Once Shannon Fink tells people — usually men — she works at Black Cloister Brewing Co., the next questions are almost inevitable.
Do you work in management? Are you a bartender?
Actually, no. She makes the beer. In fact, she’s the head brewer at downtown Toledo’s newest craft brewery.
“A lot of them are surprised. ‘Oh, you’re the brewer? That’s cool. ’” Fink said. “But I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe. It happens less now since the brewery has been open for a while. But at first I always kind of got the ‘shock face.’ ”
That perception is something Fink, 45, has battled from the start.
“The first professional brewer I ever met told me, “You can’t do what I do,’” she said. “They don’t think physically that a woman can do the work. We might not be able to throw [bags of grain] up over our heads, but we can get the job done.
“I thought there’s no way I’m ever going to get into this professionally without some kind of schooling background.”
Fink isn’t alone in her passion for craft beer. According to the Brewers Association, women consumed about 32 percent of the craft beer volume in 2014. It’s hard to find statistics for female homebrewers, but it’s believed to be around 11 percent.
The Pink Boots Society, an organization created by women to promote women in the beer industry, was established in 2008. Fink is one of more than 2,200 members.
She has been homebrewing for just four years, but making beer is a “perfect marriage of art and science” and it was love at first sight.
“I’ve been an artist all my life, self taught, always drawing, mostly charcoal,” said Fink, a Windsor native who lives in Sylvania. “My father always told me you just need to be an artist. I’d say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t make money in art.’ I was also a big science geek. So, the two is a perfect blend.”
Fink was a registered nurse for 11 years and a co-worker at her first nursing job got her interested in homebrewing. He would bring in different styles of beer for her to try and books to read.
After reading Randy Mosher’s seminal book Radical Brewing three times, she homebrewed for the first time in October, 2011.
“I knew from the first time I did it that I was hooked,” she said. “Even though the first batch I did was a complete disaster, it only made me want to do it more.”
Less than a year later, Fink applied to the American Brewers Guild’s Craftbrewer’s Apprenticeship program, a 28-week practical brewing science and engineering course which includes five weeks of hands-on experience at a craft brewery.
“I applied because I have a science background,” Fink said. “They wanted all these prerequisites: physics, chemistry, microbiology, and all this stuff, and I have all that. Why don’t I apply and we’ll see what happens?”
Fink was accepted into the program, but there was a two-year waiting list.
In the meantime, Fink, a member of the Glass City Mashers, heard that one of the homebrewing club’s co-founders, Tom Schaeffer, had plans to open a craft brewery. She told him to keep her in mind if any opportunities became available.
“He knew I was up for the course,” Fink said of Schaeffer, now CEO of Black Cloister. “He was looking for an assistant brewer because part of the plan was for one of the co-owners, Bob Hall — he’s been a homebrewer for 40 years — he was going to be the head brewer and they needed an assistant.”
Fink, who won 42 homebrewing awards in the last year, was hired as assistant brewer around the same time she started the “really intensive” online course in January. During the final week, students were put through the paces at the guild in Vermont.
“One day you’re brewing, one day you’re filtering, and one day you’re doing a yeast lab, or a hop lab,” Fink said. “Every day there was sensory training. That got nasty. [We had to learn] off flavors and just beer flavors in general, and learning how to taste beer.”
After Fink graduated, she spent five weeks at one of Ohio’s top craft breweries, Fat Head’s Brewery in the Cleveland area.
When she returned to Black Cloister in the summer, she was promoted to head brewer.
“I thank the guild for totally getting me this job,” said Fink, who married husband Kevin in the brewery’s taproom March 7 — Schaeffer, a Lutheran minister, presided over the ceremony. “Even though I hadn’t started school, I think [Black Cloister was thinking] it was kind of a bonus: She’s going to have this coursework and she’s going to have a lot of knowledge after she’s done, and looking forward this is probably something that’s going to be good for us.
“Nobody here had professionally brewed before, including myself. I just learned on the job. We started brewing probably a month and a half after I started the program, so it was all new to me too. I’m so thankful that Tom had enough faith to give me a chance to do it.”
Sugar Ridge Brewery is on the move
Sugar Ridge Brewery, located just north of Bowling Green at 17745 N. Dixie Hwy., closed its doors last week. That’s because brewer/owner Mike Mullins is busy preparing the brewery’s new location in the city’s downtown.
Sugar Ridge’s new address, 109 S. Main St., surely will benefit from foot traffic near the busy intersection of Wooster and Main. Plus, the move will allow Mullins to operate his business as a brewpub.
“That’s another reason I moved,” he said. “It would have taken a lot of money to get the other place up to code to have a kitchen. I think [the customers] are happy about it, especially because I’m going to have food.”
Mullins said his goal is to have the brewery open in November or December, just in time to celebrate Sugar Ridge’s two-year anniversary.
Octoberfest to be held at Black Cloister
Black Cloister, 619 Monroe St., will host an Octoberfest celebration from 4 p.m. to midnight Saturday, Oct. 3.
The brewery will have German-style beer and an authentic German food buffet ($10 a person while supplies last). There also will be live music and entertainment. For more information, go to blackcloister.com .
Contact Bob Cunningham at bcunningham@theblade.com or 419-724-6506.
First Published September 24, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
