Tonya Cornett Oral History Interview, September 14, 2017

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Alright, we are rolling. So, we'll start with your name [chuckles].

TONYA CORNETT: I'm Tonya Cornett. [Smile and glace at TEM] Birthday?

TEM: Yep [chuckles].

TC: [Chuckles] March 4, 1969. Today's date is September 14th [questioning look].

TEM: Yep.

TC: 2017.

TEM: We are in Bend, Oregon, at 10 Barrel.

TC: [Nods] In my messy office.

TEM: In your office with all the lovely things behind you.

TC: [Laughs].

TEM: So you were born in Indiana?

TC: [Nods] Yes.

TEM: Am I right?

TC: Yes. In a small town called Marion. It's pretty much in the middle of Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, which are the two largest cities in Indiana [motions with hands]. At least, it seems like that to me [shrugs].

TEM: So it's north?

TC: [Nods] Yeah.

TEM: Okay. Or Fort Wayne is north?

TC: [Motions with hands] Yeah, Fort Wayne, is, it's kind of just in between.

TEM: So towards Chicago.

TC: Yes [smiles].

TEM: [Laughs] I lived in Cincinnati, so not that way.

TC: [Laughs].

TEM: Do you want that closed just a little bit?

TC: Yeah, you'll probably have to move that [motions with hands], maybe even completely out of the way.

TEM: Now is when I turn the camera around [laughs].

ANNA DVORAK: Is it?

TC: I think it's shut. They put it on backwards, which is kind of interesting.

TEM: So, did you-you lived your whole life, grew up in Marion?

TC: Yes [nods].

TEM: How big was the town?

TC: I think it was like 30 or 35,000, so small, and it's kind of a GM [General Motors] town. So my dad worked for GM his, most of his adult life, retired from there [nods].

TEM: So really industrial?

TC: [Nods] Yes. Lots of factories.

TEM: Outside of-yeah.

TC: RCA was there. General Tire was there. There were lots of factories.

TEM: But did it start to go down? Did they experience the industrial evacuation?

TC: [Nods] Sure, sure. Yes. Yes.

TEM: What did that do to the town?

TC: Definitely lot of jobs went away. A lot of people moved away. When I go back 00:02:00it's kind of a ghost town a little bit. But there's still... you know, people are still-they keep on keepin' on. It's still the same town.

TEM: What did you and your family like to do when you were growing up? What are some of the things you remember as activities?

TC: I would say one of the things that...because it was mainly me and my mom and my sister. My parents divorced when I was 14 or something. And we just were so into arts and crafts, and we would just really get into one thing and learn how to do it and really technical. I can remember ceramics. It wasn't just taking a ceramics class. It was, by the end of it, we could do anything. Or macramé-we're making lions [motions with hands] and all this stuff on the wall. It was kind of like we would almost obsess about one thing and learn all the little detailed steps that it took to make something that was pretty intricate.

TEM: So did you go as far as making rope or not quite that deep?

TC: No, but I really thought about spinning for a while [smiles]. We had a Chow [Chow Chow], and I thought it would be so cool to spin his fur, because there's only a few dogs that you can actually spin their fur. Then I was like, that kind of might be weird to have a sweater made out of my dog's hair but [shrugs] kind of cool at the same time.

TEM: Yeah. People do it.

AD: I have a friend.

TC AND TEM: [Laughs].

TEM: So were you cooking too? Was that something that was part of--?

TC: No [shakes head]. My mom tried to get us to cook when we were teenagers, and I think she got so tired of spaghetti that we weren't allowed to make it anymore. She's a good cook, but, you know, family style, not like you see today on TV with all the cooking shows. I think that I wish I would have had something like that growing up, because maybe I would be a better cook now. I'm actually a 00:04:00horrible cook. It's just [shakes head] for whatever reason I feel like I cook all day here and it's just-not...I love watching those cooking shows. It just doesn't seem to translate to actually doing it. I like to know about it, but I'm just [shrugs].

TEM: Do you watch them to get ideas?

TC: [Nods] Oh absolutely.

TEM: Is there that translation between cooking and brewing and ingredients and taste and--?

TC: You know, I've been in this for a really long time, and recipe design is something that I have really gotten deep into. You start running out out ideas. I think nowadays people are so used to more, more, more, new, new, new [motions with hands], always wanting something new and all the different flavor combinations. Every time you walk into the grocery store there's something new you never tasted or a combination that you're like, oh, wow, that's weird. So I 00:05:00feel like that's really important for me right now to challenge me to make more interesting beers. I'm always looking for new ingredients.

TEM: That's fascinating. I guess I hadn't thought about where you get your inspiration isn't just in the beverage world, but it would be all over.

TC: Oh, it can be anything. I love going through the candy aisle, and if you taste some of my beers they're definitely candy-inspired. I'm not going to lie. I love, there's a beer that I do, it's basically a chocolate Baltic Porter, so it's an imperial porter, but it has lager yeast, so it's a little bit crisper and cleaner than a porter would be. I love that base because you can put anything in it. It's like desert. You can put coconut in it. You can put cherries in it. You can put orange in it. It's just on and on and on all the stuff you can do with that base. I still haven't distinguished everything that I 00:06:00will do with that. I always have it around, too. I'll brew up a bunch and put it in the cooler, because it will last forever. And I get inspired and I just get the ingredients, pull them out [motions with hands], put them together and then I have something brand new and super fun.

TEM: So what did you think you wanted to do when you were growing up?

TC: I was pretty interested in the ocean, even though I didn't live near the ocean. I thought for a while I was going to be an oceanographer, and I really wanted a salt water fish tank, and I got that finally in my 20s. Then I think my husband and I took a diving class, and after we did the first dive, I was like, oh I'm really glad I didn't do this. This is horrible for me [laughs]. This is so scary. So I think the romance of it, it seemed pretty cool. Then once I went to college I started to get my master's in industrial psychology. I went through 00:07:00the first semester, and I can remember thinking I'm going to die if I have this job. This is horrible. I can't do this. This is so boring. So it was probably about '94, my husband and I decided-we weren't married yet-but we decided to move to Colorado, just for an adventure.

TEM: So you had already gone through school in Indiana?

TC: Yep [nods].

TEM: So what did you major in?

TC: Psychology.

TEM: Okay.

TC: There's a surprisingly high number of brewers who have psychology majors. It's kind of weird. At least, I've met quite a few. Basically we just went there. I got a job waitressing, and really in the mid '90s craft brewing was just getting started and there were several breweries in Fort Collins where we 00:08:00lived, and the place that I worked had 40 different faucets. So really for the first time I had to learn what craft beer was. In the past I knew domestic or import. That was it. So I had to learn all these styles. One girl sat me down and said, "Okay, I'm going to taste you through all these beers and we're going describe them together." And there were a few that I liked. I had never been a beer drinker. There were a few I liked. And [shrugs] okay. I think I learned the vocabulary to talk about beer and appreciate what differentiates different styles and learned different companies and kind of: "Oh, there's this one company near Belgium. I really like all their beers." And visited the breweries.

Then my husband decided he wanted to home brew. So we got the kit, we started home brewing. Probably three beers into it, three brews into it, I had just been 00:09:00assisting. Then I read The Joy of Home Brewing, like the back section, and I'm like, "I can do this. This is easy. This is cookie." So I made myself all the equipment that I needed, and I can remember him coming home like "What are you doing?" I'm drilling holes [motions with hands] in the bottom of a bucket to make a little mash tun out of it. We had this really small apartment. So I ended up doing a bunch of beers by myself, and we lived in a place with a bunch of college kids. So it was great because they would drink all the beer and I could just keep making it. We got a keg fridge and it was awesome. Then one day I said, "I'm just going to go get a job at a brewery." So I went out put my applications in at all the breweries. Ended up getting hired at a place called H.C. Berger. That brewery was so much fun. Basically I started giving tours, filling growlers, selling t-shirts.

