(light guitar music)
This will be our product line today.
- Jamie Baertsch brews beer.
- I'm German and from Wisconsin,
so I guess it's kind of hard not to become a brewmaster.
I'm gonna shake it about 30 seconds.
- Truth be told, it took a lot of hard work
and one major milestone.
- Beer has been so taboo for women.
I was at Madison Area Technical College studying biotech.
I didn't know anything about beer.
And my teachers were all home brewers and were like,
you're really good at this.
You should be a brewer.
I was just like, what!?
Like, this is a job?
Back up to the line.
After being rejected from every brewery in Wisconsin,
I came here.
- Here is the Wisconsin Dells Brewing Company.
- [Jamie] Everybody ready?
(mechanical click) Start.
- On this day, Jamie is running a small
canning line for her newest craft beer.
(metal clunking)
- [Jamie] Oh! First casualty.
Kevin, how's our weight?
We've nicknamed this thing Jack the Ripper.
Whoops, lost that one.
Blooper reel.
I think Miller spills more beer on the floor
during a shift than I make in a year (laughs).
- Nothing seems to have come easy for Jamie.
- I think they just thought I'd leave some day
'cause all I did was scrub floors, polish tanks.
- Jamie became the first female brewmaster in Wisconsin.
- And I got like the luckiest break in the world.
So, I was the last person that was willing to work this hard
for that little of money and free beer (laughs).
And lid ended up upside down.
It's really dangerous work.
I work with chemicals, high pressurized tanks,
things where you can lose a finger on the canning line.
All this equipment: it'll kill you.
Ripped the top right off.
You're off just a hair and it makes you pay the price.
Jack the Ripper strikes again.
So it is not a party.
You need a level of professionalism.
This is the record of everything
that ever happened to this beer.
- And for the record, as a female brewer
in the big boy beer industry,
Jamie's making quite an impression and for good reason.
- I've won a silver medal for my Rustic Red
at the Great American Beer Festival.
I was chosen to speak at the 2008 Craft Brewers Conference.
I'm literally here because I'm standing on the shoulders
of all the guys in Wisconsin that helped push me up.
The guys have always been so supportive,
and that's really nice.
And we should get a giant air bubble coming through.
How's it look on your end?
Besides her biotech degree from MATC,
Jamie graduated from a master brewing program.
- [Jamie] And it is hard 'cause women aren't normally
pushed towards the sciences and math,
and that's what I use every day here.
And I am at 2.5 volumes of CO2.
It wasn't until 2012 there was another woman,
and actually for a long time I was the only one
in the Midwest.
- Jamie is a founding member
of the Pink Boots Society,
supporting and encouraging women in the brewing industry.
- It makes it a whole new game.
(chatting)
- She no longer stands alone.
Other Wisconsin women are following her lead.
- One, two, three!
- They celebrate the tapping of a new beer
called Common Thread.
It's a batch of brew these women made together.
- Cheers!
Now you're seeing women being brewers,
assistant brewers, running packaging lines.
These are things that you didn't see 10 years ago.
Cheers!
- Cheers.
- Wisconsin's first female brewmaster
has an optimistic and positive attitude
where the glass is always half full,
and she can't imagine brewing beer anywhere else.
- It is something about culture and family and beer brewing
that ties us all together here in Wisconsin.
- And as a German-American,
Jamie embraces the tradition.
- [Jamie] It's like, who doesn't want to be a brewmaster?
(bottles clink)