by Kurt Epps–The PubScout
She was the first-ever Beer Belle of New Jersey. And I came to know her pretty well, having interviewed her extensively in 2001. That favorably-received interview increased her public profile very nicely.
Back in 2001, I prefaced my interview with
“She has a German father, an Irish mother and a relative who brewed at Newark’s old Krueger Brewery. She even has a black cat named Porter. With credentials like that, Gretchen Schmidhausler’s attachment to good beer and affinity for brewing is understandable. The blonde, diminutive woman from South Belmar hardly looks like a brewmistress, but that she is–New Jersey’s first and only [at the time] female brewmaster.”
But her name recognition exploded a year or so later after she became the first-ever New Jersey Brewer—male or female— to take home a Gold Medal from the prestigious Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Certainly women had been involved in the beer-making process long before Gretchen earned her medal. In the middle ages, after all, women were the primary brewers, so the fact that Gretchen followed in their footsteps was not earth-shattering news.
But what was different was that she was recognized for excellence in her craft in a field heretofore dominated by men. There’s no way of knowing, of course, how many women were inspired to go into the beer business after her success. But it would be foolish to think her win had no impact on women in brewing.
I left NJ in 2019, so I hadn’t seen her for at least five or six years. While still writing in Jersey, I did cover the opening and operation of her brewery Little Dog Brewing in Neptune, NJ. It had long been her dream to run her own brewery, and she continues doing so. She also has added another GABF Gold Medal to her collection, as well as a Bronze.
But I was surprised to see her in a picture on Instagram with Lowell Puckett, owner of Makai Brewing here in OIB. Quite the serendipitous occurrence. I reached out to her to tell her how close we were to each other, and long story short, we got together the following day.
Turns out she had been staying in Sea Trail with a friend. Cally, Janet and Gretchen were kind enough to invite me over for coffee in the morning, as Gretchen had to be at MYR at 10:30 for her flight home. As a bonus, the gals made that Jersey breakfast staple called pork roll, egg and cheese to go with the coffee—which it did—very nicely, thank you.
I appreciated the gesture, as visiting Janet was quite sure the TSA would confiscate the whole pork roll she brought on the airplane. “I was certain they’d think it was C-4,” she intimated, “but we all made it through.”
It was an all around delightful getogether, and great to see the Jersey Beer Belle once again. Although it did mark the first time were ever in each other’s company without beers in our hands.
Gotta love serendipity sometimes.
The PubScout 