TEM: How big was the brewery? So if you were giving tours I'm guessing it was 00:10:00not a nano brewery.

TC: Yeah, it was probably a 20-barrel. I don't know what their production was a year, but the brewery was so fun to work at. The guys were awesome, and I think back now: I'm in my early 20s and I'm be-bopping around in short shorts [motions with hands]. I was like their little mascot. They just loved having me around and they would try to... Of course, I was super interested in learning. They would have me filling kegs or whatever, and then they would get in trouble because they were pawning their work off on me.

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: Finally I moved up to the bottling line and I did that for a while. The brew master and owner... I was bringing my home brew in. He said, "You know you do understand this. I'm going to go to your house and home brew with you." I'm like, okay. So he came to my house, spent a Saturday home brewing with me. Afterwards, he was just like "You really do get this." From then on, he's 00:11:00been-he's still a great mentor to me-his name is Sandy Jones. The company has since gone, and he's started another brewery and it's gone. They both got sold to other people. It was like the first time that I'd had a job that was that much fun. Again, brewing goes right back to when I was a teenager and we were doing arts and crafts. You can break it up into tiny little sections [motions with hands] that are simple, but in the whole scheme of things is pretty a complex series of events. The more you get into brewing, the more you realize you can get as detailed as you want to be. You can be as simple or as detailed as you want to be.

TEM: So what was the transition like moving from Indiana to Fort Collins? Did 00:12:00you immediately love Colorado? Were you immediately home sick? Did you--?

TC: It was scary. It was certainly pretty scary. Our families did-my husband and I went to high school together. It was like we'd grown up together, and our families were not happy at all that we left. I think that they thought that it was just going to be like, "Oh, they'll get out there and realize they made this big mistake and they'll come right home." When that didn't happen they were just super disappointed that we had left. But we had a ball. It was great. There was so much to do in Fort Collins. It's very much like Bend. Everyone is oriented to the outdoors, and it was the first time that I really did a lot outdoors, because in Indiana in the summer it's really hot, and in the winter it's really cold, so you weren't going skiing really. If you did, you were going up to 00:13:00Michigan and the hills are kind of small. It's just not the same. There are certainly things to do there. We just found that we were really interested in outdoor aspects, exploring that, because we really hadn't done that.

TEM: Did you feel like there was more as far as food and beer that was happening there?

TC: Oh, of course [nods].

TEM: Obviously, there were-I think you already said that about the beer. But did you feel like there was more creativity or more options there?

TC: I think it just opened up a whole new world for us. I can remember the first time that one of my coworkers took us to sushi, and we were just like, "Oh my god." Probably three weeks later we were back again for more. We'd tell our parents that we were eating sushi, and they were freaking out, like, "I can't believe you're eating that." But that's just small town Indiana. That's not 00:14:00something, unless you're in one of the bigger towns, you're not going to have a sushi joint in a small town of 30,000. Not going to happen. Especially being land locked. It's just not something that you see in those small towns. Everything was just new and exciting to us then. I think in a town like Fort Collins, which, again, is much like Bend. There are a lot of people from everywhere and it was... you didn't meet too many people that had grown up there. I can remember at the place I worked there was one guy who had grown up there his whole life. I'm thinking, "Wow how lucky are you to have grown up in such a great place? I can't imagine skiing a mountain when you're four years old." All those things that really boost confidence in people. Looking at life in a different light that we hadn't seen before.

TEM: So you were there for how long? Three years?

TC: [Nods] Yeah. We weren't there very long, really. Enough to decide that, for 00:15:00me to decide that I really was interested in brewing. So we thought that we would go back to Indiana and open up a brewery. So that was our big plan. We moved to in Southern Indiana where IU [Indiana University] is, and we thought, we'll be right outside, probably closer to Brown County, which is rolling hills and very beautiful. We were in Bloomington, Indiana, and we rented this place that had been a plant nursery. It had a 4,000 square foot Quonset hut on it. It had a house that we were going to basically use as a tasting room, but we had to live there until we got the loan and all of that. We were young, and we didn't have any money. In the whole scheme of things, I hardly had any experience. We'd 00:16:00go to the bank with our business plan, and they're just looking at us like, "Are you for real? Like how are you going to make money doing this?" It was because we didn't have a restaurant attached. They didn't understand what a production brewery was. Of course we didn't get the loan. I look back now, and it's like, thank goodness we didn't get that loan. We were doomed to fail. So in the meantime-

TEM: So this is like late '90s?

TC: [Nods] Uh-huh. So then I got a job at a place called Oaken Barrel. That was in Greenwood, and that was a 45-minute drive. That's where I really got a lot of hands-on experience cleaning tanks, scrubbing floors, brewing. I don't even know how long I worked there. I probably worked there another 3 years. Then when that was to the point were I'm not going to go any further in the company... I'm always going to be an assistant, you know-

TEM: Why did you think you were always going to be an assistant?

TC: Oh, yeah, they told me [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] There was no industrial psychology. It was straight up-

TC: [Shakes head] I can remember, I'd asked them if they would help send me to school, and it was no. Then I was like, alright it's time for me to move on. I really felt like if I'm going to be taken seriously in this occupation I need to invest in myself. So I applied to go to Siebel, which is the oldest brewing school in the U.S. It's in Chicago. I had put in my application, and probably a month before I was supposed to go the girl in the office called and said, "I need a copy of your passport." I'm like, "Passport? Why do you need a copy of my passport? I'm just going to Chicago." She was like, "No. You're going to Germany." I'm like, "What!" I totally freaked out because I had no idea and I'm like, "I don't have money to go to Germany." But it was all actually included. 00:18:00So they had changed, they had partnered with Doemens, and Doemens was also a really old brewing school. They had partnered with them, so half of it was in Chicago and half of it was at Doemens. It ended up being an amazing opportunity. It really opened my eyes to the tradition that Germany has in brewing that we don't have, which is good and bad. It's good for us because we can do whatever we want. We're not in this tiny little box. But we also don't have the pride that they have. When you are in a family, a brewing family, where you've had generations of brewers and they own their own breweries, there's a real sense of tradition that we don't have.

TEM: Was there also a sense of expectation that it would say in the family?

TC: Well sure [nods].

TEM: So there was a certain pressure, I imagine.

TC: Yeah.

TEM: So who else was in school with you when you were-is it a 12-week program? Am I remembering that right? How long were you actually in Germany?

TC: I think for about half of it, for six-[nods].

TEM: So who else was in your cohort of students?

TC: In my class? We had a lot of people from Corona. We had, gosh, I can't even really remember. There was a girl from Haiti. There was a couple of guys from Modelo. I had a guy who went on to open his own brewery, Pagosa Springs, and another guy who works for New Belgium. There were a couple of guys who were potentially going to open breweries, and they still haven't opened them. But they're very educated in beer and they're still involved and love beer. I seem to hook up with them every year in Denver. That was who was in our class.

It was interesting because of the larger breweries' influence it changed the curriculum a little bit compared to what they do now. So it was geared a little more towards a larger brewery. I thought that that was my next move. I'd done the pub thing. I'd worked in a production facility, then I worked in a brew pub setting, and I thought a larger brewery would be the direction that I went. When I got home, I was home for about a month, and then a friend who my husband had visited in Bend-it's kind of a weird story-he heard that Bend Brewing Company was looking for a brewer, that their brew master had just given his notice. He said-this is really strange but-my friend just got back from Germany and she's a brew master. I sent in my resume. Two weeks later we came to visit, and we never left. It was one of those moments that it was really meant to be. However, I 00:21:00thought, it was a lateral move. Because I was brewing in a pub and now I'm brewing in another pub. It's just the same thing. But what I didn't realize was what it meant to have my name on the door and for it to be mine. It really changed everything for me. If I would've just gone to Deschutes or, who else, Cascade Lakes was also in business when I first moved here in 2002. If I'd gone to one of those places I would've just been a shift brewer, and I would've never gotten into recipe design, more than likely, which has really shaped my career.

