Oral history interview with Meredith Gotz, 2018

Erin Lawrimore: So, before we start, can we have you say and spell your name?

Meredith Gotz: Sure. It is Meredith Gotz, M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H. And the last name is Gotz, G-O-T-Z.

Erin Lawrimore: Awesome. We are at Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for an interview for Well Crafted NC. Today is Tuesday, July 31st.

Erin Lawrimore: To start off, Meredith, can we talk about a little bit about your background and how you got here?

Meredith Gotz: How I got into brewing? Well, I basically got into craft beer heavily when I moved down to Miami. Before that, I was going to a tiny little local craft beer and boutique wine bar called the Kilted Mermaid where I lived 00:01:00in Vero Beach. The selection of beers there varied so significantly. We were getting things like Bells to Harding, we could get HopSlam, Dogfish 120, a lot of really hard to find beers. I was used to going home with Newcastle Brown, playing some Tiger Woods golf.

Meredith Gotz: I started trying a bunch of different craft beers, ended up graduating with my degree in elementary education. And I got a job down in Homestead Florida. I went down there and quickly realized that there was no craft beer scene, this is 2013. Of course, my mom calls and is like, "What's wrong?" Because I'm crying on the phone and I'm sitting at a bar. And I said, "The only craft beer they have is Blue Moon." Kind of heartbroken about that.

Meredith Gotz: I ended up going on a blind date with an engineer from Cigar City 00:02:00who had a mobile canning company. We would go around South Florida canning beer for all of these breweries that weren't quite ready to make the purchase. It was a great way to get a lot of local breweries into distribution. I ended up canning beer at a brewery that was basically my backyard in Homestead. Being a teacher, you don't really get to interact with anybody over the age of ... I worked at a Charter school, so nobody over the age of 18 really the whole week. And I wasn't a club girl, I sat at home with my dog.

Meredith Gotz: I did miss bartending and I asked if I could start beer tending for them on the weekends. Two months into beer tending on the weekends I'm giving tours, talking about the brewing process, and they ask me if I would like 00:03:00to learn how to brew beer and work for them full time.

Erin Lawrimore: What was the name of this brewery?

Meredith Gotz: Miami Brewing Company. Yeah. I was there for almost two years and helped them actually come into distribution here in North Carolina. I drove a 33 foot RV from Miami all the way up here to North Carolina. We introduced our beer to North Carolina at the very first beer camp at Sierra Nevada. It was really interesting to be set up next to breweries like Mother Earth, there was Pisgah, Catawba was there. But really being one of the only Florida breweries present and have people try our beers.

Meredith Gotz: We used a lot of different flavors, tropical flavors. We'd have a coconut caramel cream ale, we would do a mango wheat beer called Sharkbait. But, 00:04:00we really wanted that tropical flavor to come through. I ended up leaving Miami Brewing and I have a best friend that lives up here, now. I've known her for 13 years and we met down in Florida. She's been up here for about 5 years and I called her and I said, "I know I was going to move up in a year, but I just left my job and I got this paycheck." And in the background, her husband yells, "Come on up!"

Meredith Gotz: I basically took a day to pack everything into my tiny little jeep and drive up here to North Carolina. I was working a couple of restaurants to start, ended up getting a job as a beer explorer with All About Beer magazine. Really interesting doing tasting samples of Devils Backbone when they were still independent in a supermarket. And people immediately will grab the latest thing on the table and you're like, "Wait, do you like hops?" You know?

Meredith Gotz: I really learned a little bit of how to approach people and explain it more on the level of, "Well, darling, I don't really drink beer. I'm more of a wine drinker." "Oh, well, then you would like this." But, Foothills was a place that I had visited the first time I was here in Winston and even washing kegs down in Miami, I would get MicroStar kegs with Foothills tape and I'm like, "Oh, that beer sounds delicious." I was like, "I'm going to work there one day." And I would see it all the time. I applied, I saw they had a brewery position open and my boss T.L. has always said, "You've been very persistent about wanting to work here."

Meredith Gotz: That's pretty much how I ended up here at Foothills is just continuously knocking on the door and being like, "I'm here. Does the job still need to be filled?"

Erin Lawrimore: What year was that when you-

Meredith Gotz: That was ... I finally actually got on payroll and started here 00:06:00March 2016.

Erin Lawrimore: Okay.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah. I moved up here November 2015. Over the course of 3 or 4 months. My resume was at Small Batch and Wise Man hadn't even opened yet, Hoots. Anywhere here in Winston I was like, "Please hire me. Please hire me." But, yeah. It was interesting going to Foothills. I went into the pub and I was talking to the bartender. And I was like, "Hey, I heard you guys are hiring for a brewer." And someone was like, "Do you bartend?" I said, "Are you guys hiring?" "Oh, do you bartend?" I said, "No, I brew." And there were 4 or 5 employees that were working in the lab or they were brewers sitting at the bar a little bit down. And you just see heads go ... "She's a brewer." "Okay, cool."

Meredith Gotz: And then one of them actually walked over and introduced himself and I was like, "Okay, this is kind of cool."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, that's how I ended up working at Foothills.

Erin Lawrimore: Very cool.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: When you first got started in brewing, were you pretty much self taught or trained at Miami, I guess?

Meredith Gotz: Yeah. I was trained in Miami. I did a lot of reading on my own. They hired me to replace ... There were two guys brewing there before and I would go and hang out with them all the time. And one of them, his name was Matthew Weintraub, he actually started the tank down in Miami. They just won gold for their saison at the, not the great American, but I think it was the World Beer Championships. I was so proud because I saw them from that beer.

Meredith Gotz: There was a huge, besides Matthew helping me a little bit, there was a huge language barrier because I don't speak Spanish fluently but everybody at the brewery did. And not English, really, so trying to learn all of these 00:08:00scientific terms and why this is happening and also deal with the Spanish language barrier. A lot of it was, "Okay, tell me how to do it." And then you would do the first two steps and go back, "Tell me again what do you want done?"

Meredith Gotz: And a lot of it, too, was just listening to myself. I've always been into cooking and science has always been a big love of mine. I know what things should taste like. And when they weren't tasting right, I would be like, "Hey, let's check this out." But, I started a sensory program there. We weren't keeping track of any of our cans and seeing how they aged out, so I was doing vertical tastings with that. Checking the carbonation levels of the beer, as well as starting beer dinners. We were out in the middle of nowhere, so somebody has to drive 20 minutes to get to us. It was a beautiful spot, we had waterfalls 00:09:00and everything else.

Meredith Gotz: But, doing beer dinners to educate people on craft beer because there wasn't really anybody else around to do it. And now, you look at Miami's beer scene and it's blown up. And I'm really happy to see that.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, I pretty much learned everything as far as washing kegs, filling those, flavoring kegs, the whole brewing process. And we were completely manual, so there's no pumps, we didn't even have a hot liquor tank, it was self-heating. Going through and noticing that some things were antiquated. We had a boiler that needed to be replaced and just being really hard up and pressing the owners, saying, "Listen, you want the best product possible, this is what we have to do to continue brewing." Learning how to work on a canning line, which was really interesting for me. We had a 20 head fill system.

