Crafty Women: In the region's craft beer industry, women play some key roles
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Bocktown Beer and Grill founder Chris Dilla. -
Jaime Hively and her mother Diana Bellisario own and operate Mellinger's Beer Distributor in Oakland. -
Christine Span of Pittsburgh BrewMasters. -
Tera Bevilacqua of Bocktown Beer and Grill in Robinson. -
Amanda Bowen of Vecenie Distributing Co. -
Lisa Donaldson, beer director of Pines Tavern. -
Penn Brewery President & CEO Sandy Cindrich and Marketing director Linda Nyman. -
Beth Vreeland of All Saints Brewing Co. in Greensburg. -
Angela Maffessanti, founder and president of Pittsburgh Beer Ladies.
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The craft beer world still is a very male one, but there are more and more women who are making craft beer, selling it, writing and broadcasting about it, and of course drinking it.
Here -- while the local scene celebrates the first Big Pour Week of beery events surrounding Saturday's sold-out Steel City Big Pour at Construction Junction in Point Breeze -- meet some of Western Pennsylvania's craft beer women, whom you also might actually meet at a Big Pour event. Find the full list at constructionjunction.org/pages/bigpour.
Chris Dilla and Tera Bevilacqua
Dilla: Founder and owner, Bocktown Beer & Grill; Bevilacqua: Beer librarian, Bocktown Beer & Grill
Chris Dilla has just this week "gave birth to" her second Bocktown Beer & Grill -- this one in the Beaver Valley Mall near Monaca, complementing the one in North Fayette that opened in 2006 (bocktown.com). She promises to tell the world more details at the Big Pour, where both she and Ms. Bevilacqua will be working and playing.
She's succeeding with blood, sweat and beers.
She's heavily into using social media (she's @uncapd on Twitter) to promote her business and craft beer, especially local craft beer (she's been one of two women, the other being Penn's Sandy Cindrich, in a group working to start a Pittsburgh Beer Week), so she stays crazy busy. As she notes on her blog uncapd.wordpress.com, "She's dreaming of five restaurants in the area, and a future where she actually has time to blog, consult and play with her dog, Growler."
The 46-year-old, who lives in Beaver County with her husband, John, studied English at the University of Pittsburgh. She says she "accidentally" fell in love with the restaurant business, working at Amel's in Baldwin Township, where she convinced her boss and customers to try "microbrews," as they were called then. The birth of Penn Brewery had turned her on to craft beer. She expanded Amel's beer list from 10 bottles to 75 and has kept going since.
She says she designed Bocktown with women in mind. "I abhor the idea that we would ever need to hire a 'certain' look female to draw in business," she says. "We needed our message to be from day one: We sell great food and great beer, not women, not sports." And half of her customers are women.
Beer recommendation: "I usually say I'm a big fan of the IPA family. Now I'm really enjoying East End's Big Hop Harvest. Locally made, nice and fresh, great flavor. It's only around for a short time so you can savor it and appreciate the fact that you'll have to wait a whole 'nother year to get it again. I like beers like that."
Tera Bevilacqua has the great title of "beer librarian," as she "curates" Bocktown's "Beer Library" of brews. But she's also the general manager, coordinator of events including tastings and music, and is "mother hen to all the Bocktown gang."
The Hopewell native, 33, lives in Carnegie with her artist husband, Abraham. She met Chris Dilla when they both worked at Harold's Inn in Hopewell and was impressed enough to work for her when she called.
Ms. Bevilacqua and her friend Rebecca Rocereto (now Ms. Dilla's assistant) developed their taste buds by drinking their way through the beer list at the Back Door Tavern in Fallston. "Now it seems funny to me that drinking a Molson Golden or a Yuengling Porter would be any type of beer adventure," she says. "But, in Bocktown, I see it everyday -- people on the beginning of a new-found life into beer. It is beyond rewarding to be a part of their trip."
First Published September 8, 2011 12:00 am