TEM: First question-were you continuing to home brew?

TC: No.

TEM: Okay [Laughs].

TC: I remember I gave away all my stuff when I'd started at Oaken Barrel.

TEM: It seems like if you do it professionally it might not be a relaxing thing to do.

TC: Yeah [shakes head]. It loses its luster. And really what it comes down to that 5 gallons you brew still takes a long time. I brew, you know, 300 gallons now. Why would I do that?

TEM: Were you into recipe development or thinking about recipe development when you were in Indiana?

TC: No. That was not something that the pub I worked at really did. All the recipes were set in stone. They had all been home recipes of the head brewer, and that wasn't really an option for me.

TEM: You moved to Bend in 2002. What were your first thoughts or impressions or the things that you remember as that first five, six months of being in Bend?

TC: I think for us, we bought a house outside of town. We weren't as-it's about 00:23:0025 minutes away. So we weren't in town-here he goes [looks up at a place in the room].

TEM: I heard him go a little bit [laughter].

TC: [Laughs] We weren't really spending a lot of time in town. That really-it's easier to make friends when you're in town, and you can go out to dinner, and all the things that you do when you're new and wanting friends. I think it took us a little longer just because of where we chose to live. Bend Brewing Company-I still hang out with people from there. It was just such a tight-knit group. I ended up working there for 10 years and just an amazing friendship between all of us.

TEM: What was the structure of the business when you got there? It was a very small facility.

TC: [Nods] Yeah, it's super small. It's a 7-barrel brew house, and it's on the 00:24:00second story. So you have to get all the ingredients up. There was a silo on the roof, thank god, but everything was very manual. It was just like a little hallway, kind of a big walk-in closet. It was really tight. You had bumps and bruises all the time. Very physical, for sure. The structure of the company: basically there had been four owners that decided to go into partnerships, and Jerry Fox ended up buying them out one by one, and then he owned it. Right when I started he had sold it to his daughter, Wendi. She was pregnant at the time, and I remember her saying, "This is either the best thing or the worst thing that I have ever done." I think she was just nervous having a female up there, knowing how manual it was. Which, you know, is to be expected.

TEM: Did you ever feel like you had physical limitations?

TC: You know, usually I feel like there's a workaround. It's interesting now here because everything is lifted with forklifts, and it's a big brewery. It's a big factory basically. Now I feel like there's more limitations because sometimes I can't physically do things myself. I have to rely either on other people or larger equipment.

TEM: I guess you would have to operate that larger equipment.

TC: Yes.

TEM: It's not just like can I carry this bag?

TC: Right [nods and smiles].

TEM: I clearly have no idea how a forklift works [laughs]. You push a button.

TC: I wish it were that easy [smiles].

TEM: Did you feel like your gender was an issue? Did you feel at any point up 00:26:00from macramé to 2002, 2003, 2004, did you feel like there were barriers to what you wanted to do?

TC: I would say that when I was in Indiana the second time I worked with one guy in particular who I think wasn't stoked about me being a woman. I think at first he was. I think he was, "Okay, cool, I'm going to give this girl a shot." But then all of a sudden I think that I was doing his job as well as he had done it, and I think that that was threatening to him. That was just the dynamics of that company. I started off at a company that I loved and got great brewing experience and then moved to another company that was challenging and realized 00:27:00pretty quickly that I probably wasn't going to stay there for a long time.

TEM: So you moved to Bend.

TC: I moved to Bend. All of a sudden, it's my show. Especially at Bend Brewing Company, because you can look down and watch everybody eating and drinking. And it's just like, "Oh that's the Tonya show down there," because they're all coming in for my beer. It was pretty exciting. This is my stuff now. It's not somebody else's. This is really my creative outlet. It was pretty exciting times for me.

TEM: How did you figure out how to be creative? How did you figure out how to do recipe development?

TC: I did it systematically. I would research a style, like a traditional style, and brew it until I felt like I mastered it. Then I'd go on to the next one [hand motion], brew it [hand motion], brew it. And then, once you get the base down, then you just start branching off and doing cool things with it. Now 00:28:00recipe design is just part of who I am. It's just what I do. I don't even hardly go back to those old books anymore on styles because now I just know [nods]. I have old recipes that I can look back and use those and pick them apart and figure out what I liked and what I didn't like, what would work with this new ingredient.

TEM: Do you think that's-I would assume that's unique. But I might be taking a leap. Do you think that's a unique skill that you have as a brewer?

TC: I think that it's definitely one that I've worked really hard on, and I think what helped me along through the years was I think when we started going to the Great American Beer Fest. That was one thing that was great about Bend Brewing Company was that they allowed me to do whatever I wanted. So if I wanted to enter a beer in competition, they'd never done that before, but they're like 00:29:00"If you want to we'll do it. We'll all go to Denver, and we'll all have a great time." I think as the years went on and as I started winning medals-I mean, that was I think great reinforcement, that you're judged by your peers and that these beers are good and people think that they're good. It just kept perpetuating itself [motions with hands].

TEM: Who were some of the people that you were meeting at those early GABFs [Great American Beer Festival]?

TC: [Shakes head], everybody.

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: Everybody. It was so exciting. All these brewers who I had been reading about. It was just great. It was amazing. I couldn't believe all of the people that I met.

TEM: What was your first festival like?

TC: The first festival... I can remember that I had just started brewing Hop Head, which was an imperial IPA that I did pretty early on at Bend Brewing Company and had a lot of local craziness around that beer. People just loved it 00:30:00and went crazy over it. That was my first hit right off the bat. There had been a guy that had been in the pub and had tasted it and then we went to GABF and he was there. He knew a lot of brewers. I can't even remember who he was, but he was going around telling everybody, "She's going to win, she's going to win, she's going to win." I remember the batch that I had to send didn't really ferment out enough, and so I was so disappointed when it didn't win. But then the next year it did. It was just like a super cool moment for me.

TEM: So that's 2006?

TC: [Nods] Yes.

TEM: What was that like? You go up on the stage, you've won this gold medal?

TC: Actually, we didn't go [smiles]. I just sent the beer that year [laughs and nods]. My friend calls me and he was like, "Oh my god you just won a medal in 00:31:00IPA." And I was like, "What? You're kidding me!" It was just like [shakes head]. I can remember screaming and then going to the pub that day and telling everyone and then it was the Bend Oktoberfest, and there was a whole bunch of brewers from Deschutes at the Oktoberfest and telling all of them and everybody being all excited. So it was cool.

TEM: What was the feedback loop within the community like at that point? There weren't that many brewers [chuckles].

TC: Yeah, there weren't that many. I think for the longest time I had really flown under the radar. I moved to town and in the shadow of Deschutes. Deschutes I'd been reading about my whole life, or my whole brewing life I guess, and it was this amazing brewery. I felt like, I don't even think I really reached out to many Deschutes brewers that first year. I just felt like I just needed to be 00:32:00solid. I don't need the pressure. I just need to get all my ducks in a row. As soon as I won that medal, it was just crazy focus on me. It was something I hadn't anticipated. It was really the stamp of approval that I needed to say that yeah this is a real brewery. She's doing really good work.

TEM: Did you feel like there was a big arrow pointed at you too because you were a woman who was doing real work?

TC: I didn't really think about it, but every time I got written about it was always, "A woman in a male-dominated industry." So that was always weird to me. It started to be like, "Okay, I'm answering the same questions over and over."

TEM: Yeah.

TC: "I'm answering the same questions over and over." I can remember probably year 8 or so into my time at Bend Brewing Company I was so excited because the 00:33:00Wall Street Journal was going to come in and do an article on me. This girl was with me all day long. We brewed together. Talked all day. Had great conversation, and I get the paper. It's like a full page. Like I can't believe this. And it was all about me being a woman. I was so disappointed. I was just like, "Oh, my God. We didn't talk anything about that. That's really all this article is. It's just the same as all the rest." Working by myself, I didn't get my first assistant until I think year 3. So I had worked a lot of time by myself in that little, tiny hallway. It wasn't like I had a male there to do anything. It was just me. I just hated the fact that that's all anyone cared about. It's like, "Can't you care about my beer? I'm doing really good work here." So it's disappointing.

