To the common drinker, Liz Laughlin is an interesting part of the national beer community because she is part of a minority of female brewers in the U.S. But dig deeper into the beer industry and it becomes obvious that she’s defined by something different.
Laughlin has been head brewer at Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery on Indianapolis’ Northwest side for six years. The brewery is part of a larger corporation called CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries that owns a number of restaurants and breweries across the country, including another Rock Bottom near the center of downtown Indianapolis.
“Now that it’s really booming here everyone’s poo-pooing us now,” Laughlin said. “They’re like, ‘We want to go to the independent little guy.’”
In some respects, having a corporate backer like the one that oversees Rock Bottom put her on the other side of a fence that has come to separate independent and corporate brewing operations.
“The little guys get down on me and they’re like, ‘Aw you have to make corporate recipes,’ and I say, ‘Really? If you go to any place on the menu they’re going to have a light beer, a wheat beer, a pale beer, a brown beer and you make the same beer every time, you make the same ones because people enjoy them and they come in and expect to get the same one.’”
From the outside it’s easy for independent brewers, who have total control over each and every beer they make, to see Laughlin as a restrained brewer, tied to pre-determined corporate beer recipes that hinder her ability to be creative. Laughlin sees it differently.
“We make kölsch, a white, a red and an IPA and then I have kind of four to six more tap handles to play with at a time,” Laughlin said. “And literally I can do whatever I want.”
Laughlin began brewing in her home state Oregon in the early ‘90s after coming across her brother’s home brew kit while she was in college.
“I freaking fell in love,” Laughlin said. “I wanted to drink the beer quicker so I could brew more. But it wasn’t hard to find friends to give away free beer to.”
After winning a succession of homebrew competitions and her first couple of assistant brewer jobs she was professionally trained at Portland, Ore.’s Rock Bottom and shipped out to Indianapolis, which had a store in need of brewer at the time.
Laughlin said landing at a corporate company is a blessing, allowing her to secure the best ingredients possible, which smaller brewers can’t always afford.
“The best thing about working for these guys is that we do have money and buying power so we get the best of the best hops,” Laughlin said. “We send five people to selection every year to literally go through hop fields and smell and pick the lots we want and contract out five years ahead of time.”
