involve 3 years of part time study and is a degree-level qualification.

There is an immense amount of chemistry, general science and engineering involved in properly understanding brewing. Practically speaking, the processes are similar to lab work, I still spend my days transferring solutions from one vessel to another, heating, reacting, cooling and filtering said solutions through celite, whilst trying to exclude air. We even have a giant column to de-gas water!