TEM: Do you still feel like it's like that? Does it feel like it's less? I read something, and I can't remember what year it was, but I read something basically where you said that-"I would like for people to focus on my beer, not the fact that I'm a woman who made this beer. Can we just focus on the fact that I'm a brewer and I'm making this beer? And it's good?"

TC: Exactly. And I think basically people are tired of reading these articles.

TEM: Yeah.

TC: There are other females out there like me who are tired of answering those same questions over and over, because it's wearing me out.

TEM: Well, it's kind of the same article.

TC: Yeah, it's the same one. I can remember being in an airport, and I had agreed to answer some questions for an interview. And I was like, "Listen, I'm sorry. For whatever reason, I cannot do this. But I can forward you this other article that I did." And the interviewer got really mad. But I was like, "But 00:35:00it's the same questions. I'm going to answer them the same way."

TEM: Yeah. So at that point did you, at the point that you got your assistant, you had been doing everything.

TC: Yeah [nods].

TEM: From recipe development, to lugging the stuff-

TC: Washing kegs [nods].

TEM:--to washing the kegs.

TC: Yeah I would spend one whole day a week washing kegs and then probably at least 4 to 5 days brewing and then cleaning tanks while I'm brewing. It was to the point-and I still wear a timer with a stopwatch on it, because I would be like, "Okay, I have 3 minutes. What can I get done in three minutes?" Seriously, I was down to the second. I was multitasking so much, otherwise...I can remember just going months without a day off. Just because there was so much work that had to be done.

TEM: How did you get feedback then-I love this image of the Tonya show, that 00:36:00you're watching from above--

TC: I totally would.

TEM:--But how would you get feedback since there wasn't someone who was there with you? Did you walk the floor a lot? Did you talk to the staff a lot? What was that--?

TC: Well, one thing, people are super interested in the brewery. So there was constantly people coming up. I think because of the power of Deschutes, a lot of beer people were coming to town, so they would come and they would see me up there, and, "Hey can I get a tour?" So I was constantly getting feedback. Not only that, but I think by that time, again, because of Deschutes, they had done such a great job of educating the community on good beer. Everyone knew what good beer was. It wasn't like you were going out in the early '90s and trying to tell people, or convince them, no really this is beer. You didn't have to do 00:37:00that anymore. People were well-versed around here on craft beer.

TEM: So did they give you feedback like that--

TC: [shakes head] Constantly.

TEM: [Laughs] Constantly.

TC: Constantly.

TEM: You need to add a little more of this, delete a little of that.

TC: Sometimes, yeah [nods]. Totally. It's been interesting working a production facility now. I really miss that feedback. Because it was something that I really used as a tool. Sometimes people that don't really know a lot about beer, they give you really good insights. They don't even realize that they're doing it, but they do.

TEM: What was it like to bring somebody else into that facility? Was that Ian Larkin?

TC: I had a couple before Ian.

TEM: What was it like, regardless of who it was, to bring somebody else in when you are down to-it's been your--

TC: Yes, space [nods]. For sure. It was one of those things. It was really hard for two people to work up there at the same time. So they'd have to be staggered. Usually I would start someone off washing kegs. That was my biggest 00:38:00time sucker. I just need somebody to do this just so I can keep the rest of the brewing going. I did have, I think one, two of the guys had worked in breweries before, so they didn't need a lot of training. I cycled through a few different assistants before Ian came along.

TEM: 2008 you won a pretty big award, too. The Brew Master Award at the annual World Beer Competition. Then Bend Brewing Company wins the small Brew Pub Award that same year.

TC: It's based on-

TEM: Is that the same award?

TC: So...yes, yes, yes. It is.

TEM: I was confused, like is it [laughs]?

TC: So it's based on how many-so there's categories [motions with hands]: small brewery, large brewery, medium sized brewery, all that. Then brew pub, there's a 00:39:00whole line of brew pubs: small medium and large. Then it's based on how many medals you get. So if you get more medals than anyone else in your category then you win brewery and brew master of the year.

TEM: Okay, and you had two golds.

TC: Yes.

TEM: So you won [laughs].

TC: It was pretty amazing.

TEM: And you were there?

TC: I was there [nods] thank goodness. One of my friends who, his name is Ray Daniels, and he is super famous. He's got a book. He wrote an early home brewing book that I think every brewer has on their shelf. He had, I don't know whether he had helped organize some stuff that year or what his position was in the BA [Brewer's Association] that year, but he knew that I had won. I didn't know this. He didn't let on. But after the fact I found out that he did know, and so he asked if he could set up my table. I was like, "Yeah, sure. (I was there by 00:40:00myself) Absolutely." I can remember I had this really light turquoise shirt on. It's fancy. They expect you to dress up. So I walk in, and I'd been there maybe 3 minutes, and this guy just spills beer all over me. I'm just like, "Oh my god." And he just starts freaking out, and he's like, "Oh my god, you need to go change." And I'm like, "Really, it's fine. I'll get this out. Don't worry." So go to the bathroom and my whole chest is wet [motions with hands]. It was great, because it was like a porter or something and I got it all out, thank goodness. I'm sitting at this table, and I don't really know anyone else at the table. He had picked people to be at this table. I win the first one, and I'm just like, "Oh my god. I can't believe this." Then I win the second one and I'm just like, 00:41:00"No way. No way. I can't believe I'm here by myself. The biggest moment ever and I'm by myself." So they don't announce the big awards until the very end. So I was back talking to my buddies from Portland, brewers and stuff, and they started to announce them and I wasn't there, and then I went to sit down and he was like "Where have you been?" [Imitating concerned tone]. I like, "I was back there [Motions over shoulder]. Why?" He was like, "You know you're in the running for this, don't you?" I'm like, "No I'm not." Just a couple of minutes later I won. I can remember it being so loud. It was just deafening. People just freaking out. I was crying. It was an amazing moment. Since then I've talked to people. I was like, "Was it really that loud, as loud as it was in my head?" And 00:42:00they're like, "No, really, it was. People went crazy." Because I was the first woman to win. Even though the competition hadn't been around all that long, it was still kind of a cool thing.

TEM: Then is that the one where I'm remembering, though, that you tried to call people back here and nobody answered their phone? [Laughs]

TC: Yeah, nobody answered their phone [shakes head and laughs]. I basically...I mean I certainly met people that night that I hung out with, but it wasn't my friends. It was new people. It was very interesting. Then my career took a major turn. I mean, like, PBS was calling me. All these... everybody wanted interviews. I can remember for two weeks the phone was just ringing off the hook. Meanwhile, I'm like, I still have to make IPA. I still have all this stuff to do. But it was pretty crazy.

TEM: I guess I'm wondering what was that shift like? You become a celebrity. You 00:43:00become, the person--

TC: Overnight, it really was.

TEM: And you still have to wash your kegs? I mean, I guess that's when you had somebody. But you still-how did you, what were your strategies for being famous? TC: I didn't have any [laughs]. I still feel like I, there was a couple years there where there was some kind of mayhem about me, and a lot of that was because the Brewer's Association plastered my picture on everything, and so it was like everybody knew who I was for that short amount of time. But I'm kind of back to normal now.

TEM: I would say you're still probably pretty famous, from this side of the camera.

TC: It's kind of weird though, because there's so many new brewers in the industry. They really don't know who some of us old-timers are. They meet me and it's [motions hand passing over head]. Which is fine.

TEM: Did you get called on to be a mentor at that time? Did you feel-how did I 00:44:00ask this [talking to Anna]? I asked this...we were talking while we were drinking coffee before coming over here, about the point where you feel like you become-

AD: Yeah, was there a shift in which you felt like you weren't being mentored enough as much as you were being asked to mentor? Was there a switch, or was that just-you had been brewing by yourself, and now all of a sudden people know who you are and want to--?

