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| Ska Brewing's front of house diva Holly Zabka displays a few of the brewhouse's offerings. Local women like Zabka are taking a bigger role in the craft brewing industry./ Photo by Stephen Eginoire |
Barley betties
Women tapping into local brewing world
by Michelle Duregger
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Inaugural Durango |
“She makes great beer.”The phrase is not heard often and has been known to make some laugh and some cry. But females are increasingly pouring themselves into craft brewing, and the Four Corners is starting to taste the rewards.Tony Simmons, president/head brewer at Pagosa Brewing Co., admits that the commercial brewing industry is male dominated but not on purpose. Since Simmons started the brewery in 2006, only two ladies have applied for the brewer position and one got the job.
“We are an equal opportunity employer. I am just looking for someone with a passion for brewing,” he explains. “Maybe they think it’s only for guys.”Since the 1980s, women have been staging a brewing comeback, cleverly putting their passion for beer into action. “Brekenridge Brewery has a couple women now, and there are more at New Belgium,” says Arlo Grammatica, Ska Brewing sales and distribution guru.
One thing is certain, breweries are benefiting from a woman’s touch. “We are just good at it,” says Durango’s Eleanor Schnose as she hoists a massive mug of IPA. The graphic designer is on her 100th batch of home-brew and has five varieties of hops growing in her back yard.Sorry men, but women excel at tasting complex flavors and distinguishing a specific ingredient that makes a beverage or food taste a certain way, and are often great at predicting the flavors that will develop in a brew. Simmons readily admits that his wife, Julie, has a more developed palate than himself. She regularly judges home-brew competitions around the area, and is often the only woman on the judging panel.
“Beer is so complex,” Schnose explains, “so much more complicated than wine. There are a lot more ingredients, a lot more flavors going on. And women usually do the cooking, so I just don’t understand why more women would not be into beer.”
A May 2011 Gallup Poll shows only 27 percent of women list beer as their top alcoholic choice. That percentage will change, if the girls at Ska 4Brewing and Silverton Brewery have anything to do with it. Barley Pop Betties has been encouraging female beer consumption in La Plata County since October 2010. Members meet once a month at Ska, discuss craft beer and brew their own concoctions.A new group, Barley’s Angels, is set to launch in November. Spearheaded by Kate Harvie, co-owner, manager and recipe-tweaker at Silverton Brewery, Barley’s Angels will run along the same vein as Barley Pop Betties but rotate around the 12 breweries around the Western Slope.
“One day, we will talk about IPAs, another day grains,” Harvie says. “The first meeting we will do a basic comparison of what is craft beer and what is not.” Harvie grudgingly admits that at one time in her pre-beer-brewing life she thought of Samuel Adams as a craft beer. She hopes that soon women will never again hear the condescending phrase, “Really? Do you know what you are ordering?”
As craft brewing begins to capture women’s hearts, the commercial beer industry is perking up. “Nine times out of 10, it is the woman who is buying the beer at the store for her husband at home,” Harvie says, between sips of Red Mountain Ale
The industry is taking note. Ginger Johnson, of Portland, Ore., works with breweries around the nation on marketing to women. And Durango, with its four craft breweries and sizable female population, is on the crest of this new wave.As a result, more women are trickling into the workforce at local breweries. Ska Brewing has six women heavily involved in the everyday workings of the operation. They are the divas of distribution and payroll, put up with the guys in the canning room, manage the tasting room and home-brew shop, and plan out the events and bands that frequent the brewery.
There are also a few other women scattered around the other local breweries. Even from adminstrative roles, women have a powerful influence on the beer their companies put out. As more women become involved in the beer industry, Schnose predicts an explosion in beer flavors – slowly and surely changing the face of the beer industry.At Homebrewers of Pagosa Springs (HOPS), four ladies are involved, brewing their own concoctions. New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins and San Luis Valley Brewing Co. in Alamosa both have lady brewers helping to craft their beers. Oregon leads the nation with lady brewers. But even there, there are only 10 brewers sprinkled around the state’s 130 breweries.
“We are always going to be a rare breed, and there will never be an equal footing,” Schnose says. “There just will never be as many women interested as men, in my opinion.”
The cause for the absence of women brewers is mysterious, the local ladies admit. While there is a stereotype that brewing is a men’s sport, neither Schnose nor Harvie have experienced condescension or criticism.“Men totally support it,” Schnose says. “They hear you are into it, and they want to know more.”
Harvie believes that some of the discrepancy has to do with clashing egos, “It is different when a man has to take orders from a woman,” she says. “In the brewhouse there might be issues. When a woman tells a man to squeegee the floor, what is his reaction?”
However, Ska’s Brewer Thomas Larsen would gladly squeegee the floor for a lady brewer who knew her stuff. The real lack of lady brewers may be in the daunting job description: the ability to lift 50-pound bags of malts over head and lug 160-pound kegs around the brewery.
“You have to be pretty burly,” Schnose says. “I met a girl at Steamworks a few years back, and she was training to be an assistant brewer. After a while her back was coming apart, lifting those 50-pound sacks. And she was no weenie.”
Again Oregon takes the lead. Tonya Cornett, Head Brewmaster of Bend Brewery, has devised a way to save the backs and brawn of herself and her employees. She uses a hand cart or other simple machinery to leverage heavy malts and kegs to and from her second level brewhouse.
Fortunately, there is something to be said about working smarter. “Once it became industrialized they thought they needed muscles,” says Holly Zabka, Ska’s tasting room/merchandise goddess. “But look back in time, and you realize that all of the brewing used to be done by the women.”
Barley Pop Betties meets once a month to discuss and drink craft beers. Email holly@skabrewing.com for details.
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