Brandy Pieper Is A Cool Craft Distiller in Oregon

Labs didn’t inspire Brandy Pieper. The University of Tennessee grad earned her degree in biochemistry and went looking for a different career path. She wanted something she considered “cool.”

“I’ve always enjoyed jobs where I was making something,” She told us. And so, initially, beer seemed like the right balance of science and creation. “I kind of thought, oh, beer would be cool. That's a cool job.”

But then she wandered into a distillery looking for a bartending job and everything changed.

Seven years later, Brandy leads a team as the Production Manager for Oregon Spirit Distillers in Bend, Oregon. What started as a temporary job until she could get hired at a brewery turned into her career and she still thinks it’s pretty cool.

Off to a Cool Start

Brandy chose a scientific path early on. She had a knack for math and science and decided to learn more about that field in college.

“If I'm paying for an education, I'm gonna dive into something challenging,” She recalled thinking. “I went to the University of Tennessee because it was close to my house; okay, in-state tuition, this seems chill … they had a really solid program in the sciences.”

“while I was there too, I found the field of ecology — which I found to be really inspiring,” Brandy continued. “Being in the sciences really kept my attention.”

All of her science education would eventually contribute to her role in craft distilling. But straight out of college, she worked in food microbiology and food chemistry — areas that didn’t thrill her or keep her entirely engaged. That desire to work in beer had begun to grow and she wanted to find a way to break into the industry. So when the invitation came along to move to Bend, Oregon, it wasn’t hard to convince her.

“Bend was on my radar, but then my friend who lived there was like, Hey, you really could easily get a job here,” Brandy explained.

A Cool Turn of Events

The job in beer didn’t immediately materialize once Brandy arrived, however. Instead, a lot of the local breweries turned her down because she didn’t have manufacturing or production experience. What she did have? Bartending experience. There were plenty of bars in Bend, too. So she started searching for an opportunity to get behind the bar until she could get in front of a brew kettle.

Brandy applied to a number of bartending jobs around town. One day, not long after she’d settled in, she interviewed at a bar that turned out to be a distillery. After explaining her ultimate goal of going into craft brewing, the owner offered her a job — but not a bartending gig.

“I'm talking with the owner and she's saying to me, ‘You wanna work in beer? Well, we have a distillery,’” Brandy recollected. “‘This is similar in a lot of ways… would you be interested in working here in production?’”

While it wasn’t exactly what Brandy wanted — she still wanted that cool beer gig — it still intrigued her. She took the job, thinking she’d get experience in a production facility and then eventually move on to that awesome brewery that would hire her in the future.

Today, she still works at that distillery — Oregon Spirit Distillers. The owner, Kathy Irwin, who convinced her to take the job saw potential in her that those breweries did not catch. Ultimately, they lost out because Brandy thrived in her role. She worked hard and, as the distillery grew, so did Brandy’s skills as a distiller.

“When I started, I was a production assistant and I worked the late shift,” She said. “We were a really small team. So I was operating the still, distilling ferments into low wines, bottling a little bit here and there, little side projects, cleaning the floor, cleaning tanks, etc.”

Brandy easily proved her worth through the stellar work she put in. Her team noticed. Eventually, she earned the opportunity to move up when someone left and she took it.

“Maybe a year, year and a half after I started working there, our team had grown a little bit,” she explains. “There were some people that I had helped train. We were accomplishing more as a production department.”

Finding the Cool Opportunities

Even that little bit of growth wasn’t necessarily satisfying Brandy. As a person who constantly looks for — and anticipates — change to keep things interesting, she started considering moving on. Maybe she’d finally transition into brewing. So she looked around for new opportunities. After all, she had about a year and a half of production experience under her belt at this point.

Big changes were coming for Brandy — but it wouldn’t be a new job. A shift at the distillery caught her attention. Then the whole team caught a big break.

“We got a contract with our main retailer,” Brandy disclosed. “They're a national retailer and they really changed our business in a lot of ways.”

The new development drove the distillery to increase production pretty quickly. To stay on top of it, the company added a lot of new equipment. Boosting volume also led to more staff and more people to support distillation. As the wave of changes swept through the whole facility, it carried Brandy into a new role: Production Manager.

Production evolved as a department, adding engineers and other specialties to the lineup. Brandy led at the helm, directing the team to create more spirits and meet demand.

“I am standing at the still and working on the floor less and less,” Brandy admitted. “A huge part of my job is to shape how the team around me is learning. [They] are on the floor doing the work, accomplishing the goals of production.”

Brandy also deals with operations and developing the spirits produced by the team. As she describes it, she’s focused on “giving the team the tools, resources, knowledge, whatever it is, to be able to accomplish our large-scale goals.”

Once she realized that she’d found an opportunity for growth and change at the distillery where she’d already been working, Brandy was locked in. After all that time working at Oregon Spirit Distillers, she finally realized she was a distiller through and through.

She admitted that even while she loved telling people she made whiskey for a living, it didn’t sink in that she could do this for a living until she saw all that opportunity for growth and change happen throughout the distillery.

“I'm not coming in every day to punch the clock, if you will,” she told us. “There's more opportunity here and I respond really well to that. Having a year of experience behind it to understand the industry a little more and understand the craft a little bit more, it was like, okay, I could do this. Yeah. This is cool.”

Finally, A Cool Job

Having finally settled into that cool job she’d been looking for, Brandy enjoys watching her team discover distillation and all the elements that go into it. She is passionate about cultivating other people’s passion. So to lead her team as they navigate the craft spirits industry makes so much sense for her.

“When people are excited to learn, I’m happy to teach,” she said.

It’s that quality in Brandy that makes her such a great manager. She recognizes passion in others and works to encourage that. But that same tendency for reinforcement doesn’t always translate to her own state of mind.

When considering challenges, she admits that she often stands in her own way. “My biggest challenge has been myself, honestly,” she revealed. “The voice in my head that's like, ‘you're a bad leader’ or ‘that was wrong.’ Being afraid to fail — it was sort of big for me.”

Handling Challenges Like a Cool Customer

Brandy is managing that imposter syndrome, recognizing that even her bosses at Oregon Spirit Distillers want her to lead the way and believe in her as she grows. Beyond the walls of her distillery, she runs into people in the industry who tend to be tripped up by a woman who is successful in her role. That too, she meets with a level of grace.

“I used to experience a lot,” she acknowledged. “You know, the surprise, the look on people's faces, like, ‘What? You make whiskey, huh?’ There's been a little bit of that. It can always be a really fun way of kindly showing someone that, yeah, I know what I'm talking about too.”

In the years that Brandy has been in the industry, she’s noticed that women in general have taken on more leadership roles. Even women who have worked by her side have gone on to lead their own teams at other companies. She sees a benefit in highlighting women in the industry to show “it’s not just bearded men and whiskey,” as she said.

Cool Opportunities for Women

When it comes to expanding inclusivity in the industry, Brandy suggests implementing scholarships or creating other opportunities for underrepresented groups in distilling.

As women enter the industry, Brandy shared her advice. “I am a pretty firm believer that if you want to do something, you continue to put energy and time into it. I hope it's not harder than the person next to you, but it might be. I think that there is a lot of space in there still for people who want to be involved.”

For Brandy, she hopes to continue watching Oregon Spirit Distillers grow and change with the times.

“I've been a big proponent of our fruit spirits program,” she notes. “That specifically would be one that I'd be really happy to see grow and evolve and have a place on the shelves.”