TC: Yeah.

TEM: Did you get asked for advice? Was there a point where you felt like people were coming to you and saying, "How do I do what you do? Teach me."

TC: I don't really remember that. I can remember there were a couple of people, especially women, who did ask me, if I would mentor them. At the time I was just so busy, and I was like, I would love to say yes but realistically I'm going to 00:45:00flounder on this and I'm going to end up bailing. I'm just going to tell you right now I just don't have time. Because at that moment in my life I was so busy with work and so immersed in what I was doing that I really didn't have time to give to another person.

TEM: Were you feeling like you were mentoring your assistants at Bend Brewing Company? Did you have that kind of relationship with the people who worked with you?

TC: Not until Ian came on board. I think it probably happened with Ian just because we're so much alike. We worked so well together that it was just an easy transition for me to make, and he was right there. It wasn't like I'm checking in and calling him. I taught him how to brew. I was with him every day. That's been nice because I just at the beginning of the year hired him to help me out here, and it was just such a breath of fresh air because he just does everything 00:46:00like I do, so I don't have to worry about it. It's like he came in and a week later he's trained. So, poof, done [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] If only everything was that easy.

TC: I know.

TEM: So in 2009 you go to participate in the Wetherspoon's International Real-ale Festival. Is this, and then I know either later that year or the next year you get invited to brew internationally. What is it like to go brew with other people somewhere else? Like you're not on your own equipment?

TC: Right. So the first brewery that I brewed at I kind of realized pretty quickly that they had me on a tour all day, and basically everything was laid out before I got there, as far as the recipe and everything. I wrote the recipe 00:47:00and gave it to them, and they were supposed to scale it up. I had sent over all the hops, because they wanted to do an American IPA, so that's what I did. Being in a small company, I didn't have a lot of hops to just basically give away, and I realized they were not adding all those hops. So wrapping it up with the guy who put it all together, after the brew, was like, "What do you think?" I'm like, "You know, it was a great day. I loved touring the facility, it was all I did all the day was tour and a few photo ops, and I was like, "but they didn't add all the hops." He was like, "Sure they did." I'm like, "I don't think so."

So come to find out they hadn't because it was such an enormous amount of hops to them, and they were freaking out. They're like, "We're not going to be able to sell this beer it has so many hops." Then it was like two months later they 00:48:00had me come back and basically brewed an American, I think we did a pale ale that time for the Fourth of July, so it was all tongue in cheek and had an amazing time at the brewery, and it was just-I think I ended up spending 3 days in the brewery. I just loved the head brewer. He was close to retirement, just awesome, awesome guy. We laughed and had so much fun. That was a really a highlight, just following him around the brewery and seeing what happens in an old English brewery. I think the brewery they thought was like 300 years old. So it was super cool to see that.

TEM: What are the main differences that you remember about-what do you still remember as those differences in an Old English brewery as opposed to here?

TC: It's kind of night and day. It really is. The beers that they are doing are 00:49:00entrenched. Some of those recipes are hundreds of years old. Our whole culture is a blip on the radar for that, so it was just completely different. Kind of the same thing as what I had taken away from Germany in the fact that whole generations, whole families had been brew masters, and owning a brewery for 300 years in the same family. All of that is pretty amazing. They still deliver the beer with the horse-drawn carriages, and people have a lot of pride behind that.

TEM: What were into at that point style wise? What were you-were you experimenting a lot just still exploring or had you started to figure out the styles that you really loved to make?

TC: I think at that time I was still pretty much in the IPA zone, imperial IPA 00:50:00zone, so I brewed a lot of those. However, I do love to do lagers, and I've been doing them-you know, I always do an Oktoberfest, I always do a doppelbock every year. So those ongoing projects, they just keep updating the recipe every single year.

TEM: So you went to Belgium as well.

TC: Mm-hmm [nods]. A couple times.

TEM: What are some of the influences or things that you feel are unique about brewing there? What did you bring back?

TC: In Belgium there's a very romanticized culture that, to me, is just amazing. You'll have beers that are brewed in abbeys for months and the sours was a whole other learning curve that at that point I hadn't really gotten into much. There really wasn't any being brewed in the U.S. that I could get my hands on at the 00:51:00time. There were a few breweries brewing them, but really a handful. So for me it was like there's this whole other brewing culture that I didn't know anything about and beers that I hadn't been able to taste. I still love to go over and taste the sours that they do.

TEM: At that point we are so in the IPA craze, like sours-what? That's not an IPA [laughs].

TC: Yes, exactly [nods].

TEM: That's very different.

TC: When I first started brewing sours I had had the idea to do a beer with rosehips, and it all stems back to as a kid eating chewable vitamin C. I just loved them, and thinking how cool it would be to have that pop in a beer. After 00:52:00I won world beer cup the BA had put together, it was like a hundred beer writers or media people that came to a beer and food pairing, and I was judging at the time. It was the first year that I actually judged for the Great American Beer Festival. So during this I had to leave judging and then I had to get up and talk about the beer, and so it was a beer and food pairing. I am horrible in front of people, so I had to get up and talk about this beer that I made. The first beer was paired with a salad and it was served in a Champagne flute with a strawberry. It was a Berliner Weisse. I had Berliner Weisse in Germany and didn't like them. But this beer, I was like, "Oh my god, this is the base beer I want. This is exactly what I've had in my head for this beer." The beer was the Berliner Weisse from the Bruery, so Patrick Rue is the owner and the brew master 00:53:00and basically I asked him about it and you might as well have gone boop [motions closing mouth with hand] and thrown away the key. He was not giving me anything at all.

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: He was kind of like, "Nah." He gave me a few little tid bits but nothing that amounted to anything. So I have a friend named Sean Paxton who is the Home Brew Chef, and he was at the Great American Beer Festival that year. I met him because he comes to Bend every year for Thanksgiving and he stopped in the brewery, and so I knew him. I had told him about the Berliner Weisse, and he said, "Oh my friend Will from Cambridge, he knows how to make those beers. Let's go talk to him." So Will just gave me a step by step by step [motions with hand], this is how you make these beers. When Sean came later that year for Thanksgiving, we made the first sour. That was with the rosehips and hibiscus. The rosehips didn't really add what I hoped they'd add. A couple of years later 00:54:00then Ian and I did pomegranate and hibiscus, which was changing.

TEM: Do you still brew... is it Bill? Is that right? I want to call him... the Home Brew Chef?

TC: Oh, Sean Paxton.

TEM: Sean! I don't know why I had Bill. Oh, Bill Paxton is an actor. That's why.

TC: [Laughs].

TEM: Does he still come and you still brew?

TC: [Nods] Yes. Every Thanksgiving. This year, last year, we got to brew twice together because he ended up doing a dinner. Was it this year? Gosh my time is so mixed up-it was earlier this year. He did a dinner for us, and it was basically, it was such a challenging dinner. We had invited some beer writers. And all the beers were sour. It was an incredible challenge to be able to do a whole dinner. It was amazing. It was the first time I really had a complete 00:55:00dinner made by him, because I always go to his house for Thanksgiving, and it's his whole family, so it's everybody cooking. But this was him and it was really cool to see that.

TEM: Did that feel like a right turn for you then into sours? You felt like this is, like I really love this. I want to latch onto this?

TC: No. I remember that... so the first time I brewed it I really wasn't thrilled with it. It took, it was either a year or maybe even closer to two years before I started thinking about that again and I was like, "I should revisit that." Then talking to Ian, it was right when the Palm Juice first came out. He was like, "Have you had that?" I'm like, "No. I have no idea even what you're talking about." Going to the grocery that night and buying one and like, "Yes, let's do this again." That was a huge learning curve for everyone. So 00:56:00trying to sell that beer was really hard. People just didn't get it. I'm like, "It's pink Champagne, it's like candy [shrugs]." You know.

TEM: [Laughs] It's the chewable vitamin C!

