The Craft Brewers Conference promoted an environment where members of the beer industry exchanged ideas and furthered their knowledge of craft beer. Attendees to this year’s conference came from all parts of the world, ranging from the wide-eyed prospective brewery owner to the seasoned beer community veteran. Regardless of position, gender or career focus, individuals at the conference all shared a desire to learn more about this rapidly-growing industry.
During CBC, Portland-based Deschutes Brewery organized an event at Toronado to help promote the DVD release of The Love of Beer, a film by Alison Grayson. Of course, like at most Deschutes’ “Base Camp” events, their famous over-sized traveling barrel keg “Woody” was outside welcoming patrons. On the back patio, Grayson was selling copies of the DVD, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Keep A Breast Foundation. Back inside the bar, purchases of chocolate truffles from local chocolatiers Chi Chocolat benefitted the same cause.
Grayson’s film, which will be screened next Tuesday in Green Flash’s tasting room followed by a panel discussion with local industry members, tells the story of passionate women working in craft beer, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest. Like the title infers, these women “aren’t doing it for feminism or equality—they’re doing it for the love of beer.”
Overall, the film focuses on three women in the industry: Sarah Penderson from Saraveza Bottle Shop & Pasty Tavern in Portland, OR; Tonya Cornett, award-winning Head Brewmaster from Bend Brewing Co. in Bend, OR; and Teri Fahrendorf, first woman Brewmaster at a California craft brewery and President of the Pink Boots Society, an organization whose mission statement is to “empower women beer professionals to advance their careers in the Beer Industry through Education.”
I had the opportunity to meet Fahrendorf at my first National Pink Boots Society Meeting, held on Friday of CBC week. It was truly an honor, and a great source of inspiration, to sit in the same room with presidents, founders, CEOs, managers and brewmistresses from well-known breweries across the country.
In addition to an address from Fahrendorf on the current and future state of the organization, Alexandra Nowell from Drake’s Brewing discussed the Pink Boots Saison, brewed last year as a way to raise money for the organization’s scholarship fund. The 15-barrel batch was available only on draft throughout the Bay Area, and was very popular; Nowell was confident that future brews with donated ingredients would fare just as well.