What's Brewing Winter 2019

WOMEN IN BEER | profile
Q&A WITH NANCY MORE
INSTRUCTOR, BREWING & BREWERY OPERATIONS
PROGRAM, KWANTLEN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
>> LUNDY DALE
Nancy More is a true legend of
the brewing industry, in BC
and internationally. She has
done a lot for women in the
brewing world in her 40 years working
with beer, mostly without even trying. In
1985, she was appointed Head Brewmaster
at Oland’s Brewery in Saint John, New
Brunswick—the first female head brewer in
North America. She has since had stints in
Europe, the Ukraine, Russia, and back in BC.
She co-founded and teaches in the brewing
program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
In honour of a landmark anniversary and
all her contributions to the industry, the BC
Craft Brewers Guild announced a scholarship
in her name in October. To complement
that honour, Nancy received a Legend
award at the 2019 BC Beer Awards.
Nancy will always make time to help anyone
who has a question about the industry,
or about beer, especially over a beer. You
leave the conversation knowing more than
you thought there was possibly to know
about beer and wanting to know more. I
met Nancy a few years back at one of our
annual International Women’s Day Pink
Boots brew days. She attends as many of
these brews as her time allows and brings
female students with her. Last year she led a
large group of students and many KPU senior
faculty members to their first International
Women’s Day brew. We hope many
more will follow.
WINTER 2019-20 WHAT'S BREWING 17
Learning From a
LEGEND
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN
YOUR PRESENT POSITION, AND
WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY AT
FIRST?
In October of 2014, Dominic Bernard and
I started to develop the curriculum for the
KPU Brewing program, so I helped shape
the content of the courses that were going to
be given. Dominic and I worked together to
ensure the individual courses included the
appropriate content, and that they built on,
and complemented, each other. Our goal
was to have graduates who understood
the fundamental science behind brewing
and could competently apply that in the
real world.
WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY
NOW?
KPU gave me the opportunity to come
out to Langley and teach one day a week,
so I started teaching in January of 2015.
I co-teach the Brewing Industry course
with Ken Beattie, and Microbiology
and Fermentation as well as Brewery
Management.
WHAT BROUGHT YOU INTO
THE INDUSTRY OVER 40 YEARS
AGO?
Like any university student, I liked to drink
beer. I worked at the Protein Lab at the
National Research Council in Saskatoon
the summer between my third and fourth
years at university. During that summer,
I met two people who had applied to, or
were in, the Labatt Breweries Technical
Training program. I thought that would
be fun, so when I went back to the U of
Alberta to finish my chemistry degree, I
decided to apply. Rumour has it that the
year I applied, people in operations at
Labatt were told they needed to start hiring
women. So, after three sets of interviews,
I was offered a position. I decided to take
it and stay until it wasn’t fun anymore. I
stayed with Labatt for 27½ years.
HOW WERE YOU TRAINED?
The training program was a three-year
experience where we did every job in the
brewery, studied the technical literature,
kept voluminous notes on what we were
learning and how it applied in the brewery,
and wrote exams on each section. We were
trained in brewing, packaging, distribution,
and quality, and acted as supervisors in the
areas we were being trained in at the end
of that section.
WHERE WERE YOU THE FIRST
FEMALE BREWMASTER IN
NORTH AMERICA?
In 1985, I was appointed as the Head
Brewmaster for Oland’s Brewery in Saint
John, New Brunswick. That was pretty
exciting, more for the opportunity to do the
job than for the distinction and publicity
that was given for being the first female.
And moving to the Maritimes was my first
experience in really learning how to work
in a (slightly) different culture.
WHAT WERE YOUR LAST
MAJOR JOBS?
I then moved from one coast of Canada
to the other, and I really loved my time
as the Brewery Manager at the Columbia
Brewery in Creston. The people at
Columbia have such great passion for what
they do, and they absolutely work together
in a team to make the best beer possible.
In 2001, I was given the opportunity to
move to Europe where SunInterbrew
had 14 breweries across Russia and the
Ukraine. Then InBev wanted to use my
combination of technical expertise and
business management experience to work
within the Global Technology Development
team. That was another exposure to
new ideas and new countries.
Finally, in 2005, Guinness came looking
for me, and I joined Diageo in London,
working in International Beer Supply. In
2006, I became Supply Director, which I
think was the type of role that I had been
looking for all my life.
Continued on page 19