TC: I can remember telling one of the bartenders closer to right before I left in 2012, "These are going to be huge. You wait and see." Just like six months ago I saw him, and he was like, "Oh my gosh. You were so right. I just totally poo-pooed that when you said that and thought there was no way that sours will ever outsell IPAs," and he was like, "and I have seen it happen."

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: So that was pretty cool.

TEM: Heading into the early 2010s, how were you feeling professionally? Where did you think that you wanted to go? Were you thinking about leaving and next 00:57:00steps, I guess, potential steps? Like start a new brewery yourself, or-"

TC: I think certainly that crossed my mind at various times. I'd be exhausted and tired of somebody else making the money and feeling like I've done so much, yet I'm still really not making very much money. Because brewers just don't make very much money. You work for a small pub, there just isn't money to be made. So in feeling like, gosh, I feel like I'm worth more. But knowing that that wasn't really going to happen there. So there was a point where I talked about buying into the company, and right at that point was when 10 Barrel came to me. Basically I think I was really worried going forward at Bend Brewing Company 00:58:00just because the job was so physical. My back hurt all the time. I had lumps on my head all the time from hitting my head on equipment. Bruises everywhere all the time. Seriously, just being exhausted every moment of the day, so much so that I never did anything else. It was work or sleep. That's it.

TEM: And that's 10 years.

TC: [Nods] Yeah, yeah.

TEM: And you did interviews a little.

TC: And it only progressively got worse [motions with hand].

TEM: Yeah.

TC: You know? The more I got into my job and feeling like I have a staff of 35 down on the floor who depend on me to bring people in the door, and in a small pub they do. If I'm sick, beer doesn't get made. So working sick and all of that, I think it just had taken its toll on me. So when 10 Barrel came to me, it 00:59:00was like, we really want you to do recipe design. I'm like, "That's it?"

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: And we're going to pay you a little more money. It was kind of like, okay, sign me up. That was really appealing to me.

TEM: And in that ten years, Bend brewing culture, not Bend Brewing Company, but the industry of beer in Bend had just radically, radically changed.

TC: Exploded.

TEM: Radically shifted.

TC: [Nods] Yes.

TEM: What was it like to be in this community as a brewer as that expansion, explosion was happening?

TC: I can think of at least 4 different breweries that basically camped out at Bend Brewing Company writing their business plan. We saw them all the time. That's what they were doing. They were doing research. They were asking questions.

TEM: Was that kind of weird?

TC: It was weird, because that wasn't stuff that I really wanted to take because 01:00:00I think that even though I know I could have my own brewery, there's so much stuff that I would be spending my time on and not brewing. My whole thing is as long as I can brew, that's what I want to be doing. I want to physically be doing this. I want to have my hands on the beer from the beginning to the end. I really have a sense of mine, you know, like this is mine from the beginning to the end. Whereas, if someone else is doing it, the ownership isn't there as much. I knew that I'd be doing paperwork or doing sales, and so that's never appealed to me. For me, I was like, "good luck" [makes waving motion with hand].

TEM: Your transition from Bend Brewing Company to 10 Barrel was very well documented [laughs].

TC: [Laughs] That was weird.

TEM: To put it in a very-so you do have this 2011 film that happens. So what was 01:01:00it like to have Alison Grayson follow you around? As I-the math I did is that it was like 15, 16 months.

TC: Yes [nods]. She slept on hotel room floors. She went all over with me. She spent days with me up in the brewery. It was super fun.

TEM: What was that like to have-?

TC: It was crazy. It was really crazy. I recently just saw that movie again. I hadn't seen it in years. I'm just like-usually when I talk I'm super disjointed and I don't really carry a consistent theme, you know-I'll get back to it but it'll be chopped up [motions with hands]. I can definitely see that in that movie. I'm like, oh god. I hate seeing myself.

TEM: But she really, she was, I mean she was in the hotel rooms with you. It was a very inside-

TC: Yes.

TEM: --not quite the same sort as with Sarah Peterson. A little different. A different narrative. So it's also at a really interesting point in your career. So I imagine that it was weird to watch it five years later.

TC: Yes. It was weird. It was a huge decision for me, a huge turning point. The fact that people did go so crazy. The news was camped outside. It's just like, "Seriously? I'm a brewer. This is a brew pub. Why does anyone care?"

TEM: [Laughs] Yeah.

TC: There's still a lot of things about me that someone will comment on. And 01:03:00it's just like, "Why do you care? I'm just a person with a job." But for some reason people latch onto brewers and it's-I wouldn't call it a rock star thing, because I don't think it's that, but they definitely feel ownership and they feel that they can say things to you that they would never say to anyone else, especially lately with the situation that we're in now when we've been acquired by Anheuser-Busch. I mean, other brewers, just people on Facebook, it's just like, "Why should you have an opinion on who I work for? Like what gives you the right to say these things to me on Facebook?" To the point where I've just shut off social media. I'll do it occasionally, but I just can't get on there because--

TEM: Well, that's what I was going to ask you, again, the strategy for dealing with celebrity earlier on. Did you feel like you had more coping skills or had 01:04:00some buffer around yourself?

TC: Well, when everything is positive that's one thing. But when it turns negative, you know, that's really difficult to deal with. When you're still doing the same thing that you've been doing for years and years and now all of a sudden everyone is angry with you. It's like, well, this is my job. I made this job. Literally, for myself. Everything, all my responsibilities are things that I have said, yes I will do this. This is part of my job description. This is what I love to do, and you want me to quit because you don't agree with the decisions that the owners of this company have made? I still have a car payment and a house payment like everyone else and you want me to go back and work for 01:05:00half as much? I'm sorry, but I get to do whatever I want here. For me, it's one of those double-edged swords. I understand why people are upset, but at the same time I don't want to own my own brewery. I have the gravy job. I have the best job. So, you know, until somebody else steps up with the bigger offer [smiles].

TEM: Yeah, well, I think that it's though like it's your life at the end of the day, right?

TC: Yes, exactly [nods].

TEM: You make something that people really enjoy, but it's also your life [laughs].

TC: For me personally, I would just never do that. I would never assume that what I say to you about your personal decisions is, number one, going to sway you at all or make any kind of difference. I just don't understand why a person who I don't even know would take the time, I guess number two, would even take 01:06:00the time or interest to do that. It just astounds me.

TEM: Do you think that it is the relationship of the consumers in this community that the importance-I'm trying to think of a word besides fetishization-do you think that it was the community was so attached to the idea of 10 Barrel that they felt like it was a personal thing to them?

TC: Yes [nods].

TEM: Is that? From an outsider that's kind of what it seemed like.

TC: Because, you know, they love 10 Barrel. They love supporting 10 Barrel. 10 Barrel gives back to the community, and they always have. I think that they took pride in the fact that we were in a community, and then when they found out that 01:07:00Anheuser-Busch was taking over somehow that changed how they felt about us. But it's interesting because this year, the source, the local rag, does a "best of" and people vote. We got voted best brewery. For me, that was like, aw, I felt this little turn. Maybe just in myself. I was like, "Oh my gosh. That's amazing that the community, they're the ones that voted, actually voted." I can't remember a year when Deschutes didn't win. There probably was one. For me that was huge because I think people are seeing we haven't changed. We're still doing the same thing we've been doing, and we're still trying to do it in the best way possible.

TEM: So was it surprising to you? You'd been here for two years and this can be 01:08:00where you say, like, next question please? But you'd been here for two years, you really are in this job that is pretty dreamy-like you're in this creative space. Was it surprising to you?

TC: No.

TEM: Okay.

TC: It wasn't. And I'll tell you why, because the owners were businessmen first and foremost who loved beer. But that's who they were. It didn't surprise me.

TEM: Did you feel anything change apart from the external stuff? Did you feel anything change the next day when you went to work? Or had you already experienced such a change because you'd gone from this very small facility now to a totally different job?

