Celebrating the women of New Jersey's craft beer industry

The time has come to raise a glass to the women of New Jersey's craft beer industry.

Beer has been booming across the state in recent years, but far too often there remains the misconception that the world of beer is a boys' club.

The reality couldn't be more different; one visit to a local brewery tasting room shows that on both sides of the bar, female beer lovers, brewers and entrepreneurs are key to this scene.

Check out our photos from a recent Women in Business event:

Here are three such breweries and our salute to the women working behind the scenes:

Torie Fisher and Melinda Gulsever, Backward Flag Brewing Co., Forked River

At Backward Flag Brewing Co. in Forked River, owner Torie Fisher and head brewer Melinda Gulsever have one goal for their beer: balance.

(For an inside look at Backward Flag Brewing Co., watch the video above.)

“We’re always talking about how (with), say, a pepper beer or a spicy beer, it’s kind of easy to make a beer that say is like super-spicy," said Fisher. "But there’s a lot more skill that goes into making that beer balanced, where it’s going to have different levels and a complexity of flavors and a heat that can be appreciated by a lot of different people."

Or, to put it in other words, "just because you make a strawberry blonde doesn’t mean that when you drink that beer it should taste like jam," said Fisher. "It’s OK to have a little bit of a woman’s touch. It’s just nice and balanced and subtle.”

A self-described "Army brat," Fisher was born in Louisiana and spent part of her youth in Hawaii. Fisher, who now lives in Tuckerton, joined the U.S. Army in 2003 and turned 19 while on one of her two tours of duty in Iraq.

It was during her military service, she said, that she took her first steps toward life in the beer industry.

“A guy in my unit was a home-brewer and I just started out going to his house one day and learning how to brew," she said. "That was a hobby that kind of turned into an obsession.”

Backward Flag Brewing Co. opened in an in industrial park on Challenger Way in Forked River two years ago, and the staff of about nine people is largely made up of veterans, firemen and police officers; Gulsever serves in the Army National Guard.

“You definitely get an understanding that goes back and forth across the bar," said Fisher. "A lot of our customers are also cops, firemen, veterans, so when they come in there’s always at least one person behind the bar that they can talk to that’s kind of walked in their shoes, seen the things that they’ve seen and can talk to them on an equal level.

"That’s a fantastic thing because for a lot of people like us that’s what you’re looking for when you go some place, somebody you can connect with.”

Business is booming at Backward Flag: they're set to expand from a two-barrel system to a 10-barrel by early 2018, meaning beers like the signature offering Oak Armored Ale may finally be available in bars, restaurants and liquor stores soon. At the moment, the only place to get the product is directly from source at the tasting room and brewing facility.

“There’s definitely some surprise that comes a lot when people come here and they find out that I’m the owner and then they’ll see little Melinda, walking around carrying around 50-pound bags of grain and find out that she’s the brewer," said Fisher. "We do get a lot of people that come in and we have a bunch of big guys that work behind the bar and they’ll automatically assume that one of them are the owner, so they usually have a little bit of a look of surprise when they point to me or her and say, ‘No, she’s the owner’ or ‘That’s the brewer.’ ”

Jamie Queli, Forgotten Boardwalk Brewing Co., Cherry Hill

A Wall native now living in Bradley Beach, Jamie Queli also found her way into the beer industry through an avid home-brewing hobby.

Queli and company opened Cherry Hill's Forgotten Boardwalk Brewing Co. to the public in 2014, and the company quickly became a key point in the state's beer landscape thanks to flavorful, inventive creations like the sweet Funnel Cake Boardwalk Ale and the ominous Morro Castle Smoked Porter.

"As far our personality, I find us to be very quirky raconteurs," Queli, owner of Forgotten Boardwalk, said. "Those are the voices we sort of speak in. If you look at any of our cans, they sort of tell a story of the Jersey Shore past."

That singular personality has earned Forgotten Boardwalk quite the following across the state. And when it comes to the clientele visiting the brewery's Olney Avenue tasting room, Queli said men and women are equally represented.

"It might even skew a little bit more towards women," she noted, "but I would say it's about an even split."

But Queli said her gender generally hasn't been a factor when it comes to her work in the beer industry or her reception as a force in the business.

"I've always felt that at the end of the day, I didn't get to choose my gender and really, I didn't get to choose what I did with my career, it chose me," she said. "So, I just followed along."

Gretchen Schmidhausler, Little Dog Brewing Co., Neptune City

Gretchen Schmidhausler's path to her Little Dog Brewing Co. was a long and winding one.

Before opening Little Dog, where she is the owner and brewmaster, in November 2014, she worked as a reporter for the Asbury Park Press and has brewed professionally since 1996 — including a 12-year run as the head brewer at the former Basil T's in Red Bank.

"I tend to be a more traditional brewer, and I do more classic styles," said Schmidhausler, of Lake Como. "My beers are German and English-influenced. I don't do anything that is particularly hop-forward, I don't do anything that is high ABV (alcohol by volume), everything is around 5 percent, drinkable, pairs well with food. It's really (the) kind of beer you can enjoy."

Little Dog will mark its third anniversary with a mini-cask festival featuring three cask-conditioned beers, noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18 and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, at their facility, 141 Steiner Avenue.

While she said she still doesn't see the craft beer audience as a 50-50 split along gender lines ("I think the majority is still male," she said), Schmidhausler concurred that more and more women are becoming interested in craft beer these days.

Discussing what's driving that increased interest, she said, "It's craft beer, so there's more variety in flavor and style. And not to generalize, but a lot of women came to it maybe through a love of wine, they like the Belgian styles.

"That's not to say they don't like the stouts and the IPAs either, but the craft beer movement means there's really something for almost every palate."