Meredith Gotz: Ball, who used to make the mason jars, they actually went into 00:10:00the canning business, so we got all of our cans from Ball. And they would be on these huge pallets and you just have to pull the sheet and the cans would slide into place. But, making sure all those were filled properly. It's a lot of work and we were still a very small group. I think total there was 5 of us working.

Erin Lawrimore: Wow.

Meredith Gotz: That's a lot of time. Easily doing 40 plus hours and when you're salary, I was doing 40 hours in the brewery and then working bar on the weekends to give tours and educate people on the process of craft beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Pretty much did everything there.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. You mentioned doing a lot of reading.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you think of the specific resources that you drew on to grow as a brewer to learn?

Meredith Gotz: A lot of the books, I mean it's hilarious because I got into brewing without even doing home brewing before. When you think of home brewing, 00:11:00you immediately think of The Joy Of Home Brewing so Charlie Papazian number one, John Palmer, reading a lot of The Brewmaster's Bible. As I started advancing a little bit more I would get into the water hops yeast books. Right now, even self reading, I'm going through the Lewis and Young really college level text of brewing that involves chemistry and everything else.

Meredith Gotz: Anything that was on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf, anything that if I walked into a home brew store and said, "That looks very detailed," you just grab the book.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Definitely.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. In addition to, I guess, books, were there specific people that you can pinpoint as folks who were important to your growth? Or maybe that served as mentors as you were going through?

Meredith Gotz: I mentioned Matt Weintraub, so definitely probably one of the 00:12:00most influential brewers that I worked with down in Miami. He and his partner, Moe, when I talk about the detail and the level of scientific specificity that they went through even designing that saison, you're weighing out hops by the gram, one little pellet. And you have 6 or 7 different worts divided into Pony Kegs and you're dosing each one with a tiny little amount or how much carbonation should we add to the beer. He brought beer making onto a very scientific ... Where I feel like a lot of brewers know how it's supposed to taste. "I plugged it into the recipe machine, let's just run with it." That's a beautiful side of brewing, but Matt's guidance was more of a scientific, "Use all your notes because if you keep great notes, you're going to be able to replicate that beer over and over again."

Meredith Gotz: That was probably my biggest influence down in Miami. And then when I came up here, once I got involved with Foothills, T.L., who's our head brewmaster, just ... Foothills is known for being IPAs, but every single IPA for the most part that I've had is so different. And when you think of base grains from most IPAs, they're very similar and it's just the hops that you're playing with. Whether you're double or triple dry-hopping it or when you're adding them. What amounts can give you such an array of differences, that really opened my eyes.

Meredith Gotz: You don't have to add 17 different specialty malts to make the beer different, you can just change it up subtly. And that's been really important, so whenever I've thought about beers that I would like to brew, I completely go back to just keep it simple and let the individual ingredients really shine.

Meredith Gotz: And then, also, just as far as the teaching goes, it's very much 00:14:00like, "What do you want to learn? We'll teach it to you if you want to learn it and show proficiency in it."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: I really enjoy the fact that anybody that, for the most part, I've come up to that talked to me about carbing with nitrogen, do a beer mix, do this. Also, you have a lot of home brew forums like on Probrew and stuff like that. It's just reading for information and weeding out some of the crazier ideas. And okay, this is fact, this is fiction kind of thing.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, those two gentlemen have helped me immensely and then I recently got involved in Pink Boots. I honestly feel like that group of women has kept me sane enough to continue in the beer industry. One in particular, Anita Riley, as far as asking her for advice. There's different situations, it's 00:15:00been immensely helpful.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Those are probably my top three.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Thinking about the brewing process, what's your favorite part of brewing?

Meredith Gotz: Oh god. I kind of love all of it. Brewing, for me, even though it's super hot up there, it is such a sensory, nerdy, I get to be science-y and here's all my mash numbers. I understand the pH levels, but then the smell when you're mashing in and the grain, you're just like, "Oh man!" But then, as I'm dropping hops, hops is one of my favorite things, and you just kept help but smell the bucket and be like, "Yes! This smells so good." As you're adding everything in.

Meredith Gotz: I've gotten to see the other side working in the lab, but even looking at the barrels as we're aging beer knowing that this barrel looks a 00:16:00little bit different from this one, it's going to impart a different flavor into the beer, but we're going to blend it all anyways, so it's all good. And adding a lot of different fruits, we're doing quite a few barrel aged things here.

Meredith Gotz: I think the whole process overall as far as brewing is my favorite. People are like, "Clean up has got to suck." And I'm like, "It doesn't. You turn on some music and you zone out. And you're going to clean for 4 or 5 hours." And sometimes you do that for a full 8. But, I would never be good behind a desk. I realized that after teaching, I was like, "I need to move." And even on my bad days when I'm really sore, it's just getting in there, sweating, and doing your job. It really does take your mind off of anything else that could possibly be going on.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Every aspect of it between the science side of it to just sitting 00:17:00at the bar 4 weeks later and trying something that you had a hand in is my favorite part, honestly.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: One of the things that you talked about a little bit, you had your education background, but it sounds like you are still doing lots of education related things with brewing.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about how those two fit together? How you see the education component and teaching people about beer tying into the brewing that you do?

Meredith Gotz: Oh yeah. I always ... Two things that I've always said is when you stop learning, you stop growing. And that to get somebody to really partake and become active and supportive of the craft beer revolution, if you want to call it, or the scene, is to educate them on what we're about. We're not the, well forget you Coors, Busch, and ugh! You should only drink this, if you drink 00:18:00any of that then you're an awful person. I can't stand that.

Meredith Gotz: The biggest issue is you have not taken that person who likes those beers and shown them a craft beer equivalent that is just tasty and makes you want to come back and say, "I would drink a case of that because that's delicious." That's on you to do that. One of my favorite things was doing the beer exploring was to take those people that had a case of Bud light and they would try a Vienna lager and be like, "That is smooth. Okay." And they would put it back and I was like, "Yes!"

Meredith Gotz: That's the thing, it's not to shun people because they don't know better, it's to welcome them into your field and say, "Let me teach you a little something." And I feel like I do that all the time whenever I'm giving somebody a tour. And one of the biggest, I guess, compliments is when they're like, "I learned so much." That twinkle you see in somebody's eye when they're like, "Oh!" All of a sudden, you're like, "Okay, cool, you get it now."

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, to give somebody a tour or to talk to a guy who's new brewing on our system and why do we have the water temp like this. Or why are we using these malts or adding salt at this time. To tell them why it's the best reason, they're like, "Okay," and it just makes them a better person. I think the more educated people, craft beer wise, that we have out there, the easier it will be to accept when you're like, "Hey I just released this double dry-hop with this hop. It's a rare hop." You're like, "Okay, now I see what you did."

Meredith Gotz: But, I love how both of them have always crossed over for me. I love training people or even just talking to them because I think one of the things about education is you learn the material yourself first, and then you 00:20:00find a better way of teaching that person so they grasp the concept. And just learning how that person learns. Some are like, "Here's the SOP, I know you can read it, go." And then others are like, "Please show me which valve to open and how much chemical I should add?" Step by step. But, once you figure that out, you can reach them on any level.

