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WOMEN BREWING
Opportunities are growing
within the craft beer industry
By Cara Roberts Murez
For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Sunday, May 3, 2015, page D1
When Teri Fahrendorf began brewing beer in the late 1980s, she was an anomaly in the male-dominated profession.
She became the first woman craft brewmaster in California, where she began her career, in 1989 — and only the second in the country. When she joined Steelhead Brewing Co. in Eugene in 1990, she was not just the first woman craft brewmaster in Oregon, she was the first in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, just as the craft brewing industry has seen explosive growth, so has the networking organization she set up years ago for women in brewing, an attempt "to create a community out of thin air."
It is, Fahrendorf said, an indication not just of the amount of interest in the brewing industry among women, but also of the opportunities it offers for them.
Emily Rinck is a newcomer to the craft beer industry.
Her interest was sparked, she said, when she was working on her bachelor's degree in horticulture at Oregon State University and interned in the hops program.
Rinck said she admired how involved the brewers were with the agricultural products they used and how much they seemed to enjoy their work. And she began to think about how she could find her own niche in the beer industry.
The answer was a shop in Cottage Grove that is part feed store, part home-brewing supplies market and part tap room.
Rinck opened Coast Fork Feed Co. and the Brewstation at 106 S. Sixth St. in April 2013, in partnership with her parents, Dale Smith and Ernie Smith.
"Literally from the first night it was so busy," Rinck said.
Rinck said she has found the brewing industry to be a welcoming one, ready to assist a newcomer.
"I've found most of the people I've met in the industry are just happy to be in the industry," she said. "If you like beer, they'll talk to you about it. I've learned a lot from the people I've met."
The beer side of the business has 12 taps with beer from a variety of local and other craft breweries, a small bar and lots of tables.
"Not only do I get to buy Chicken Feed for my chickens," one of Rinck's customers enthused on Yelp! "but I can fill up my Growler too? All I can say is my chickens have plenty of food and I need to go back already."
Craft catching on
The Oregon Brewers Association ranks Oregon as No. 1 in the country in terms of craft breweries per capita, with one brewery for every 100,000 residents who are 21 and older.
There were 16 craft breweries in Lane County at the end of last year, according to the Oregon Brewers Guild, with women in leadership roles in several of them.
Mercy McDonald, for example, co-founded and owns Claim 52 Brewing in Eugene. Last year, Claim 52 expanded to Springfield, opening a taproom called The Abbey at Sprout! Regional Food Hub.
Colleen Sheehan is co-owner and head of operations at Elk Horn Brewery in Eugene, where she said, she is planning to add beers that might be perceived as being interesting to women, such as a floral series and ciders that have a taste similar to wine.
"It's nice to have a woman's perspective on beer," Sheehan said.
At Ninkasi Brewing Co., the workforce is 27 percent women, spokeswoman Ali Aasum said, which included a woman brewer up until a few months ago, when brewer Dana Robles left for a job in Bend.
It also has fostered the growth of at least one woman-owned beer business, BrewLab, started by former Ninkasi lab tech Dana Garves.
Garves, who studied chemistry at the University of Oregon, started out working in water testing, a field that did not inspire her, she said.
In 2011, she went to work for Ninkasi, where she set up their lab and learned a lot, Garves said.
"Beer is one of the best industries to work with," Garves said. "You can't find better people who care so much about their product, that really want to see not just success for themselves but for other breweries as well."
While she was working at Ninkasi, Garves said, she saw a need for a company that could do affordable beer and wine analyses, particularly for home brewers and small breweries.
In January, she started BrewLab, which analyzes brews for alcohol by volume and International Bitterness Units, as well as color.
"The response has been overwhelming," Garves said.
Changes in the industry
Fahrendorf said the industry has come a long way as far as employing women since she began brewing, after leaving a career at a Fortune 500 tech company, Unisys Corp.
When she left Steelhead in 1990, after brewing there for 17 years, she took a road trip, visiting 70 breweries across the country in five months.
Often the breweries that asked her to visit had young women brewers, Fahrendorf said, and she realized that mentoring them was one of the reasons she'd been invited.
"I was like a role model, I guess you could say, after 19 years as a brewmaster," Fahrendorf said.
She began keeping a list of the women she met in brewing, posting it on her website and called the new network the Pink Boots Society, in honor of her pink work boots.
Over time, Pink Boots morphed into a more formal organization with nonprofit status, membership rules and scholarships for women beer professionals.
"I like to say that there is no gender-based glass ceiling in the beer industry. There is only an education-based glass ceiling," said Fahrendorf who currently works for Country Malt Group in Portland selling brewing supplies to breweries. "If you can't move up from assistant brewer to head brewer, it's probably because you don't have formal brewing education."
By the end of 2013, the organization had about 1,000 members. By the end of 2014, membership had grown by 40 percent, to 1,400. In the first 31/2 months of this year, it added another 500 members.
This rapid increase doesn't just reflect a growing interest by women in brewing, it in turn help fuels it, Fahrendorf said.
"I'm not being egotistical when I say this," she said. "I think by the women beer professionals banding together and naming ourselves, that it has become a lightning rod."
As women's interest in beer has grown, other organization have sprung up in response to that interest.
Barley's Angels, which was founded in 2011, is a club for women more interested in the consumption, than the production, of beers.
Its goal is to educate women about craft beer and increase appreciation of the beverage through events with craft beer professionals, such as beer tastings, food pairings and talks on buying beer. It operates internationally through local chapters.
Kiley Gwynn is chapter president for the Eugene chapter of Barley's Angels, which has 75 members, she said. Beer education takes away the barrier and initial awkwardness that exist when you don't know a subject well, Gwynn said.
"I think it's providing that avenue of accessibility," she said.
"I like to say that there is no gender-based glass ceiling in the beer industry. There is only an education-based glass ceiling."
Teri Fahrendorf
Pink Boots Society, a network of women in the brewing industry
Pink Boots Society — pinkbootssociety.org or Facebook
Eugene Chapter of Barley's Angels — emeraldcity@barleysangels.org or www.facebook.com/BarleysAngelsEUG
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