TC: Yes [nods] because it was all negative stuff coming our way. People were 01:09:00personally, they singled me out. There's a couple other brewers that work for us that they personally singled out. I think for me it's been a little more ongoing than for them, but it's only because my face has been out there a little bit more and more people know about me. It's still surprising what people say to me.

TEM: Did you think about leaving?

TC: You know, bad days, sure.

TEM: I don't mean your job here, but just generally, did you think, "I want to go to a different state" [laughs]? I've got to leave this because this is like-"?

TC: I was just so bewildered by the whole thing that I almost wanted to prove people wrong. I know that's weird, but I think what's interesting in this 01:10:00situation is that I see the craft breweries that are within this company starting to, just a tiny bit, I see changes in the larger company I think because of our influence. That might be completely off base, but I do see it happening. It's a company that's incredibly excited about what we're doing, and to me I like that. I feed off of people's excitement on what I'm doing, and I always have. It was definitely earth-shattering for sure.

TEM: We jumped 2 years ahead pretty quickly. So you come here, though, before that you come here in 2012, your well-documented move from one brewery to 01:11:00another before the well-documented sale. Where'd you even start? You were not the person who was running every little thing. What was that like?

TC: Basically I can remember the first sour that I did here was just a plain Berliner Weisse. I can remember the guys saying, "We can't sell this. We're going to have to dump this." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. We're not dumping this." And still fighting that sour, that people just didn't know very much about sours. Then that first year it got a medal at Great American Beer Fest, and then, again, it was that stamp of approval, and then we never had trouble selling them at all ever again. Of course, I've done a thousand different iterations of the same style. I think they had me doing assignments at 01:12:00first. I think they quickly found out if my heart's not in it, I'm going to do it... it's just probably not going to be as good as if it were inspired by me. That probably lasted probably for three years. There were times where I was doing production on my side for the beer box and stuff like that. It wasn't all super creative work, but it was nothing that I hadn't done in the past.

TEM: What was your setup like? You have a 7-barrel system at Bend Brewing Company, and there was a 10-barrel system-hence the name [laughs]-and then at the point that you got here, though, is that when it expanded?

TC: Yes.

TEM: Did you walk into a larger facility?

TC: Basically I brewed at the old facility by myself for, well, not by myself-one of the other brewers, Shawn Kelso, who's now brewing in Boise-he was 01:13:00driving back and forth from Boise. So for probably the first six months we were at a different facility on the old 10-barrel system, and then we moved the system over here, and it's right next to the production 50-barrel system. I still work on it.

TEM: What was the thing that you remember as being the biggest change in your job? Maybe the answer is that everything, because it's a totally different job [laughs] at a totally different company.

TC: Really it was working with people, because I really hadn't worked with anyone, and I was used to being the boss. That was really hard for me. Shawn was in the same position. It was really hard for him too. It was great, because we could talk it through because we were just both like a fish out of water. We just weren't used to that. Definitely a learning curve on just how to talk to 01:14:00people, how to realize that I'm not the one making all the decisions anymore and that I have to refer to someone else to make that decision. Which is kind of weird.

TEM: What was the difference in company culture? What are the kind of, like, I don't know if it's key values or core kind of like language or approach or, like, what--?

TC: [Shakes head] Oh, All of that.

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: It was like a complete 180. At Bend Brewing Company everyone in power were women: woman owner, woman chef, woman brew master, and we just had different ways of dealing with each other. Now all of a sudden I'm just with a whole bunch of men, and they're throwing a football in here and a basketball, and I'm trying 01:15:00to work, and just doing things that guys do all the time. It was definitely a learning curve.

TEM: What are some of the opportunities that you feel came with that 2014 sale? What was it that you... what are some of the benefits to you as a brewer, not necessarily to the whole system? What did you feel like--oh I can do this or I can have the time to do this now?

TC: Nothing like that has changed. I don't have more time to do anything [laughs].

TEM: You didn't get extra hours?

TC: No, I wish. For me I think what happened was that I got a larger audience for my beer. Which is what I had wanted leaving Bend Brewing Company. I felt 01:16:00like I'm making this beer but only people in Bend are tasting it and they're not really writing about it. Nobody knows that I'm doing this unless I win a medal for it, which continues to get harder and harder with the addition of all these breweries in the country because there's amazing beer everywhere. For me I think, especially with the Crush series, is having people in Florida send pictures of it, or New York or wherever. They're at a football game and they're drinking my beer and my friends are sending me pictures, like, "Isn't this the beer you make?" For me I think introducing people to a beer that's not like any other beer that they've ever had. It does take a lot of inspiration from candy. It doesn't have that beer-y quality necessarily. I think it might bridge some 01:17:00kind of gap, maybe, between beer and wine. It's on the peripheral of what most people would consider beer and so many people to hear them say, "I can remember the first time I had this beer. I remember where I was, what I was wearing. And now I'm drinking all these other beers because I had yours." To me, that's super exciting. I can remember stories in Colorado of people drinking Fat Tire and saying the same thing. People are saying that about my beer now, and that would've never happened. It really wouldn't have.

TEM: Well, it's sort of the positive flip side of social media, being able to share those experiences, that kind of personal experience.

TC: [Nods] Yeah.

TEM: Which, even that ability to share has shifted so much in your time in the industry.

TC: [Nods] Exactly.

TEM: You don't need people to be journalists who write about your beer, I guess. People can share themselves.

TC: [Nods] Yes, and I think that we've really seen that in the last five years. All the different rated beers and there's quite a few of those type websites out there just seeing everybody does have an opinion. I was actually in New York last week and there was four people sitting at the bar all rating their beers. I'm like, "Ah, people really do that? Wow." [Laughs]

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: But they do. A lot of people are into it. So that's pretty cool.

TEM: Yeah. I'm curious about that educated consumer base and with the availability of information, accessibility of information, ability to share your 01:19:00thoughts, learn, more online communities, whatever. What is that like as a brewer? It's no longer you looking down or you going through the brewery and talking to people, getting that kind of, like, it's a different kind of feedback.

TC: Yeah. Because it's removed, and it's very impersonal. When you're talking to someone, you know, it's personal and I think people tend to say things in a different way than they do online where it's more anonymous. I tend to not look at those. Once or twice a year I'll get on and look at some of my favorite beers that I've done over the year just to see what people are saying. But generally they end up just pissing me off [laughs].

TEM: Yeah. So it's not that kind of helpful feedback, like, oh, let's see if I can go in this direction. That it's-

TC: Now, it always has inevitably something about Anheuser-Busch in there, and 01:20:00I'm just like [rolls eyes]. "I'm over it, can't you be?"

TEM: Yeah. I'm going to pause to allow you to ask any questions, Anna.

AD: I think we've covered all them.

TEM: [Laughs].

AD: You did a great job.

TEM: [Laughs] I am curious, though, about this shift between small company to big company and the growth of the businesses that you've worked in. Bend Brewing Company was obviously very small. 10 Barrel was bigger, but now you're part of this larger corporation. How do you interact with management? How do you interact with each other? What is the-?

TC: It's definitely unlike anything I've ever experienced before. I've never worked in a corporate-type arena, and I wouldn't even say that it's corporate. 01:21:00But definitely there are some hoops to jump through. Even though it's a big company, things tend to work at a snail's pace. So you just have to be diligent. Yes there's money, but how you get that money takes a really long time. So it wasn't like immediately things changed here. It took a really long time. It's been incremental [motions with hand]. Certainly with the new restaurant next door, that's amazing. And that's probably something that we wouldn't have had here, especially the bottling, the packaging facility, which is amazing, and that's only going to make our beer so much better on the shelf. That's probably the biggest thing. It's kind of learning all that: who do you talk to for this, who do you talk to for that, hey I'm really interested in this, could I possibly go to Belgium and learn how to do this? It's stuff like that. Like earlier I got 01:22:00to go to South Africa for a hop harvest. That would've never happened. Really there's so many educated people in this company, it's when you have a question it's just finding out the person who knows your answer. For me that's exciting. I really love going to Louven and talking to the yeast guy. That's super cool to know how much yeast is in their yeast bank, but I don't have access to it all. I only have access to some of it. It's learning your way through this maze.