Meredith Gotz: I honestly feel that education and brewing is such a married relationship because I think brewing, as a whole, I don't think every single person went out there and invented how to brew beer. Somebody taught somebody else how to do that. And then somebody figured out how to do it better and they taught that person how to do it better.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: It's educating and beer drinking goes hand in hand.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. And I think some of that ties into the ... You talked 00:21:00about bringing someone from big beer and introducing them to craft beer.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: And then once they get into craft beer, there's educating them on the different styles. Can you talk about how do you go about teaching someone who has taken the craft beer, or at least dipped their toe into craft beer, and broadening their horizons.

Meredith Gotz: I guess probably one of the easiest examples that I use was one that even I had to go through. You don't have many big beer drinkers going over to craft beer and immediately jumping on the IPA bandwagon, and saying, "I love IPAs." They're never like that. Maybe some, but not everybody. Usually it's a lager that brings them on board because it's something that they're relatable to. The first time you say, "I think you should try this IPA," you get that look of disgust on their face. "Ugh, I don't like those."

Meredith Gotz: And then the first question I always ask them is, "Is it too piney or does it taste like you're licking an air freshener? The bitterness?" 00:22:00And you pick apart what's your hate relationship with the hops. And once you find out what it is, whether it's an IBU factor or it's just the type of hop that was in there, you can suggest something that you know they're going to like. And that moment when they try a beer style that they're like, "I hate this beer." And they're like, "Oh man, that's really good." You're like, "See! Told you."

Meredith Gotz: And that's what happened with me, I had a lot of really heavily hopped 98 IBU IPAs and I was like, "I can't drink this." And then I started going into some various New England, not New England milkshake IPAs, but I like more citrus-y hops which is why I love Jade or HopJob, it's just very grapefruit and give me some lemon in there. Something crisp, something light.

Meredith Gotz: We can go as dark and dank as you want, just tell me what your threshold is. Or even people, oh my god, another big one, too, is color. They immediately think that color dictates your flavor. And I said, "That's so not the case." I said, "Don't judge a beer by its color." And I immediately explain the SRM factor to them, but it's basically just like making a cup of coffee. Some people like their coffee black and then other people like it with a little milk. I like mine with a lot of milk, so much so that it's probably just a splash of coffee in there. It's fine.

Meredith Gotz: But, the malts and when you smell them, you realize, "Oh, that's where I get my chocolate, that's where I get my coffee from. That's where I get the caramel." Oh my god a bag of C20 opened up that's been newly roasted smells like beautiful caramel. And you don't even want to wear the mask, you just want to smell it. But, those grains are giving the beer the flavor, not the heavy 00:24:00thickness that you're imparting. And introducing people to that, as well. I love beer dinners for that reason. You're not necessarily forcing someone to drink a whole pint of beer that they hate, but you're also pairing it with a food that they're like, "All right, at least the chocolate's awesome if I don't drink the beer." When you do marry the two together, you're like, "But, now I see how it's such an awesome idea if you have both of them together."

Meredith Gotz: I really do feel like that is a really easy way to help bridge that gap and get people over to just play around with it. Get samples, almost every bar does a flight or a sample glass. If you're not comfortable with a new style, totally ask. The mass majority of breweries that I've gone to have some of the most educated beer tenders and a lot of them have their level one, if not level two, cicerone. Let them share their knowledge and teach you something 00:25:00because then you're just continuing that education craft beer beautifulness.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Speaking of style and trends from a brewers perspective.

Meredith Gotz: Okay.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you have particular styles or trends that you are either really in love with and hope continue for forever or that you would not cry if they went away?

Meredith Gotz: When you sent me the questions, immediately it's like, "Glitter beer." Or super sour beers. There's a threshold that I think everybody's pH level. Once you start going below that, physically it's unpleasant to drink those beers. Those are the kids that would shove 5 lemon heads in their mouth and walk around like it's the best day. Not me. To be honest with you, I feel 00:26:00that the beautiful part about craft beer is that there's so many different people who love different types of beers. Some are like, "Give me the most experimental thing you've got on draft." And then others are like, "I like your pilsner and that's all I want to drink." That is fine.

Meredith Gotz: Let a brewery be experimental. I doubt we would have as many styles as we do today if somebody didn't step outside the box and say, "Let me try this instead. Let me open fermentation in this field back here and see what I get." We wouldn't have that if somebody just didn't think outside the box. I had a conversation recently with a bunch of friends, because there was a beer they came across that had activated charcoal in it. It was activated charcoal and glitter and while it looks cool, I feel that there are ... We have a responsibility as brewers to be very non-withholding about ingredients that have 00:27:00a possibility to lessen the effects of your medication or could possibly cause you an allergic reaction. And a lot of that is, "Hey, we used peanuts," or "There's shellfish in this." Things like that.

Meredith Gotz: Being very forthcoming, I think we have that responsibility to be responsible and say, "This is what I put in there. If you're allergic to it, please don't drink this beer." And then I feel like you're just covering your butt because you're telling them up front like, "Yeah, there's shellfish in here." There's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather tell somebody what's in my beer than have them have anaphylactic reaction at my bar.

Meredith Gotz: I really do honestly feel like be as crazy as you want, there's going to be somebody out there who's going to drink it. If it's a one-off, it's a one-off, who cares? That's the beautiful part, favorite thing about working on a SABCO machine is somebody may never have this again or somebody may want a bunch of it again. Go crazy, but be responsible.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: You know? For me, I will continue to drink IPAs until the day I die. I just recently found out ... I love saisons and Belgians and all that, but I had an interesting allergic reaction to ... I'm sure you're familiar with Hunahpu from Cigar City. The year that they had that ticket mishap with Eventbrite where all of these false tickets got out and they ran out of Hunahpu, they did a 70 brewer collaboration commemorative bottle the following year. When I say 70 breweries, it's like, "Oh well, Duck Rabbit sprinkled the yeast in." That kind of thing.

Meredith Gotz: But, they decided to use Trappist yeast and I took a sip of the beer and, I mean really one sip, and all of a sudden this all got real red and itchy. I just was like, "I think I'm allergic to that yeast strain." I'm finding 00:29:00really, really, really old yeast strains and I do not get along for some reason. I've been very weary of Belgians and even some Saisons. The fact that I'll drink a beer and I could tell you that, "Oh, this is german hefeweizen and I immediately am getting a headache from this. It's a little weird, it's a little helpful, though, too, when you're doing blind tastings. You're like, "I know what style that is."

Meredith Gotz: But, yeah, just be forthcoming because we all have these weird things in our body like allergies. I'm dealing with one myself, right now.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: It cuts down on your drinkability on things that you can do. Chimay is definitely out now.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, which is a shame.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, oh yeah. I love Chimay, it's awesome.

Erin Lawrimore: Thinking about just the brewing industry as a whole.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Where do you see the industry going over the next 5 or 10 years?

