In a field dominated by male brewers, two female brewmasters are changing the landscape of the craft beer brewing for a growing Chattanooga restaurant company.
At SquareOne Holdings, which operates two brewpubs and a wholesale brewery in North Carolina and three local brewery restaurants in East Tennessee, Becky Hammond is the brewmaster responsible for making the thousands of draughts, cans, and kegs of unique seasonal and year-round beers. At the company's newest restaurant, Top of the Rock on Jasper Mountain near Kimball, Tennessee, K.T. Wiles is managing the mountaintop brewpub at Jasper Highlands.
Despite the rapid growth of craft brewing, only 10% of brewers today are female.
The two women both said they got interested in beer brewing after studying biology in college. Hammond earned her degree from Clemson where her major was marine biology and her minor was entrepreneurship. She said her passion was, and remains, beer.
"I spent some time in Europe and found out about how cool beer can be and got interested in the culture and the science of beer," Hammond recalled. "So all I wanted to do was come home and make great beer."
Contributed photo / Becky HammondShe began an internship at Jackalope Brewing where she met Allen Corey, then CEO of Craftworks Holdings. Corey offered her the chance to continue learning the trade at Big River Grill and Brewery in Chattanooga, which Corey had helped start along with restaurateur Tim Hennen and Jon Kinsey in downtown Chattanooga a year after the Tennessee Aquarium opened in 1992.
At Big River, Hammond learned the steps to produce beer from grain to glass. She later moved to Nashville to assist with remodeling Rock Bottom in the Music City, where she served as an assistant brewer. While mastering the processes of fermentation, she installed new fermentation tanks and other equipment to upgrade the efficiency and production of the brewery.
After demonstrating a talent for both brewing and management, Hammond relocated to the Short Pump neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, to construct a new Rock Bottom Brewery and served as its official brewmaster before moving to Mill Creek Brewing Co. in Nolensville, Tennessee . Last year, Corey asked her to join the Chattanooga company he started a couple years ago, Square One, as head of beer production.
"I knew Becky from her work at Big River in the past and we had stayed in touch so I asked Becky to come here and work for Square One and oversee all of these breweries we have and manage them from A to Z," Corey said. "She's done a fantastic job. She's very technical and has helped focus our recipes, codify our flavor profiles and make these beers what we want them to be. Her success is showing in our results."
Hammond has helped Square One grow its brewpubs from the startup to production at Balter Beerworks in Knoxville, Strawberry Alley Ale Works in Clarksville, Tenn., Top of the Rock in Marion County and Carolina Brewery's brewpubs and wholesale operations in Pittsboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. SquareOne also operates STIR and State of Confusion bars and restaurants in its hometown of Chattanooga.
"I worked hard to learn every aspect of brewery operations from as many experts as I could," Hammond said. "Helping to build a brewery from the ground up enabled me to develop a set of skills and a more thorough understanding of beer production that few brewers have."
Staff photo by Erin O. Smith / A brewery is part of the new restaurant, Top of the Rock, at Jasper Highlands in Marion County, Tennessee. The restaurant will have several varieties of its own beer.In August, Hammond hired another female brewer, KT Wiles, to manage brewing at Top of the Rock. A native of Knoxville, Wiles earned her biology degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where she concentrated her studies on fermentation science. With her expertise in beer science and experience in brewing, Wiles developed the brew for five house beers on-site, including a featured rotating seasonal selection.
"She has a strong sense of the analytical side of yeast management, which is crucial in the realm of crafting consistent products," Hammond said of Wiles. "She's brewing great beer at Top of the Rock."
Hammond minimizes the gender significance of having two female brewmasters and attributes her success to being focused on brewing good beer for specific markets.
"The craft market is saturated with highly creative brewers, which it needs," she said. "However, my niche is making clean and consistent beers that both beer drinkers and those that usually opt for something else can enjoy."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.