05/12/2008

Associated Press

Raise your glasses to Tonya Cornett.

Cornett, a brewer at Bend Brewing Co., recently won the prestigious brewmaster award at the World Beer Cup sponsored by the Brewers Association — the first woman to earn the honor.

It's part of a growing ascension of women in the male-dominated world of beer making.

"I just jumped up and down," said Cornett, who lost her voice a couple of days before the ceremony in San Diego. "So I couldn't scream. I ran up on the stage. There were tears going down my face."

Among the other wet eyes in the crowd were Teri Fahrendorf. When Fahrendorf started brewing in Berkeley almost 20 years ago, she was the only woman brewmaster west of the Rocky Mountains.

"Now there's a few more, which is good," she said. "But it's probably still less than 1 percent of the brewers that are women."

Fahrendorf says she hopes Cornett's win — stemming from gold medals for her Outback X strong ale and Black Diamond lager — will help draw more women to brewing.

"How you've got to start is to get women to drink beer, because if they never drink it, they aren't going to pursue it as a career," Fahrendorf said.

Last year, Fahrendorf retired after 17 years at Steelhead Brewing in Eugene and founded the Pink Boots Society, an association of women brewers. Their first meeting was in San Diego, just a few hours before Cornett was on stage accepting her award.

The society has a list of 62 active U.S. women brewers, including six in Oregon, 15 inactive women brewers and 28 in other countries.

Cornett said the West's craft brewing culture is accepting of her, more so than where she got her start in the Midwest.

"I didn't know there was such a thing as craft brews (then)," Cornett said.

When she moved to Fort Collins, Colo. she worked at a pub with 40 beers on tap. Every day, she saw people excited about beer. It rubbed off.

When she realized she could make it a career, she went to the World Brewing Academy in Chicago and Munich, Germany, where she got a degree in brewing technology in 2001.

She took over at Bend Brewing the next year, and in recent years her beers have won gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival and from the North American Brewers Association.

Despite her acclaim, Cornett said she still runs up against the ingrained image of the male brewer, bearded and in black rubber boots.

At a trade show not long ago, she would walk up to booths and find no one willing to answer her questions. "No one was taking me seriously," she said.

But her work might be motivating the next generation of women brewers. In April, Veronica Vega started brewing at the Deschutes Brewery, a job she pursued after reading about Cornett and other women brewers in a trade publication.

"I was totally inspired by that," said Vega, 28. "I really felt this was something I could do, something I could get excited about."

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Information from: The Bulletin, http://www.bendbulletin.com