Meredith Gotz: I'm sure other people have said this to you, but I honestly see it toning down from really big mega-breweries. Foothills is huge, we're 5 states. But, there's only so many production breweries that you can have that can saturate the market. Before prohibition and the world wars, a lot of towns just had their local brewery. One of the things that I loved about Winston, I live pretty close to downtown where I can walk, if I want to go uphill. I'm downtown in 5 minutes if I walk. And the number of little places or breweries that I can walk to is fantastic. And that's really where I see it heading.

Meredith Gotz: I think if you stay small, if you're not wanting to do ... I want to do 60,000 barrels. No! Just do 5,000 barrels, you know? Make it limited 00:31:00releases. That's the biggest thing now, is people aren't necessarily concerned about price. If it's a great brewery, and it's a limited release, and it's a one-time run, they will show up. You brew it, they will come kind of mentality. I love the quality over quantity aspect of it.

Meredith Gotz: I really do see breweries slowing down or re-changing their growth plans to only really include maybe just in the triad, you know? Forget using these large distributors and make a killing off of it. You have Joymongers, who doesn't distribute, and yet you just opened a barrel hall. There's something to be said to just attracting people to your location and I think it also gets you to step outside of the texting box for a minute and sit across from your friend and have a beer. It's a social hall, it's a gathering 00:32:00place, it's not a sit on your couch with a headset and play video games for 12 hours kind of thing.

Meredith Gotz: Social media even blows up when it comes to craft beer. And like I said, we talk about Hazy IPAs, I'm in the Colorado, New England IPA haze craze group and just the pictures that they post, you're like, "That looks beautiful!" Sharing with strangers halfway across the country over what? Over a beer. I think that's going to continue as far as people are going to get more involved in their city, their town, and the people that they live around because they're all going to go to the same little bars and areas and support your local community.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: I would love to see it stay on a smaller city-wide scale than blow up. You don't need 55 million giant breweries. It's a great way to hire people, but you can have 6 or 7 little breweries in your town and still find 00:33:00every single one of them packed if they're doing it right.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. And I think that ties in with the education that you were talking about earlier, too.

Meredith Gotz: Absolutely.

Erin Lawrimore: You don't get the education when you're buying the beer from a brewery on the other side of the country from your grocery store.

Meredith Gotz: No and I mean, I've never gone to Miller or Coors or any of those places and walked in and said, "Show me your place!" I don't know if they would be so forthcoming to be like, "Absolutely, let me show you everything." Where it's like here, we're like, "You want to go on a tour? Come on, put some safety glasses on." Three o'clock during the weekend you get 20 people walking through wanting to check out the space. Yeah, let's be open about what we're doing and we want to share it with you and this is who we are. I love that.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Foothills.

Meredith Gotz: Okay.

Erin Lawrimore: You've talked about some of these things already. How do you define the main mission of Foothills or the theme for Foothills?

Meredith Gotz: I mean, I think with Foothills being really the first brewery here in Winston and the fact that we've gone from that tiny little pub space to this, it says a little bit about the dedication of Jamie, T.L., and the owners for their commitment to making excellent beers. I work in a lab and for an independent craft brewery to have as high tech of a lab as we do, they really care about the quality of the product that's going out their door.

Meredith Gotz: At the same time, while we introduce the big IPAs to everybody here, I think that Wise Man, Incendiary, and Hoots, and all those guys probably played a part in us going outside of just IPAs. Barrel aging more things, adding fruit to more things. People were really worried when those breweries started 00:35:00opening up, like, "What's going to happen to Foothills?" I said, "They're going to be challenged and they're going to rise to the occasion."

Meredith Gotz: But, I mean between the huge events that Foothills has here, I think our biggest goal is just to really bring the community of Winston-Salem, if not North Carolina beer people together. Jamie through sitting on the brewmasters table and everything else. With all of those guys, it's all about bringing people together, educate, support, and expand, make North Carolina a great brewing state. I think Foothills has definitely accomplished that. For sure.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Yeah. When you came here, this space hadn't opened yet? Is that right?

Meredith Gotz: It was open.

Erin Lawrimore: It was open. So, the move had already taken place?

Meredith Gotz: The move had already taken place. I believe it was 2014 they moved over here.

Erin Lawrimore: Okay.

Meredith Gotz: And it's really hard for me to think because I started out working in the pub and it was just me and another brewer. There were two of us and it was like, "How many people used to work back here?" And he would be like, "8 people, 6 people." And I'm with a forklift, and brewing, and this, I'm like, "I would hate somebody." I see some breweries and they're so tiny. I couldn't imagine having that many people work in a tight space, you really have to love your co-workers.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. How many folks do y'all have now?

Meredith Gotz: Oh my god, total number?

Erin Lawrimore: Ballpark if you need to.

Meredith Gotz: Okay, I'll break it down by brewing and production. We run 24 hours a day during the week. Usually up until Wednesday or Thursday depending on what our schedule is, you'll always have two brewers/cellarmen working. Three shifts, it's 6. Plus myself, who is the assistant brewer, so 7. Now I'm moving 00:37:00into a grain position, so back to 6. Our production line, now, you probably have between 6 to 8 people per shift. And those guys during the week, they run 12 hour shifts.

Erin Lawrimore: Wow.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, some weeks they're working 6 to 6. That's super hardcore. I worked on the production line for a bit here, too. When we talk about, trained pretty much on everything. That's where I'm at. And then we have three ladies in the lab and then our office staff.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: And then all the sales crew and everything else. Yeah, what you see back here, there's probably 20 of us that are on the staff rotating shifts throughout the week.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Wow.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah. It's a lot. You come in here at 4 o'clock in the morning and people are still working. You're like, "Oh! That's a lot!"

Erin Lawrimore: Well, you've talked about the lab a little bit and that's actually one of the pieces. Like you said, most of the breweries we've been to 00:38:00for this project, they don't have a lab.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about the lab work and what you guys have in the lab? And how you make use of it?

Meredith Gotz: Yeah. I guess we'll start with quality control. We will take a wort sample of every beer that we brew and we will plate it. So, we can see if there's any growth. We plate all of our tanks after they've been clean so we'll do a swickle sample. And that's just to check, "Hey, you thoroughly cleaned the tank." Plating all of the brite tanks and then also our bottling line. Random bottles as they come off, as well as anything that's coming in contact with the bottles. We use media to monitor the growths.

Meredith Gotz: Every brewery is going to have some type of growth. The numbers, what it is, and everything else really matters. But, the fact is we monitor that 00:39:00every day. Then the lab is also responsible, which kind of frees up some time for the brewers, but every day we're going and checking turbidity. How clear is our beer and I think one thing you'll notice about Foothills is that for our IPAs and things like that, they're pretty clear.

Meredith Gotz: And that's just really detailed standard operating procedures of how we're crashing our tanks when we're spinning them and we're just very much on top of that. Keeping daily logs of your gravity, your turbidities, what the PSI is on the tank, what the temperature is. Basic things those labs can do.

