Biography
TERI
FAHRENDORF
Brewmaster & Road Brewer
In 1989, Teri became the first woman Brewmaster at a craft brewery west of the Rocky Mountains.
Teri brewed professionally 1988-2007. Her brewing career included Sieben's River North Brewpub in Chicago, Illinois; Golden Gate Brewing Company in Berkeley, California; Triple Rock Brewing Company in Berkeley, California; and Steelhead Brewing Company's five locations in Eugene, Oregon and California.
In 2007, after 17 years with Steelhead, Teri departed on a five-month road trip across the USA and back, visiting 70 breweries and three distilleries along the way. During this epic adventure of beery discovery, Teri participated in 38 brews and two distillations.
The most amazing part of her journey was the hospitality extended by the brewers who invited her to visit them. Many had never met Teri, yet they invited her into their breweries and their homes, generously sharing food, beer, their families and their personal lives.
Many larger breweries along the way gifted Teri with cases of bottled beer to take with her. Due to their generous contributions (and space under her trailer's kitchen table), Teri was able to extend the beer gifting, by exposing rare beers to brewers down the road who lived outside of those beers' normal distribution regions. Teri documented her adventure live from the road on her blog, www.roadbrewer.com.
Many times during her journey Teri was asked, "How many women brewers are there?" Not knowing the answer, Teri founded the Pink Boots Society and determined to collect the names and contact information for all women brewers worldwide. This list of women brewers can be found at www.pinkbootssociety.com.
Teri's
longest brewing stint was as Brewmaster for Steelhead Brewing Company. From 1990-2007,
Teri was instrumental in the outfitting, installation, and management of Steelhead's
five brewpub breweries. Teri also oversaw Steelhead's contract-brewed root beer
soda projects, which are sold in bottles under the Steelhead and Bulldog brand
names.
Over her entire 19-year brewing career, Teri was involved in the hiring and/or training of 44 new brewers. She affectionately refers to these talented brewers as graduates of "Triple Rock Brewing School" or the "Steelhead School of Practical Brewing."
Teri was a member of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas 1989-2007, and served on the M.B.A.A. Education Committee 1999-2000. She was a founding Board Member and Treasurer of the Oregon Brewers Guild 1992-1994. In 2000, Teri was selected for inclusion in the Millennium Edition of "Who's Who of American Women 2000-2001."
Since 1991, Teri has been invited to be one of over 100 international judges chosen for the annual Great American Beer Festival. In both 2001 and 2002 she was invited to judge the Australian International Beer Awards where she was the only American judge, and in 2004 she was invited to judge the Brew New Zealand beer awards. Teri is also a periodic World Beer Cup judge, and is a National BJCP Judge for homebrew competitions.
Teri has been a technical speaker at many beer industry conferences, and has written technical articles for brewing trade magazines and books. Many of her articles can be found on this website. (See links in left column.) She is a 1988 Diploma graduate of the Siebel Institute of Brewing Technology in Chicago, Illinois.
Born in New York, but raised in Wisconsin, Teri believes her brewing career was a natural outgrowth of her childhood fascination with yeast. She made her first loaf of homemade bread at ten, and began fermenting fruit wines and meads while attending the University of Wisconsin. In 1985, Teri switched to homebrewing beer and never looked back.
Previous to her brewing career, Teri was a systems analyst for Unisys Corporation in San Francisco, a Fortune 100 company at the time. She enjoys spending time with her husband (former Brewmaster Jon Graber), playing German boardgames, cooking, writing, scootering on her Yamaha Vino 125, and hiking to Oregon's many magnificent waterfalls.
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