Rebecca Bennett (brewer)

Rebecca Bennett was born in 1983 to Vickie and Christopher Reid; she and her brother, Timothy, grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana.[1]

Bennett's father was an electrical engineer, and as a high school student she learned about a Women in Engineering outreach program, something that increased her awareness of her father's work and made that a plausible career for her.[2] In her freshman year at Purdue, Bennett learned more about the versatility of chemical engineering and spent two summers at Eastman Chemical, working on chemicals used in plastics and gas-collection systems.[2][3] Those internships showed her that she didn't want to work for large chemical companies and caused her to question her major; she met staff from Anheuser-Busch at Purdue's Industrial Roundtable and it shifted how she thought about her career possibilities.[3] Pete Kraemer, a fifth-generation brew master at Anheuser-Busch, was a guest lecturer in one of her classes, and that experience showed her that her schoolwork was applicable to making beer.[4]

She graduated in May 2005 and was working for Anheuser-Busch in June. Before joining Anheuser-Busch, Bennett said she "always liked beer, but I honestly didn't know a lot about it when I got here."[3] She learned quickly, working first as a production supervisor at the main brewery (2005), a member of the innovation group (2010), and head of the pilot brewery (2013).[3] Unlike Pete Kraemer, Bennett didn't grow up in a house where beer or brewing were prevalent, but her science background was helpful.[3] In her work at the pilot brewery, Bennett experimented with new beers in a scaled-down replica of the main brewery; each batch of beer is 10 barrels and most of the 500 recipes she and her team brewed each year never moved beyond the experimental stage.[5] She liked being able to combine her STEM studies with management, marketing, and tasting.[6]

Bennett developed the recipe for Bud Light Platinum and Michelob Ultra-Light Cider.[2][5] She and Jill Vaughn developed Shock Top and the Straw-Ber-Rita.[7][8] After her move to Anheuser-Busch's Baldwinsville Brewery, Bennett worked on Bud Light Seltzer.[9][10]

Bennett is creative with ingredients; she mixed hibiscus flowers with wheat and lemon peels to approximate the taste of a “strawberry lemonade” beer, an idea that emerged from a baking recipe with chocolate chili powder cupcakes and hibiscus frosting.[5] She has also found inspiration in cocktails: "from an ingredient perspective, there's a lot of fun things happening in cocktails, and being able to cull inspiration from that and work that into beer is exciting."[11]

Bennett says she doesn't feel like a trailblazer in a brew master's masculine world, citing an increase in women brewers and her work at Anheuser-Busch InBev with Jane Killebrew and Jill Vaughn.[2][12] At the same time, the gender imbalance in consumers and brewers is real. In 2013, Teri Fahrendorf, brew master and founder of the Pink Boots Society, estimated that 99% of brew masters are men; the Siebel Institute, a brewing academy, says only about 5% of its students are women.[3][5]

As an African American, millennial in the brewing industry, Bennett is outside the norm of industry demographics.[3][13] She said that "People have a perception that brewers are all guys with beards and are surprised when they see me, an African-American female. I tell them that I am a brewer, and that the brewing process is really rooted in science. There is so much you can do with a STEM degree."[14]