Meredith Gotz: Now, when you look at the other stuff Foothills does because we have the bottling line, we have some advanced calibration machines that we'll use to check out the CO2 and the dissolved oxygen in our bottles as they're coming off the line. We did research on bottle caps and how are they absorbing 00:40:00oxygen or letting it in. To beer is to make our product as fresh as possible. We give 90 days freshness on our bottles and yet you see other breweries who have to go to pasteurization to do 120 days. We're not pasteurizing our beer, we don't want to get rid of that amazing hop flavor. But, we're going to research whatever we can to make sure that it stays fresh and as delicious as long as possible.

Meredith Gotz: We've done all of that research. One of the things that's kind of interesting about us is that we actually have a yeast propagator. We'll start with a little package of yeast about this big, it comes live in some wort from the lab. We'll actually put it in the propagator and over the course of 40 to 72 hours, we're actually ... We call it the love motel for yeast, basically. We're getting all the yeast cells to reproduce and just grow in volume. In which case 00:41:00then we'll pitch it, and we do studies on our yeast every single time. We can actually use our yeast up to 5 times, 5 generations here. But, that's not without constant monitoring.

Meredith Gotz: And that's what I really love about it is that brewing is such a science and I think if you pay close attention to what you're doing, you can have a great product regardless of the situation. You really understand how the yeast is working and how your grain is working, so the lab here is ... I mean vertical tests for months out that we're tasting these beers.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Lots of lab work.

Erin Lawrimore: Oh, I bet.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, but we also ... Wise Man would bring over some of their cans and we would test those. They had a mobile company bottle for them and we would just test it and say, "Hey, your cans are good. You've got good levels of 00:42:00dissolved oxygen in there. Good to go." And I think it also, just by having that better lab, invites the community. So like, "Hey, if you're not sure about something, bring it in. We'll check it out for you." You know? I love that. It's awesome.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. And you touched on this a little bit already when you're talking about the staffing, but from your perspective, do you have a typical week that you could describe? Or even just a typical brew cycle, I guess, might make more sense than the week.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah. You want me to just tell you what I do during the week?

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Okay. This is completely switching as of August 13th. My typical week is I work Thursday through Monday. Thursday, Fridays, well and on the weekends, too, I'll jump up on the brewhouse where I'll check in with the brewer 00:43:00that I might be taking over. Like, "Hey, do we need to mill in? Do we need hops? What do we need?" I coordinate the grain pickup with the farmers, so I have two different farmers and if we have a silo fill, making sure the slot is open for the silo truck to come in.

Meredith Gotz: I'll do the brewing side and then on the weekends, we also have lab work. I'm the lab person on the weekends. I will take all the gravity samples, do all the cellar work, I will start a batch of beer in the morning depending on the schedule because I'll have a guy come in like two or three hours after I get there. I might start brewing beer and then I'll hand off the beer to him. Then I'll start doing lab work for the rest of the day. And then I'll go and do cellar work based on my lab results.

Meredith Gotz: It's kind of cool. It allows you to not be bored. That's for sure. It's also taught me this side of being responsible and reading the results 00:44:00you're getting from all of your lab work. And making decisions on what to do with that tank. There's always somebody you can call and be like, "So, I don't know about this gravity. I don't know if I should bung the tank."

Meredith Gotz: It's totally educated me and given me a chance to say, "Hey, you know the answer. You're looking at the numbers, make the decision." Which, as much reading as you can do, until you're put into that position, you're always like, "Oh my god, I hope I made the right decision. I hope I don't mess this up," kind of thing, which I think helps build a more confident and more aware employee. Giving them that responsibility and saying, "All right. Make the call."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: You know? Yesterday was my Friday, we didn't have enough coverage in the lab, so I worked in the lab all day and took beer samples, plated knockouts, and did turbidities. I did all that. Yeah. I love the fact that I can 00:45:00fill in any day and I don't know what I'm doing sometimes when I walk in. They're like, "Could you fill kegs?" I'm like, "Sure!" But, I love being cross-trained like that where you can just jump and help out whatever is needed.

Erin Lawrimore: And do you think having that kind of cross-training ... Basically anything that's going on back there, you've had your hand in it at some point.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Do you think that ... How do you think that, that helps in terms of making the beer and talking about the beer? How do you think that, that factors in?

Meredith Gotz: I think if you only work on the bottling line and you don't know what product is going into the bottle, where it's going, how can you become aware and educated if something is not right coming in front of you? You may be the only person that's going to catch it. I think understanding, at least 00:46:00understanding what normal looks like in all the different areas of the brewery, like, "Hey, that bin with the hops, that fan is making a weird noise. Or this light pops up that shouldn't be on there." Just notify somebody and be like, "Hey." Or looking at a bunch of grain and saying, "This doesn't look right. This isn't what we normally order." And being able to make those calls.

Meredith Gotz: I had this discussion with my mom one time and it was ... The frustration that you have sometimes working somewhere and the most amazing thing that could happen is when somebody says, "Thank you. That was a great catch." It's free. It doesn't take anything, but that person leaves their job for the day being like, "Yeah, I did something right." My mom's like, "Well, do you get a paycheck every week?" I'm like, "Yeah, but that's not the point" The paycheck is like, "Well, yeah, you put in your hours. There you go."

Meredith Gotz: But, anybody that I've worked with that's given me a report or, "Hey, I milled in this grain." I've always been like, "Thank you so much for doing that for me," because at the end of the day, they're like, "Today sucked, but somebody said thank you." I think really being back there and being able to tell anybody, "Hey, do you need help on this? Let me just jump in and help you," or "I need this staged." Knowing every little aspect that's going on helps keep the day rolling. If you stay informed of changes and things that are happening, you can set people up for success the rest of the day. Like, "Hey, I know we're switching hops on this next batch. I put those out for you. Alpha acid changed."

Meredith Gotz: And it makes life so much better when you have people setting you up for success rather than, "I don't know where this stuff is. Good luck finding it. You have to mash in, in 30 minutes. Bye! It's 8, I gotta go." You know? And that's always been my goal here, is no matter what I'm doing, if you need help, 00:48:00I'm glad that I'm at least trained enough where it's like, "Yeah, I gotcha. I can drive this forklift for you for 10 minutes. What do you need?" I'll do it. It's fine.

Meredith Gotz: But, yeah. Definitely knowing a little bit of everything back there and I think everybody should. You should cross-train people like crazy because not only are you creating better employees, but when you're short in some area, you can be like, "Remember that one time? Go over there and do it." Problem solved.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Yeah. You've been in Winston since 2015, is that right?

Meredith Gotz: The end of 2015, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: That hasn't been that long ago.

Meredith Gotz: No.

Erin Lawrimore: But Winston's beer scene has changed dramatically since then.

Meredith Gotz: A lot, yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about that?

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: The changes you've seen.

Meredith Gotz: I think the craft beer scene has changed as far as people are 00:49:00becoming more involved in the brewery scene. And I think it's because breweries offer so many community activities. Every weekend or even during the week you have Yoga somewhere. Concert places, so many local bands have so many great venues to play at now, because you have all these breweries that are open. Where am I going to take my friends that are coming into town? Take them here. Food trucks, so many parking lots for food trucks to go to now.

