A woman’s place is in the brewhouse

The fact that craft brewing is still a very male dominated industry hasn’t slowed Kristin Johnson one bit. She has no problem holding her own in the brewhouse. Kristin says she absolutely loves her job as a full-time brewer at Screech Owl Brewing Company in Cuzzart, WV.

Her brewing mentor, Screech Owl’s founder and head brewer Roger Johnson, who also happens to be her father-in-law. is rightfully proud of Kristin’s accomplishments with the malt and hops. He’s had no hesitation letting her occasionally take the lead, like last year when for several months he was tied up building their new taproom restaurant, or this year when his activities were limited as he recovered from some minor surgery.

From the church house to the brewhouse

Ten years ago Kristin was a worship leader at a church that Roger’s son Jameson Johnson happened to start attending. They met, hit it off, and before long were married. They started a family and Kristin also got involved in a cleaning business with her mother. She was one a busy person. After a number of years though, she got a little burned out with the two jobs and decided she needed a career change.

“I didn’t want to do it anymore,” she said. So early in 2018, she called Roger and asked if he needed any help at the brewery. “And that’s how it happened.” That February, she was hired at the most basic entry level.

“I started cleaning kegs, working at the sink cleaning everything. That’s all I did was clean.” She said, initially, she didn’t have a vital role in anything else. Roger observed that she had a knack for the job and that she was willing to put in the hours needed to succeed. He also found a willing student who was excited to work in the brewery.

At first, Kristin found the learning curve challenging. “It was extremely difficult. There are so many little tiny, tedious details to every little thing. One thing that’s not perfectly clean will ruin the whole batch.”

Kristin Johnson starts making beer

She must have kept everything spotless, because she was soon given more responsibilities and started working in the brewing process.

“I was nervous at first because I didn’t want to mess anything up, because it’s very expensive. I didn’t want to open up the wrong valve and let the whole batch come out. There’s just a lot of things to it. “

But Kristin was a fast study. It took her only two or three months before she began getting comfortable with the processes and the job.

“I’m still learning,” she said as she is now a little over one year on the job. “I learn every single day. It makes you respect a glass of beer — all the work that goes into it.”

Brewing, it’s a great career

When asked to talk about her favorite parts of the job she answered, “All of it. I love all of it — even the cleaning part.”

Not only is she a female thriving in a male dominated profession, but transitioning from a worship leader to a brewer is not something you hear about someone doing every day. “It’s night and day,” as she called it, but her friends think it’s great. They may be surprised to find out what she’s doing, but they are very supportive and interested in learning about what she does.

“It’s a lot of heavy lifting. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s very dirty. You go home smelling like beer. You go home with gaskets in your pocket. You go home with clamps in your hoodie. The work is very physical.” But she loves it.

She thinks brewing would be an excellent career choice for a young woman looking for something to get totally involved in, as long as they don’t mind physical work.

“I highly recommend it,” she says. “You need to be physically active. It’s not a sit down job at all. It’s not a glitz and glamor job. It’s a very labor intensive, hard working atmosphere, but it make the day go by.”

Looking to the future

She says she enjoys all beer styles and does not have a favorite one to brew. “I like them all,” she says with a laugh. “All of our beers are very drinkable, very sessional.”

Now that she has mastered the basics, she says she has been “chit-chatting” with Roger about some new beers she would like to brew. And this August, Screech Owl will welcome the arrival of its new 10-barrel brewing system. (They currently brew on a 3.5-barrel system). They will also be getting a larger 20-barrel fermentor. Kristin says she looks forward to brewing larger batches on the big system so they can increase their distribution and expose more folks to Screech Owl beer. She also hopes they can get into regular bottling.

“Everything’s a step at a time. You can’t rush it, that’s for sure.”

There is no doubt that Screech Owl has a real asset in brewer Kristin Johnson. Any brewery in the state would love to have such an enthusiastic, hard working, capable brewer in their facility.

Other women in WV brewing

West Virginia has a history of women brewers that goes all the way back to the early days of craft brewing here. Back in 1996, the fancy brewpub BrewBakers in Huntington opened with a female German brewmaster who graduated from brewing school in Bavaria. Through the 2000s decade, Debra Sampson handled the brewing at Blackwater Brewing Company in Davis. In more recent years, other breweries have also had women brewing some beer, including Mountain State Brewing, Greenbrier Valley Brewing, and more.

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Screech Owl Brewing
Cuzzart, WV
Brewery website link