You know what happens when a couple of scientists with backgrounds in biology and fermentation start a nanobrewery? They make delicious beer, of course!
It’s not only the 30+ years of home brewing and commercial fermentation that goes into it, but the commitment to educating everyone who works with us in beer styles, service, and brewing. All of our staff are Certified Beer Judges or Cicerone Certified Beer Servers (the first of 4 Cicerone levels). We encourage this education because we want our staff to be able to help customers explore beers they never heard of or beers that they never thought they’d enjoy.
Brewing at home 10 gallons at a time on homemade equipment is very different than brewing 217 gallons on a mostly automated commercial system! Scaling up a recipe is sometimes more complicated than anticipated and we’ve already tweaked some of our early beers to get them just right.
We put a lot of thought and planning into each batch of beer since we don’t want to mess anything up! Our most popular beer requires 350 pounds of grain…. That’s a lot of grain used for nothing if the beer isn’t drinkable! Since there’s a lot of planning and science that goes into it, we advocate for our staff to train as certified beer servers in the front of the house, but also for our brew house staff to be educated in brewing science.
That’s a lot of background info to say that we’re proud of our brewer! After hiking over 2600 miles last year as an AT and Pinhoti Trail thru hiker in fewer than 130 days on trail, Maddie settled in as our Tap Room manager, but decided she wanted to try out the back of the house, too. She has stepped up to learn how to brew and successfully completed a World Brewing Academy Concise Course in Brewing Technology class at The Seibel Institute of Technology. Her first solo project was to rework our Baby’s Oatmeal Stout and she did a fantastic job! She modified the recipe to include only local grains, toasted oats, different hops, and added honey. All these changes gave way to a smoother, more complex beer that we all love.
This oatmeal stout still honors Frances Perkins (the first woman to serve in a Presidential Cabinet) and Frances Houseman, the Baby that no one should put in a corner!
And…. We name some of our beers after some bad-ass women. Most of us here at Bite My Cookies Brewing Company are bad-ass women and the couple who aren’t, are married to a bad-ass woman.