Meredith Gotz: We do, and I know the name is changing, but it's a quarterly event that we do called Hop Shop. The number of craft vendors, they take up all in here, all out there in the parking lot, you have thousands of people coming here, there's food trucks everywhere. But, just allowing even local craft vendors a spot that, "Hey, you can open up and you can sell your wares for two days." People love that.

Meredith Gotz: I really feel like Winston and, I guess, pretty much any town where you get a bunch of breweries opening, it benefits so much. And I remember back in Miami they were like, "No, we should only include ... Breweries should only be allowed to go into industrial warehouse spaces nowhere near the neighborhoods with the schools and the children." It was like, "Bring me a brewery. I want you right next door." That's the way I feel like Winston is really now doing it and people joke and say, "Oh, Winston could be the Eastern Asheville of North Carolina." I'm like, "No, Asheville is two hours that way, you just go that way." I can't afford to live in Asheville, I can afford to live in Winston.

Meredith Gotz: But, I think as a city we have nowhere to go but up as far as the beautifulness that breweries bring in. As far as activities and sponsorship of local things that are going on and local groups, and meeting places for everybody in your town. And if you don't like the one brewery, go to the other 00:51:00one because there's 8 of them. And they're only getting bigger. Yeah, I think Winston is smart in allowing the breweries to open up and say, "Yes." And saying, "Please, come into our town."

Meredith Gotz: I mean, it also offers a challenge to all the other breweries and saying, "That's pretty creative. I like what you did there. I'm going to take that and I'm going to run with it over here." I have a friend who does Yoga and she's into aerial yoga. So, she does the silks and everything else and she's like, "I don't know." I said, "Go pitch your idea to other breweries because there's so many people that are just doing floor yoga, I would go pay 20 bucks to do an aerial yoga class. Absolutely. That'd be awesome." And it's a great space to do it in a brewery. You got all these rafters you can hang your silks from.

Meredith Gotz: But, yeah. I love how different the craft beer scene has gotten 00:52:00in Winston and it's going to get bigger. I mean, we got other breweries opening up. And it's not even just the brewery, like, "Hey, you want to be a tap room? There's plenty of beers that you can put on tap." And you want to be special and only have North Carolina beers? There's enough of them, you can have them. Oh, you only want to do a 150 mile radius? No problem! We have those, too. There's enough. There is enough and we have room for more.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Definitely.

Meredith Gotz: I love Winston.

Erin Lawrimore: We'll switch gears a little bit.

Meredith Gotz: Okay.

Erin Lawrimore: You mentioned Pink Boots a while ago and the importance of Pink Boots.

Meredith Gotz: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about being a woman in the brewing side of the beer industry?

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: We found a number of folks this summer, but it still seems like any time someone thinks brewer, they're picturing a dude with a beard.

Meredith Gotz: Oh yeah. I don't have a beard. I always get offended because they're like, "I didn't know girls brewed." I'm like, "They were the first brewers! Snap out of it!" And I always antiquate the guys grilling and it's the women picks out the cut of meat, she marinates it, she hands it to the guy and says, "Put it on the grill." She reminds him to turn it, take it off, let it rest, let it rest, let it rest, cut into it and the guy's like, "I did a beautiful job on this steak." And you're like, "Yeah, you did, honey. Good job." This is why I'm probably single, too.

Meredith Gotz: But, craft beer is very much been like that. When I was in Miami, I was the only woman brewer that I knew of down there. We didn't have a Pink Boots chapter and whenever I would go to brewery meetings, I was the only girl sitting there sipping my beer and there's all these dudes with beards and 00:54:00brewing tattoos, "These are my 12 bottles of home brew that I did last month." And you're just like ...

Meredith Gotz: I didn't want to be shy, but it's hard to muscle your way into that especially when they're like, "Did you start off home brewing it?" I was like, "No I was a music teacher." And they're like, "Interesting choice." You know?

Meredith Gotz: But, then when I moved up here, I kept seeing Pink Boots, Pink Boots and I was like ... And a part of me after battling with the dudes for so long was, "I don't need a girl group of brewers." And I think they released some material and I had told a friend of mine. I was like, "I'm thinking about joining Pink Boots." And he was like, "Why would you want to join that group?" And he sent me a picture and it was like two girls dumping in a bag of grains. And I was like, "We don't ... If she's strong, you shouldn't need two girls to lift a 50 pound bag of grain." Or looking into the work kettle with your hair not pulled back. I was like, "Oh, no! Why would you do that?" Or Pink wort 00:55:00coming out, I was like, "That's not supposed ... I don't know why they would do the wort pink."

Meredith Gotz: I had this ... I want to join this but none of these images are really true of what a true woman in brewing would be. The other interesting thing about Pink Boots that a lot of women didn't even know is that you don't have to be a brewer to join. If you work for [Kaffe? 00:55:27], if you're doing beer sales, you're in. 25% of your income has to come from beer and it doesn't even have to be craft beer. If you work for Millers or Coors or whatever, come on in. We don't judge like that. We will try to switch you, but anyways. We don't judge.

Meredith Gotz: But, I've plastered me and another bartender here, Sydney, she's our treasurer and I'm the leader for the new Greensboro chapter, we did a triad chapter. We literally went and plastered downtown Winston-Salem with all these 00:56:00breweries, bars, and talked to women, and gave them fliers. And we're like, "Come join us!" And the biggest mission with Pink Boots is to support, and to educate, and to really promote women within this industry that, for so long has been noted as it's a guys' thing. It's really not, I think women have better palates than men. We are better at catching subtle flavors, I think.

Meredith Gotz: And also, there's that delicateness that girls are like, "That's enough salt, honey." And they're like, "I can't taste it, yet." You're like, "Slow down, slow down." Then also just understanding the fermentation process and realizing that you've got to baby the yeast, give it a minute, don't freak out if it's not bubbling after 24 hours. But, women are also very persistent, you know? You tell us we can't do something and we're like pretty much any 5 00:57:00year old. We're going to open that cabinet one way or another, you tell me I can't run a brewery? You tell me I can't be the head brewer somewhere? And it's like, no, we will.

Meredith Gotz: I think that with Pink Boots, they're giving you the opportunity to ... You can't afford level two cicerone training, or even level one, there you go. Apply for this scholarship. There's Seibel, there's going out to hop farms, or even local. We went to Epiphany Malt and I got a tour there. It was the first maltster I'd ever been to. Yes, it's a small operation, but number one, you take pride because it's your North Carolina area, you're like, "This is in my backyard." And you get that hands on, straight from the guys mouth, this is how we do it and it's just ... The smell. He was roasting malt at one point and you're like, "This smells like roasted coffee, it smells so good." You want to stick your head in this really hot piles of grain. And you're like, "No!"

Meredith Gotz: But, Pink Boots allows you to do all of that. The fact is, is 00:58:00that any meeting that we have, we always try to do a educational bit and we open that up to pretty much anybody. Even if ... Like we're going to do here, we're doing top 5 off flavors that you would find in beers, which I think if you work in sales or you're a bartender, or anything like that, you should A; be trying all the products, and B; be able to pinpoint like, "Dude, this is off." Now, is it something the brewery wanted to do or is it like, "We shouldn't be selling this keg," kind of thing. And it happens, but you catch it.

