Being a Brewster
The women who contribute to Oregon’s beer scene
by Catherine FossRequirements for being a brewer: must love hops; must enjoy working with complicated sciences; must forgo the office environment in favor of cramped quarters and sticky floors.
Nothing in these requirements says that a brewer must be a keg-tossing male. While Oregon’s female brewers are less than plentiful, they play a huge part in crafting Oregon’s numerous microbrews.
Dana Robles. Photo by Todd Ccooper Tonya Cornett Tonya Cornett, a brewmaster from Bend Brewing, is all too aware of the stereotypes about being a female brewer: She once was denied a job because she couldn’t pick up a keg. She also left a previous brewery because one of the other employees had a problem with her gender. Now, she says, “The brewing industry in Oregon has welcomed me with open arms.” Once she attained the position at Bend Brewing, she never looked back. “Now I let my beer do the talking.”
“Brewster is the female term for brewer,” says Nora Hawkins, a brewer at Terminal Gravity Brewing. Hawkins has an unusual workplace: There are equal numbers of male and female brewers, and gender is almost invisible. “There was an expectation that I was hired to do a job and I was to do it as well as anybody there, whether it was male or female,” she says. In the wider world, she has noticed that this equality isn’t common; she attended a conference where there were four women and a couple hundred males.
Dana Robles, assistant brewer at Oakshire Brewery, says: “When I meet a female brewer, it’s pretty outstanding. I’m pretty stoked because we’re uncommon for sure.” At the six-month brewing program she went through in Davis, Calif., there were 36 men and two women. This was intimidating at first, and she says she felt really nervous and constantly worried about being taken seriously.
Many microbreweries run on small staffs, and it’s hard for an unknown female brewer to break into this male-dominated world. “Breweries are not very corporate in their structure … They’re not very equal opportunity,” says Lillian Macnamara, head brewer at Oregon Trail Brewing. “It’s all about who hangs out with who and who you know.”
Macnamara doesn’t have formal training in brewing sciences, but she acquired a taste for the process through her home brewing experiments. She knew the owner of the brewery where she now works, and when a position became available, he already knew and trusted her. “I would bring my home brew to work for him to try, and he knew that I was a capable brewer.”
Once a woman secures a position as a brewer, it usually doesn’t take long before she becomes one of the team. Robles says, “I have amazing coworkers and they’ve always been really supportive, and also never made me feel different. They weren’t like, ‘Do you need a hand with that?’ They kind of just threw me in there and had me do the work they were doing without questioning whether or not I could do it.”
Why is brewing perceived as a man’s job? Robles feels it goes back to tradition; she mentions that Thomas Jefferson’s wife brewed the beer, so when beer was made in the kitchen, it was a woman’s occupation — but then once production increased, it became a man’s job.
The biggest obstacle for a female brewer might be apprehension. Says Bristol Kelley from Brewers Union Local 180, “I think maybe there’s a little fear that they can’t keep up with the physical part.” The physicality of the job depends on the size of the brewery — the larger the brewery, the more automated it is. At Oakshire, there is a rule that nobody can lift kegs by themselves. “I tell people, I can’t lift a keg, woop-de-doo. No one should lift a keg. It’s bad for your back,” Robles says.
On the other hand, some breweries require intense physical work. Hawkins is one woman who has no problem with that. “I’m a farmer, I’m a packer, I’ve been a firefighter,” she says. Similarly, Macnamara spent a lot of time as the sole brewer. “I had to be able to pass a keg-lifting test before I could even get this job,” she says.
Shaking the stereotype about female brewers also requires accepting that a woman can enjoy a cold beer just as much as the guy next to her. “Women don’t tend to drink beer as much as men in our culture; maybe that’s what it’s all about,” Macnamara says. Not surprisingly, the brewers interviewed had a deep love affair with beers of all types. Robles’ choice is a good IPA: “A nice bright-orange hoppy ale.”
Kelley is still surprised by the lack of female brewers. “We need to have a support group or something,” she says. Kelley’s opinion is that women like her can be very valuable to a brewery — they have a subtler palate, for one. “If we’re designing the menu and the beer, I think that’s a marriage made in heaven,” she says.
Cornett says that although beer was once considered a “guy” thing, more women are now considering it as a career. “Several dads have brought their college-age daughters in to meet me and tour the brewery,” she says. Kelley’s advice to aspiring brewers is: “Plunge in. Nag them until they say they’ll train you, and work really hard.”
Robles hopes that soon it won’t be such an “intimidating endeavor” for a female to pursue brewing. She says, “The more of us, the merrier. I hope secretly that one day I can have a brewery and hire lots of women.”
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