Tonya Cornett Oral History Interview

Tonya Cornett is the head of Research and Development at 10 Barrel Brewing. In her interview, Cornett talks about growing up in Indiana; moving to Fort Collins in the 1990s, where she attended college and discovered home brewing; her job in packaging and tours at the HC Berger Brewery; and her move back to Indiana, where she got her first job as a brewer. Cornett also talks about her professional goals, what led to her decision to attend the Siebel Institute, and her 2002 move to Bend to become the lone brew master at Bend Brewing Company. She details her time at BBC, including challenges of working alone in a small brewery, where she found inspiration for her creative brew recipes, her experiences as a woman in the industry who received a lot of attention for her brewing, and the national awards she won. Finally, Cornett talks about taking a position at 10 Barrel Brewing in 2012, her early experiences with a new job dedicated to recipe development, and the personal and professional impacts of the sale of the company to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2014.