Meredith Gotz: But, we're educating people here and it's not just open to people in Pink Boots. You might pay a small fee, but that helps us. It's a donation towards Pink Boots. I know that there's been times where I've been really frustrated at work and I called people on my support list from Pink Boots and 00:59:00I'm like, "This is what's going on." It's been nice because I have a best friend that I always call and vent to, but she doesn't work in the brewing profession, she doesn't 100% understand what it's like and how something might be going on. You talk to another female and she's like, "Oh yeah, that's not right." Or, "That sucks, let me talk you down off this ledge."

Meredith Gotz: I mean, to have a sisterhood that you honestly now are so proud and you can look across your state and say, "Some of my favorite beers come from these breweries and they're led by women." Love it. Absolutely love it. I think Pink Boots, if 25% of your income comes from beer, join it. There's enough chapters, I think, opening up now that there's somebody close by who has a support system that can help you learn more.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. One of the changes in, I guess, North Carolina and Pink 01:00:00Boots recently have been these more local chapters.

Meredith Gotz: Yes.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk a little bit about the local Winston, Greensboro ... What do you call it? Is it the triad group?

Meredith Gotz: Well, we originally were going to call it the triad, but the problem is, is when you talk about, "Oh, where are you?" "I'm the North Carolina triad chapter." Where on the map does it say triad? Somebody put up a really good point, triad means nothing to me. And it was like, "Well, I will say Greensboro because it's that little triangle. It's in the peak." So, we say Greensboro.

Meredith Gotz: They recently, though ... Anita was doing the Raleigh, Durham and we were in Winston, we had to drive all the way out there. That was the closest chapter. Asheville just got formed, Charlotte just got formed, you have Raleigh-Durham, Wilmington is opening up, and you have Greensboro. And I'm sure there's other chapters, too, that I'm not remembering because there are so many 01:01:00opening up.

Meredith Gotz: But, I think ... I was reading on their website the other day, I think when Pink Boots first formed there was, God, I want to say maybe 75 women under that premise of 25% of your income in that group. And we are international, we're not just state side, but in other countries over 250 women. I can easily tell you that number has even definitely gone up as, I think, women get more interested in craft beer. And I think by lowering that threshold of being really intimidated by the guys that know all about the beer and having women beer tenders, "Girl, you should try this. This is awesome." Opening that door and having women actually have the courage to be like, "No, I'm going to do this."

Meredith Gotz: My biggest thing is I heard somebody say, "I was a woman and the 01:02:00way I looked. And then I start talking about craft beer." I was like, "You don't even need to look a certain way. Guys should you respect you. If you open your mouth and you know what you're talking with beer, who cares if her hair is frizzy and she's wearing jeans and jockos. It doesn't matter.

Meredith Gotz: But, yeah, Pink Boots has played a huge part in just having the confidence to approach anything. They're the one group that if you come to them and say, "I'd really like to learn this." I had asked to learn about barrel aging, there's not a lot of breweries that are going to be like, "Let me teach you all about our barrel program," because it's still secretive, how you get certain flavors out of barrels or your techniques. But, to have them say, "Okay, we'll work on getting somebody super knowledgeable in this and we'll lead a class." I didn't have to pay for a college class, I paid my $35 dollar annual membership and I'm going to learn about barrel aging. I love that.

Erin Lawrimore: Can you talk about some of the events that the Greensboro group has done already because I know that there have been a few already?

Meredith Gotz: The one that we just did that was our most recent was ... Christina Hobbs, she's an assistant brewer over at Joymongers. She led the charge in fermentation science, basically. And so we were actually making sour kraut and she was talking about the fermentation process and how that would happen with the cabbage and all of that. We have that off-flavor tasting here that we're going to do.

Meredith Gotz: Upcoming a bunch of fundraisers, so the next Hop and Shop that we're doing, which is the last weekend in September, we're going to be having a booth outside where we're going to sell Biere De Femme tickets, not tickets, merchandise. And then also I'm doing a yard saleish, where ladies, your winter 01:04:00jackets that you don't like anymore, beer glasses, because I'm sure all have a million beer glasses. Beer merchandise, things like that, that you want to sell, let's have a yard sale. Here's dishes, things like that, but allow people to buy those items and the purchase goes towards Pink Boots.

Meredith Gotz: At the end of the event, it's a two day Hop Shop this time, I'm actually donating whatever is left to a woman's shelter. Regardless of whether the donation benefits us, the donation will benefit some women somewhere. We also have a local bottle shop, Jugheads, that is October 6th, they're going to do a percentage of pint purchases will go towards Pink Boots for an evening of beers. And they'll have a food truck and things out there.

Meredith Gotz: The big thing that we're looking at is a silent auction. Again, 01:05:00more Biere De Femme merchandise. One of the things that I really felt was kind of interesting, but I wanted to do a Brew With a Brewster. If you silent auction and you win that, it would be you meeting with some of the women in Pink Boots, come up with your favorite kind of beer is a wheat beer and you like oranges and lemons, okay. We're going to brew a beer for you and we're going to do a home brew setup and show them all about home brewing and stuff like that.

Meredith Gotz: I, also, because we've worked with so many different breweries, getting some limited release bottles donated so people could silent auction on those, as well.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: I think the big thing right now is just trying to raise some money for a new chapter that just opened up. Those are some of the events that we're going to pull together and hopefully, in the near future, I wanted to do a class on sours because so many of us are like, "Ugh! I don't like them." I know 01:06:00there's a threshold, there's gotta be some sours that people are going to be like, "I'm going to hate this." And drink it and be like, "That was actually really good." Again, it's educating people and changing their perspective on something. That's a class that I really wanted to organize and get people to speak at, as well.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Very cool.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: If we had a woman wander through right now, if she was like, "Hello. I want to be a brewer, what should I do?" What advice would you give her?

Meredith Gotz: Well, first of all, go for it. Second of all, figure out where you want to go with it. One thing that I have noticed working here is that I don't have a creative hand in making recipes here. We have our Footmen series, which is going to be opening up again soon with the pub re-opening. But, I don't have any control on writing recipes. I don't get to say, "Hey, this week, let's 01:07:00brew this."

Meredith Gotz: If you're okay saying, "Hey, I've got my 8 hours. I know I've gotta get this done in that time," and you're good at multi-tasking, which most women are, do it. I think a huge thing that we miss out on is remembering that you can do whatever you want to, just how bad do you want it? Start out by making sure that you understand styles. Start out beer tending, it's the best way to A; learn your styles, learn what you like, and then also you have a closer connection with brewers and everybody that's out there because you talk to them on an almost daily basis.

Meredith Gotz: Hang out after work or before work and ask questions. Again, back to the education thing, almost everybody out there is willing to tell you what they're doing and why they're doing it. So, just learn. If you're curious, just 01:08:00ask. There's a lot of programs and that's something that's completely different from Florida, too, but there's so many educational programs that you can go to. You have Appalachian State has a great two year program that you could take. There is Rockingham College that has a program. There's online through Seibel. I think there's another, it's like American Beverage or something like that, also has one.

