Innovation is a word that gets batted around in the beer industry. It means different things for different people, depending on their roles, but ultimately it is about the creative thinking that has guided the industry for the last four decades. From recipe development to refinement, business practices, or packaging, innovation plays a critical role in beer.
This month our expert topic series is focused on innovation and will feature interviews and insight from some of the leading names in beer who are striving for the next idea or discovery that will help their beer, business, and industry.
There is perhaps no one better to kick things off than Tonya Cornett, the long-time innovation brewer, who was awarded 2024 The Russell Scherer Award for Innovation in Brewing at the most recent Craft Brewers Conference.
Cornett began her brewing career in 1995 and would soon attend the World Brewing Academy. By 2002 she was brewmaster at Bend Brewing Co. in Oregon and a decade later she would move to 10 Barrel where she headed up the innovation brewing team until earlier this year. She has won numerous awards at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup and was the first woman to win the title of World Beer Cup Small Brewer of the Year. Earlier this year she was part of the 10 Barrel Team that swept the German Sour Ale Category at World Beer Cup.
Currently Cornett is looking for her next role as an innovation brewer and spoke to All About Beer Editor and ProBrewer Contributor John Holl.
John Holl: when you think of yourself as an innovation brewer, how does that title separate from other brewing titles like head brewer, brewmaster? What is in that silo of innovation brewer?
Tonya Cornett: So innovation can mean a lot of different things. It can be optimizing process for trialing new ingredients. My focus is on recipe design, which includes new styles, or styles new to me, ingredients, new flavor combinations, new process, but also taking these recipes past the first brew and mastering the balance of the beer.
Lots of brewers can play with new ingredients, and they can do a different beer every single week, but I think until you really master the beer, and you master the balance of the beer, I think that’s what makes a true innovator in beer. The mastery part.
There’s always the new for the sake of new, especially if you’re talking in the first brew, but I think it’s when you get to the third or fourth brew and you’re really dialing things in, that’s when it changes from just being a one off into something that is more innovative and thought out.
John Holl: When you’re working on something and you’re brewing it ten times, what are you changing each time? Or how are you approaching it differently each time?
Tonya Cornett: I really concentrate on the balance of the beer, and it really is just trying to make it perfect. And I know that that’s relative, but that is what I’ve always tried to do. And it can be something super subtle, a subtle change, or it could be drastic. It just really depends on where that beer is and where I want to take it. Sometimes there’s happy accidents and a beer will go wrong with the brew, and then you find out that’s the direction that it really wanted to go in that whole time.
For me it is just trial and error. It’s systematically changing things. Trying not to do too many things at once. I am pretty comfortable and I am able to extrapolate what the changes will do. I probably change more things than most people when they’re trying to dial in a recipe. It just comes with experience. Also, I think having a clear kind of idea of what you’re shooting for helps.
John Holl: It seems like there’s always new ingredients that are that are coming out, or new. Then every once in a while, we kind of get these weird curve balls where a brewer just totally messes with the established norms and we, the drinkers, get something delightful. What’s the fun challenge of taking an ingredient and totally ignoring the manufacturers recommendations?
Tonya Cornett: For me, it was always a challenge just to fit all those new ingredients in and especially in the framework of beers that I already had in mind that I was going to create. I try to just take all those things into consideration, especially in the world of hop products, there are a lot of new ingredients. But I’ve also talked to some people who are trying to sell those ingredients, and they say that it’s hard to get your foot in the door, and it’s difficult to get brewers to kind of change it up, like they might do it for a one off. But getting some of those products into a regular production beer, has been a challenge.
John Holl: What would you like to see the industry do more of when it comes to innovation?
Tonya Cornett: I think right now, it’s important for us to educate our consumers, the newest generation. They’ve grown up with craft beer. Their parents drank craft beer, so it’s no big deal to them, and I’m sure they have a pretty good baseline information.
However, I do think that we have to create excitement, and there just doesn’t seem to be a ton of excitement about beer right now, and it’s up to us, just like in the mid 1990s when everything crashed, it was all about educating our consumers, and I think we need to go back to that.