Rebecca Bennett (brewer) facts for kids

Rebecca Bennett, born Rebecca Reid in 1983, is a skilled brewmaster. She has worked for Anheuser-Busch InBev, a very large brewing company. Most recently, she was a senior quality manager in Baldwinsville, New York. Before that, she was an assistant brewmaster from 2015 to 2018. She also worked as a product development specialist and group manager in St. Louis, Missouri. Rebecca studied chemical engineering at Purdue University, graduating in 2005.

Rebecca's Early Life and Education

Rebecca Bennett was born in 1983. Her parents are Vickie and Christopher Reid. She grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her brother, Timothy.

Rebecca's father was an electrical engineer. When she was in high school, she learned about a program called "Women in Engineering." This program helped her see that her father's work could be a career for her too. In her first year at Purdue, Rebecca learned more about chemical engineering. She spent two summers working at Eastman Chemical Company. There, she worked with chemicals used in plastics and gas systems.

These internships helped her realize she didn't want to work for big chemical companies. She then met people from Anheuser-Busch at a career event at Purdue. This meeting changed her ideas about what she could do. Pete Kraemer, a fifth-generation brewmaster from Anheuser-Busch, even gave a guest lecture in one of her classes. This showed Rebecca that her schoolwork could be used to make beer!

Working at Anheuser-Busch

Rebecca graduated in May 2005 and started working for Anheuser-Busch in June. She said that she "always liked beer," but she didn't know much about making it at first. She learned very quickly!

She started as a production supervisor in 2005. Later, she joined the innovation group in 2010. By 2013, she was in charge of the pilot brewery. Unlike Pete Kraemer, Rebecca didn't grow up around beer making. But her science background was very helpful.

At the pilot brewery, Rebecca experimented with new beers. This brewery was a smaller version of the main brewery. Each batch of beer was 10 barrels. She and her team brewed about 500 new recipes each year. Most of these experimental beers never became widely sold. Rebecca enjoyed combining her STEM studies with managing, marketing, and tasting.

Rebecca helped create the recipe for Bud Light Platinum and Michelob Ultra-Light Cider. She also worked with Jill Vaughn to develop Shock Top and the Straw-Ber-Rita. After moving to Anheuser-Busch's Baldwinsville Brewery, Rebecca worked on Bud Light Seltzer.

Rebecca is very creative with ingredients. For example, she mixed hibiscus flowers with wheat and lemon peels. This was to make a beer taste like "strawberry lemonade." She got this idea from a baking recipe that used chocolate chili powder cupcakes and hibiscus frosting. She also finds ideas from cocktails. She says there are "a lot of fun things happening in cocktails." She enjoys using those ideas to inspire new beers.

Impact and Industry Demographics

Rebecca doesn't see herself as a "trailblazer" in the brewing world. She notes that more women are becoming brewers. She also mentions working with other women like Jane Killebrew and Jill Vaughn at Anheuser-Busch InBev.

However, there is still a difference in the number of men and women in brewing. In 2013, Teri Fahrendorf, a brewmaster and founder of the Pink Boots Society, thought that 99% of brewmasters were men. The Siebel Institute, a brewing school, says only about 5% of its students are women.

Rebecca is an African American woman and a millennial in the brewing industry. This makes her different from the typical person in the industry. She said that "People have a perception that brewers are all guys with beards." They are often surprised when they see her. She tells them that she is a brewer. She explains that making beer is "really rooted in science." She wants people to know how much they can do with a STEM degree.