Meredith Gotz: But, there's so many brewing programs that you can take, it's a little bit of money, but it really helps if you can work in the brewery and understand the process. But, there's nothing stopping you. Don't let a boy tell you that you can't do it. You can. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. What would you say is your favorite part of working in the North Carolina craft beer industry?

Meredith Gotz: Oh my god, probably the fact that there's breweries everywhere. Everywhere. You want to go to Boone? There's breweries up there. You want to go to the beach? There's breweries over there. And the fact that people used to, or 01:09:00people now plan their trips based around what breweries are in the area. And I love, too, the fact that I'm not very far from Virginia, even, so there's a bunch of breweries up there that I would want to go to.

Meredith Gotz: But, North Carolina, they have beautiful spots and they have a lot of breweries. And one of my ... I just took a friend of mine, this past week, he'd never been to the Sierra Nevada brewery. So, I said, "You've seriously never been?" He said, "No." I was like, "Okay." I drove him out there and his ... He worked with me in Miami brewing, his face was just like, "Are you kidding me right now?" Also, showing him that a lot of North Carolina breweries are very environmentally friendly and conscious about what they're doing.

Meredith Gotz: We have a recycling for glass, we have recycling for all of our plastic wrap, our cardboard, everything here. Our grain is picked up by farmers. 01:10:00Aside from recycling our gray water, and solar power, everything else that we pretty much do is recycling. And that's because when you see the size of a brewery, you have so many waste materials. But, the availability of beer in North Carolina is amazing and the differences. You have breweries that just do English style ales. That's great. You have german style beers at one brewery, that's great.

Meredith Gotz: But, you can go to all these different towns and they could be real small or they could be real big, and you'll probably A; find a brewery, and B; they're usually contributing, not only to the town that they're in, but also to the environment that they're in. Being somebody who fished and did a lot of water stuff down in Florida, to see people actually care about their river systems and the local things going on is so refreshing to me because I used to take kayaks out and garbage bags with just bottles and things people would throw 01:11:00in the water. Here, a lot of the times, I already see people doing it, breweries are organizing river-water cleanups and all of this. So, they're very environmentally friendly and there's just lots of beer.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: Two favorite things about North Carolina breweries, hands down.

Erin Lawrimore: We've got a couple of fun questions that we like to wrap up with.

Meredith Gotz: Okay. Oh, man.

Erin Lawrimore: What's your favorite beer from Foothills?

Meredith Gotz: Man. Okay, if it's an IPA, I'll drink Jade. We redid our Carolina Blonde, we wanted to repackage it for Foothills and it's now called A Thousand Smiles. Hands down, my go-to like, "I kind of want a beer, but I don't really want a beer. It's hot outside." A Thousand Smiles. Yeah, we'll go with that one for right now.

Erin Lawrimore: We won't hold you to it, you're still allowed to drink other things.

Meredith Gotz: I swear, I drink so many of these other ones.

Erin Lawrimore: The harder question.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore: What's your favorite beer from a North Carolina brewery other than Foothills?

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, I've been dreading this question a lot. There's a couple. One that you can get a lot of different places, but it's just ... If I want an IPA and it's a go-to, every single day I could drink it, in and out, but actually be Highland's Mandarina IPA. First time I drank it I was like, "Did you say there's orange juice in here?" But, being a Florida girl any fresh orange juice is hands down my favorite. And then reading there's just a splash, just a tiny, tiny little amount and it would definitely be one of those IPAs that if I had a friend looking at me sideways like, "Ugh, IPA." I'd be like, "No, you have to try this." That's one of the ones that you could get somebody to switch over on, easily.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah. Yeah. When you're not here, when you're not brewing, when 01:13:00you're not doing Pink Boots stuff, what are some of your favorite things to do for fun?

Meredith Gotz: I have a little Manchester Terrier and her name's Haley. I was actually going to bring her today and I was like, "I don't know how they feel ..." She's my bar dog. She just sits with me on the bench and is very chill. Little old ladies love her. But, I usually will take her for car rides or we go through some of the trails here. Visiting the other breweries is always an awesome chance to deal with.

Meredith Gotz: But, if I'm not doing any of that stuff, I do play in the Salem band, which is the oldest music group since I want to say 1757 continuously. We played music concerts in the summer in Old Salem Square. Playing music with those guys and then really getting out and seeing a lot of the nature that's out 01:14:00there. In Florida, I was a water girl and I loved it. I'm a Florida native, but that was ... I also craved mountains. And now I'm 30 minutes and I can go hiking up a mountain if I want to. And just having the ability to get out because, obviously, when you're in here and its hot, and sweaty, and loud, you just want to go somewhere that's a little quiet and relax, bring it all back in.

Meredith Gotz: I also recently been teaching some friends how to home brew, which has really been interesting. Asking, "Hey do you have a hose I could borrow?" "Well, we could run it out the second floor to ... Wait, where does this hose need to go?" I'm like, "You have no idea what we're doing, do you?" Setting it up and showing them how to home brew has been a really fun thing that I've recently been doing.

Meredith Gotz: I've also been recently helping people pick out beers for their weddings. Sitting down and being like, "What are you having to eat? How many 01:15:00people are in your group? How many are we trying to feed beer to?" And educating them on different styles and getting them to be like, "That beer would be perfect for our wedding." Just always educating people about the beer.

Meredith Gotz: Yeah, if I'm not brewing it, making it, cleaning it, or packaging it, I might be talking about it and helping somebody pick out something to drink. I don't know.

Erin Lawrimore: Or playing with a dog.

Meredith Gotz: Or playing with my dog, yeah. She likes beer. My last brewery was on 30 acres and I had a Dachshund and her. And they were allowed to be with me at night. They would go and run the farmlands and hang out. But, anytime you would start draining off that warm wort, that sugary water, they would lick the floor. They were like, "Oh, it tastes so good." Dachshund would jump up in the forklift with me and we would go dump grain. I kind of feel like that's how it 01:16:00should be. It's a very organic hangout process.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: I loved it.

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah.

Meredith Gotz: I wish I could bring my dog here. I really do.

Erin Lawrimore: That's pretty much the extent of all the questions that I came prepared with. Is there anything we didn't cover that you think would be useful to have as part of your story?

Meredith Gotz: Not really. There's not much aside from I have no formal education, which I kind of wish I did. It really is one of those, you can make the perfect cake but you can't tell them scientifically what the baking soda does. That's where I'm at now, so it's just trying a good brewing program that I would really want to put money and time into. But, also, not be frustrated like, "I already know all of this stuff."

Erin Lawrimore: Yeah, yeah.

Meredith Gotz: That's basically it. Aside from that, I think I've told you 01:17:00everything, I'm chatty.

Erin Lawrimore: Thank you so much for talking to us.

Meredith Gotz: My pleasure.

Erin Lawrimore: We really appreciate it.

Meredith Gotz: I loved it, it was fun.