COVER

BEER Female brewmaster takes indirect route to the tap

by Charlie Smith

When Sarah Polkinghorne applied to become the head brewer at Black Kettle Brewing, her first interview occurred over Skype. That wasn’t a surprise to Polkinghorne, a Port Coquitlam native and graduate of the brewmaster and brewery operations management program at Niagara College Canada.

But then the North Vancouver craft brewery asked her to create her own beer— something she had never experienced before while seeking work.

“I actually developed a recipe when I was interviewing for this job,” Polkinghorne told the Straight by phone. “For the second interview, we made the beer. It got me the job.”

A year later, her Interview Beer is one of the beverages available at Black Kettle Brewing.

“It’s delicious,” she said. “It’s the one I drink the most.”

Polkinghorne is one of a handful of female brewmasters in B.C. The list includes Dogwood Brewing founder Claire Wilson, Julia Hanlon of Steamworks, Nicole MacLean of Twa Dogs Brewery, Heather Kilbourne of Salt Spring Island Ales, and Erin Dale of Barkerville Brewing Co.

Polkinghorne didn’t originally intend on becoming a brewmaster. She obtained a bachelor of science in chemistry at the

Black Kettle Brewing hired Sarah Polkinghorne as its brewmaster after she created her own beer during a job interview—the beverage is called the Interview Beer. Photo by Todd Duncan Studios.

Brewer Brienne Allan drew a huge response by asking women to share tales of sexism in her industry. Photo by Notch Brewing.

University of Victoria before being hired as an analyst and later a laboratory technician at Maxxam Analytics (now Bureau Veritas). After a stint with a mining company, Polkinghorne became a quality-assurance technician at Coca-Cola’s plant in Richmond, later moving into a similar position at Northam Brewery in Kamloops.

“That’s when I fell in love with craft beer,” Polkinghorne said. “I had been working in quality assurance in beer for six months. I started doing a bit of home brewing and I really liked it because I got to use my science skills I already had. I was able to make up recipes, which uses your creative side.”

She decided to enroll at Niagara College Canada—then one of only three brewmaster programs in the country—because it had a brewery on campus. The Kwantlen Polytechnic University program opened its brewery after she had decided to move to Ontario.

At Niagara College Canada, Polkinghorne learned in her first year how to brew her own recipes in a five-hectolitre system. In the second year, she was given an option between two styles of beer to make. She chose a smoked hefeweizen.

“If you can brew on a small system, you can go and work at a big brewery,” Polkinghorne said. “They only get fancier and more automated.”

In 2019, a Brewers Association survey in the U.S. found that women filled 37 percent of nonproduction and nonservice staffing positions in the craft-brewery industry. However, only 7.5 percent of the female employees were head brewers, in comparison to 54 percent who were brewery service staff.

Polkinghorne is a member of the Pink Boots Society, an international organization that encourages women to advance their careers in brewing through education. It does this through fundraising for educational scholarships.

In that spirit, Polkinghorne created a Pink Boots 2021 Hop blend, with $1 from every pint going to the society. “It has been out for three weeks now,” she said.

So what sets Kettle Brewing apart from its many competitors, including nine on the North Shore?

“We focus more on traditional-style beers and making things we like,” Polkinghorne replied. “We have a mix of North American style, the hazy IPAs, and also traditional stouts, like bitter West Coast IPAs. And, of course, having a female brewmaster sets us apart.” g

U.S. craft whistleblower prompts local response

by Charlie Smith

The craft-beer industry markets itself as hip, artisanal, and forward-thinking. But over the past month, many U.S. companies had to fend off accusations that they were back in the Stone Age in their treatment of female employees.

The human-resources bomb was detonated by a Massachusetts brewer, Brienne Allan, through a simple question. On her Instagram feed, @ratmagnet, she asked women to share stories of sexism in the beer industry. This came after her credentials were questioned.

What followed was a torrent of responses that named names and led to several resignations, including that of San Diego–based Modern Times Beer CEO Jacob McKean. Evil Genius Beer Co. co-owner Trevor Hayward reportedly stepped down from the Philly Loves Beer board.

One former brewing industry employee in the San Francisco Bay area told Allan that she had endured levels of misogyny beyond what she’d seen in any other profession. Another wrote of an older, married coworker offering her a lift home, then driving down a dark side street, where she was assaulted.

“He choked me to the point of passing out and ripped out some hair as I was flailing to flight back,” the woman stated. “I was scared and decided it was better to pretend to go along with it, so as he’s ripping my pants off I asked him to get a condom and it’ll be fine.”

As the man went to his trunk, the woman fled and called the cops. “He spent the next few weeks threatening me and pressuring me to drop the case,” she wrote, before naming his South Dakota bar.

There were scores of other tales of sexism and abuse.

“I thought maybe it would die down, and it’s just getting worse,” Allan, former leader of the Pink Boots Society’s Boston chapter, told the digital-media company VinePair last month. “I don’t know how to really handle it right now.”

The Pink Boots Society advocates on behalf of women in the industry.

“Over the past few weeks, over a thousand accounts of sexism and harassment of women in our community have demanded bravery, compassion, and collective action from us all,” the society’s president, Jen Jordan, said in an online message to members. “Many members have taken the lead by creating safe space events where women can share their experiences. Resources are being collected and shared on the local level to support members, or any women who needs help.”

The stories of sexism reached such a crescendo in the U.S. that the executive director of the B.C. Craft Brewers Guild, Ken Beattie, posted a message on his organization’s site saying that it is “on a mission to create a safe workplace across the country for our industry”. According to Beattie, this showcased how the industry has “failed its core purpose of taking care of its people while doing business”. The guild’s board applauded the courage of those who have spoken out on the @ratmagnet account.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Beattie said a great deal is being done to change the culture of the industry, enhance workplace safety, and introduce standards of reporting. This month, for example, there will be a survey of employees in craft breweries across the country.

“You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are now,” Beattie said. “Hopefully, that will establish the benchmarks that we need to provide the education and resources moving forward.”

He also said that at the guild’s conference in February, Ontario-based beer-industry diversity consultant Ren Navarro