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Sisters Are Brewing it for Themselves

An in-depth look at the first ladies of craft brewing

By Lori Barrett
Published: January 3rd, 2011 | 9:00am

The craft beer industry is changing the image Madison Avenue has foisted on beer: that of the sweating cans tossed between burly men at tailgating parties, frat gatherings, and backyard barbecues.  And among craft brewers, in this country and across Europe, there is a growing population of women manning the tanks, hoisting the barrels, and calculating the metabolic cycle of yeast.

Teri Fahrendorf counts herself as the second female brewmaster, the beer-making equivalent of a chef, at a craft brewer. Her 17 years of brewing make her not only a pioneer among women brewers, but also in the craft-beer industry in general. In 2008, when trying to decide what to do next in her career, Fahrendorf took a road trip and brewery tour, where she met so many young women at work that she formed the Pink Boots Society, an organization for women in the beer industry—not just brewers, but writers, marketers and pub owners. The society has 440 members and a lively system of support. Fahrendorf cites a recent forum discussion about being pregnant and working around brewing chemicals as proof that the Pink Boots was meant to be. Years ago, that pregnant brewer would have been on her own.

Touring the breweries, Fahrendorf came to the conclusion that women brewers might have a few advantages in being smaller and, perhaps, more clever. “I don’t know any woman in the industry with a bad back,” she says. “Women have learned to strategize because they can’t muscle through.” In her own experience, she found ways to break up loads, move them with dollies, and build steps or dumbwaiters to the tops of tanks.

The inaugural meeting of the PBS was held at the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego, where, coincidentally, Tonya Cornett of Bend Brewing in Oregon won the World Beer Cup award for champion brewery in the small brewpub category. She’s the first female brewmaster to win that award. “It was so awesome, having the Pink Boots in the house,” says Cornett. The women were jumping up and down and eager to congratulate her.

Cornett started home brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado, after being inspired by the beer from local brewery New Belgium. From there she volunteered at a pub, watched and toured other breweries, and finally made her way to the World Brewing Academy, a Chicago-based partnership between the Windy City’s Seibel Academy and the German Doemans Academy.  Now, two years after her Beer Cup award, Cornett says it’s her that beer tourists and journalists come looking for when they’re in Oregon, even though there are seven other talented brewmasters in her home state.

Jennifer Talley, the brewmaster at Squatters Pub in Salt Lake City, Utah, came to beer through the Grateful Dead. She travelled from show to show with other Deadheads, drinking Sierra Nevada at campsites and in parking lots. “Not many of those people had homes, but they all had coolers full of craft beer,” Talley says. She fell in love with the pale ale and began home brewing. Not certain that brewing could be a long-term career, she earned a Masters in Social Work, then shelved the degree and instead became a brewer’s apprentice. In 1995, she won a scholarship to the World Brewing Academy, where she mastered the beermaking process “from grain to glass.” Her beers have won awards as well, at beer festivals and the World Beer Cup. Last fall, she won a gold medal at the National Wood-aged Beer Competition for her Fifth Element.

Of course, being a brewmaster isn’t all recipes and awards. “We’re really glorified janitors with a cool job title,” says Jamie Martin, brewmaster at Moosejaw Pizza & Dells Brewing in Wisconsin Dells. Everything that touches the beer has to be cleaned and sanitized; each piece of equipment takes about two-and-a-half hours to clean. Many days are spent scrubbing and making repairs. Martin discovered brewing while studying biotechnology in college. Some of her professors were home brewers, so bioreaction class turned into a lesson in fermentation. She did well enough that her teachers advised her to go into the beer industry. Now, with nearly a decade of brewing (and a silver medal from the Great American Beer Festival for her amber ale) behind her, Martin’s discussion of microbrewing still sounds like a discussion of microbiology, peppered with references to metabolic cycles and energy cells.

It’s not easy to break into the beer industry, says Martin. She always tells people it’s easier to become a neurosurgeon. When she was starting out in 2002, being a woman made it a little tougher to land a job, but once established, she found her sex actually opened some doors—though she did run into trouble not long ago when ordering a silo. The woman on the other end of the phone mistook Martin for a secretary and asked her to put the brewmaster on the line.

Besides the many established craft brewers, the Pink Boots Society includes members who are brewing and developing recipes at the large, corporate breweries. Jane Killbrew-Galeski trains young brewers at Anheuser-Busch, Bonnie Cheng is a brewing manager at Anheuser-Busch, and Rhonda Dannenberg is a pilot brewer with MillerCoors. Fahrendorf says uniting all these brewers, pub owners, beer writers, and beer drinkers has been as satisfying, if not more, than winning the eight medals she’s won for her beer. “It’s time for me to give back.”

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