TEM: It seems like just access though to more people and more minds and more that there's, for you to have gone from being the one person not that long ago to having this-

TC: Network of people-

TEM: Yeah, yeah.

TC: --that I can go to is pretty amazing [shrugs and smiles].

TEM: How do you think, I'm sort of thinking about cultural shifts in Oregon as 01:23:00it relates to beer in agriculture and our identification with where our food comes from.

TC: Sure.

TEM: Is that something that being here in Oregon has influenced the things you even think of to create and make? What is that proximity I guess to hops?

TC: Yeah, I mean, hops is-

TEM: Here it's a malt.

TC: Hops is the big one. I think with fresh hop beers that this part of the country has been able to do for a long time. Now hops are being grown in other parts of the country so other brewers are having access to them for those types of beers. That certainly has been nice. I think it all kind of goes back to 01:24:00these sour beers and talking about terroir and I think a lot of that has come in through wine and then the people that started doing sour beers started talking about that, and so everybody's kind of picked up on that through the things that they've said over and over and how these beers can reflect the land around them. Now we have the boutique malt stirs, so you can get malt that's been grown and malted next door practically. I don't know if we could ever get to a point where you're drinking a beer and you're like, "Oh that came from Oregon in 1997."

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: I don't know if we're going to get to that point like wine does, but I do think that we are going to start to see some cool diversity, and it might be one 01:25:00of those things where you have your boutique malt stir, and no one else can get that malt. You just got it and you're the only one that can make that beer. So there would be those kind of differences.

TEM: What are you really excited about right now?

TC: What I'm really excited about? Definitely expanding our sour cellar. I've always been really interested in long-term aging of beer, whether it's clean beer or sour beer. I particularly think that age can give you flavors that we can't get any other way, so for me that's what I've been obsessed about for a while. Getting deeper into it. We have a very small sour cellar, and I feel like we've done the most with what we have, certainly. But I feel like we've just 01:26:00barely scratched the surface with what can be done with those beers. Learning from other brewers on how to make ours better, and certainly getting a network, which I do have a network of brewers who I trust that I'll send beer out and they'll send beer to me and we talk about what's good about it and what's bad about it. For me, that's been hugely helpful throughout the years.

TEM: How do you keep learning? How do you keep building your knowledge base up? I guess the answer could be everything you said, and it's having, you just have made a lot of beer [laughs].

TC: I've made a lot [smiles]. I think you just start, well, I think if you're not learning, why do it? You're just spinning your wheels at that point. I've worked for brewers and breweries that were doing that. And that's boring. If you 01:27:00aren't continually-and I think also in this day and age where there are so many breweries doing super cool stuff all the time, really pushing the boundaries. If you aren't pushing those boundaries [motions with hand] nobody's talking about you. They're forgetting about you. That's what I try to do. I recently sent a beer that I was very proud of to the very first brew master that I worked for, Sandy Jones, and he was like, "I just don't get this."

TEM: [Laughs].

TC: There is just so much stuff going on. And I have really like, it took me about a year and a half to put this beer together because I was stashing different components knowing that I wanted to age this for this long and this for that long, and this is going to be in barrels and this isn't and this is going to be in the cooler, and different components. It took me about probably two weeks to blend it. Because I'd blend something in and then I would 01:28:00re-circuit and I'd taste it, and I'd want to put a little of this in and a little of that in, just like a cook. When it was finished I was so proud of it. But I love the fact that he was just kind of like, "I don't know what you're doing here." Basically I said the same thing to him: "If you are not pushing boundaries no one's talking about you at all."

TEM: Yeah.

TC: The guy down the street is going to be pushing those boundaries.

TEM: Well, there's certainly a pressure, not only in Oregon. I mean there's pressure in the craft industry, pressure in Oregon, but imagine that the pressure in the Central Oregon area, maybe people in Portland feel it more, I don't know.

TC: Yeah.

TEM: That there is this, there's are a lot of breweries.

TC: [Nods] There are a lot of breweries doing amazing work. We're all friends. So when you're out with your buddies in Portland, usually I'm there for a 01:29:00competition or something, and then we go to the other breweries, you're constantly thinking, "How could I make this better? What would be my twist on this beer to change it and make it better?" I think all of us do that.

TEM: Can you dissect recipes? If you taste something now do you feel like you can pick out how they did it? Or the process-ingredient approach?

TC: Not always. I might be able to know the type of base beer. I could probably come close [nods]. I could probably come close, yeah. With the sours, that's a whole other learning curve where your wild yeast and bacteria are doing things that sometimes can't even be replicated even if we're using the same barrel, the same exact base in there, because the cultures are changing and shifting. Those are-

TEM: They're wilier.

TC: They are [nods]. A little bit of a moving target I think for all of us. But that's what makes them so interesting, and that's why so many brewers are doing them right now because you never know what you're going to get. When you land on something that's amazing, it's a huge sense of accomplishment. They're just tricky beers. They're tricky but they're simple at the same time.

TEM: So it's interesting as we were driving out here to have, will this turn into a restaurant? Is it just a tasting room or will food be here too?

TC: Oh there is [motions with hand].

TEM: There is! There is already? Okay. It was an odd time when we came in.

TC: Yeah.

TEM: This completely surprised me. I don't know where my head has been, but I was like, "Wait this is a whole thing? This is a whole section of Bend? It's like I opened a door, and there was another closet in my house.

TC: Basically the infrastructure of Bend, the water-we can't handle all the 01:31:00water going back to be processed. The pipes aren't large enough. I can remember when I first started here, the city, the water department, had a meeting with all the brewers, and said, "If you know of anyone that wants to start a brewery here, here, here, or here [motions with hands] tell them no." So basically all of this is new development, so they developed it with larger infrastructure. So that's why there are probably 5 or 6 breweries out here [nods].

TEM: Okay, okay.

TC: I've heard that they're going to start doing the bicycle tours [nods].

TEM: Yeah.

TC: The cycle pubs? I've heard of that, but I haven't seen it.

TEM: So it seems like it would be pretty ripe for big streets, not a whole lot of... well, I guess there's some residential, but-

TC: Yeah.

TEM: It's just kind of like industrial tourism.

TC: Yeah, yeah. Just the fact that there's going to be so many in this area, especially as the breweries are growing, they have to seek out this industrial 01:32:00park. But yeah, it's worked well for us.

TEM: What are you really proud of? As you reflect on your long career, and the long time ahead of you in your career, but at this point in your career, what is it that you're like, you know that was really awesome, or I'm really glad that that happened, I'm really glad I made that happen, I'm really glad I did that?

TC: Gosh. I think for me there's a lot of things I'm really proud of. There are certain beers I'm really proud of. I can look back over my career and there's probably five beers and I'm just like, "I can't believe I made that" [smiles]. It just makes me so happy that I actually did that. I think now going forward, I think I have a different perspective on beers. Because I don't have to just push 01:33:00beers out the door like I used to. Now I can give them the time that I want. I can put more thought into them. I think they're just a little more refined. Even the first go out they're just a little more refined. I think going back to Crush I'm super proud of those beers, and for me I hope that they not only open people up to sour beer, but I think all the breweries that are producing sour beer right now, they're a gateway. They're a gateway for people to go into their doors. As much as they might not like Anheuser-Busch, I really feel like this is an amazing opportunity for this company to be that gateway. I know they're going to hate me saying that, but I honestly believe that it will mean customers in 01:34:00their door.

TEM: What did you think that I would ask you about or that Anna would ask you about that you didn't have a chance to say or that you're surprised I didn't ask you about or that you want to just say because the camera's on your face?

TC: I think you guys covered everything. You did a really good job. I was really surprised at how much you knew about me [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] You are relatively easy to find information about. People have written a lot about you.

TC: [Laughs]

TEM: Well, thank you so much for you time.

TC: Thanks.