Mount Pleasant Magazine May/June 2019

www.ChsWomenInBusiness.com | www.ChsWomenInRE.com WIB - 11 brewing was born. And, as in any birth, women were required — again. Today craft beer is a $12-billion-a-year business with thousands of small, artisanal breweries and more popping up almost daily like toadstools after a spring downpour. And key to their success is the return of women. The Lowcountry is no exception. Today, small-batch brewers ply their craft in at least 50 breweries and/or tap rooms from Daniel Island to Downtown to Dorchester County. And women are right there in the thick of things. One of the members of this sudsy sorority is Sarah Gayle McConnell of Tradesman Brewing Company. In addition to working at her family-owned brewery, McConnell co-founded, along with Macey Martin of Frothy Beard, Brewsters, reviving this time-honored term for female brewers to create an organization dedicated to sponsoring a host of beer-related events to introduce other women to the business and also raise money for women- oriented charities. A neo-natal nurse for many years “in a previous life,” McConnell said that she first experienced craft beer when her husband, a graphic designer, began home brewing. When friends consistently favored his brews over commercially produced beers, she encouraged him to “take a chance and go for it.” In 2014, Tradesman Brewing became a reality on James Island, and McConnell soon left her nursing post to become “Head Minion and Bean Counter” handling administrative functions for their growing brewery and tap room, now a fixture in what she called “the new-beer district” off I-26 on the peninsula. “To get into brewing,” she suggested, “it doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female. You just have to have a passion for it. There has to be a special spark that draws you to it.” At COAST Brewing Company in North Charleston, the lady behind the lager (and other beer varieties) is Jaime Tenny, owner with husband, David Merritt, a professionally trained brewer. Tenny held a variety of jobs from biodiesel to teaching yoga before heading for the hops full time. In addition to handling the business’s paperwork, Tenny runs the brewery’s lab and works to make their operation “as environmentally friendly and efficient as possible.” A New Jersey native who moved here at 16 and graduated from both Wando High School (where she met her husband-to-be) and College of Charleston, Tenny founded the South Carolina Brewers’ Guild in 2005 and helped lobby the state legislature to change many of the laws in ways that kick-started the current craft-beer juggernaut. Today, Tenny devotes herself to beer, focusing on accounting and the administrative end of the business. Jamie Tenny of COAST Brewing Company. Photo courtesy of Bethany Thurm.