WILMINGTON — During a brew day last week at Waterline Brewing Company, in an old warehouse beneath the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, Dani Bearss was sitting on an elevated brew stand monitoring an automated control panel. The day's first batch of Kölsch wort was transferring from the kettle to a fermenter tank.
"We got two minutes to knockout!" Bearss (pronounced "beers") yelled down to her two assistant brewers after shining a flashlight down into the kettle tank.
"Knockout" was the end of the transfer. After the hot wort — unfermented beer — left the kettle it passed through a heat exchanger, dropping its temperature before being "put to bed" in a fermenter tank, where it would sit for two weeks as yeast ate the sugars and produced beer.
"Yeast is really the star of the show," Bearss said. "Without it you have sugar water."
No special attention needed
Surrounded by a male-dominated industry, Bears said that she recognizes the importance of women brewers defeating stereotypes, but she doesn't feel the need to make a point by saying, "Hey look at me, I'm a girl doing it!"
"It's at a point of contention among female brewers, where we should be lifting each other up. Yes I agree, but I think the best way to be a feminist or an equal rights [proponent] is to do equal work," Bearrs said. "If you’re doing the same job but expecting special attention for it, it defeats the purpose. I am a chick brewer but I just love doing what I do. I love making beer."
She remembered a time when she showed up at a beer event wearing her brewer's shirt, and an organizer took her husband back to the brewhouse assuming he was Dan Bearss.
"I said, 'No he’s just here for the free beer," Bearss said.
Her assistant, a red-bearded, six-foot-five, 285-pound man she calls Grambo, said Dani's size threw him for a loop when he first saw her working around the brewhouse.
“Watching her throw around these 50-pound bags of grain, I was thinking, ‘Oh I can do that.' I go and try to one-hand it and then I’m stuck. It was humbling," Graham Wilson said.
Running a modern brewhouse is a prime test of one's ability to multi-task, and as she discussed her story she kept an eye on the temperature of the mash tank, the temperature of the cellar tanks, and the wort level of the brew kettle while calling out updates to the other brewers.
From cleaning floors to a gold in New Zealand
When Bearss first arrived to Wilmington in 2016 after a six-month road trip from Michigan with her now-husband, she was hired as a bartender at Waterline. Soon after she began volunteering in the brewhouse, cleaning the floors so she could grab a peek of operations.
"Then squeegeeing floors becomes cleaning kegs, and cleaning kegs becomes cleaning tanks," Bearss said. "The head brewer, Brian Bale, started to teach me how to work in the cellar and do transfers. As production grew they needed someone to help brew."
She said Bale gave her a book — How to Brew by John Palmer — and told her to read it from cover to cover and quizzed her every week on the brewing process. Under Bale's guidance, within six months she earned a full-time role as an assistant brewer.
A year later a notice came in from New Zealand: a work visa application she had filled out with her husband, 18 months earlier while on the road from Michigan, was approved.
After a four-month, 3,000-kilometer hike down the Te Araroa Trail — "The Long Path" traverses the entire length of the country's north and south islands — Bearss took a job running a brewery in the famous Malborough wine region of the south island.
It was there she grew into her skin as a brewer.
"I learned a lot about filtration, to adapt — that with this setup and with these tanks [at Waterline] we are spoiled," Bearss said. "Being able to make it and see the grain bill and see the mash temperatures and things like that, and see how it was produced, was really insightful."
During her time there she helped develop a German Rachbier that won gold at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Beer Awards.
After 6 months at the brewery, she traveled west with her husband on their way back home. They arrived in Munich just in time for Oktoberfest then visited some of the Trappist breweries of Belgium. Upon arrival in Wilmington in September 2018, Bearss took the job as Waterline's head brewer.
Possibilities beyond the guidelines
"Dani came in and brought so many ideas from New Zealand ... timing, multi-tasking, getting rid of downtime, re-writing the procedures, things like that," assistant brewer Hunter Oates said. "Our efficiency went up, our productivity went up. It was a new level of professionalism."
Bearss said she now likes brewing on a small system — Waterline has a 5-barrel brewhouse — because it allows her to experiment with beers like the Gruit she made for the holidays without holding up a larger system. This means more batches and more brew days, something she does't really mind.
"Starting sparging!" Bearss yelled down to Oates, before running over the production numbers of the brewhouse.
Waterline produces about 40 barrels a week, according to Bearss, but that number jumps to an average of 70 barrels a week in the summertime due to heavy Kölsch production. A small brewhouse, though, yields to a large 100-barrel cellar.
"This means we're brewing all the time. In the winter we're brewing three to four days a week," Bearss said.
Ultimately, Bearss said it was the art, science, and manual labor of brewing that has her hooked.
"I like how there are a set of rules to adhere to, but within those rules there’s all kind of room to play," Bears said. "When you understand the basics of brewing — people have been doing it for ages — you start to see the possibilities outside of those basic guidelines."
Credits:
(Port City Daily photos/Mark Darrough)