Electric Sparks — How the Brown Gradient Beer Wenches Are Transforming Utah’s Beer Scene

“All of us are absolutely physically gorgeous,” Shyree Rose tells me with a grin. She’s right, of course: The Brown Gradient Beer Wenches are indeed a stunning group of women. But that’s not the point; the sheer, unadulterated joy that they take in their Brownness is itself a thing of beauty. “We’re a beautiful melting pot,” Melissa Diaz exclaims when I ask how they came up with their name. “I looked at our skin color and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re all different shades of Brown.’” 

The Brown Gradient Beer Wenches are Melissa Diaz, Melissa “Mel” Dahud, Shyree “Ree” Rose, and Stephanie Biesecker. All currently work in the craft beer industry in Utah, in and around Salt Lake City, but collectively they bring beer and bartending experience from Florida, Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas to the Beehive State’s growing craft beer scene. 

Their heritage is equally varied and distinct. Diaz describes herself as “full-blooded Mexican,” while Dahud’s ancestry combines Palestinian, Ecuadorian, and Nicaraguan roots. Rose is of African-American, French Creole, Scottish, and English descent, and Biesecker is white and Samoan Islander. 

Despite living most of my life amid the swirl of international London, I have rarely met close groups of friends with such a variety of backgrounds. It makes me think about how often people talk about diversity without actually practicing it, and also about the reasons that marginalized groups silo. It can be about survival, about finding a way to build essential support networks, but it can also cut us off from one another. The Brown Gradient Beer Wenches, by contrast, see their diverse backgrounds as a gift—and a way to forge broadly supportive networks. “I love that all of us found each other in this very white-dominant state,” says Diaz. “It’s a very beautiful thing. Because when you think ‘Utah,’ you definitely don’t think of Brown people.”

Diaz initially started the Brown Gradient Beer Wenches’ Instagram account as an upbeat collection of photos, videos, and reels, a place where the four could post about the beers they enjoyed as well as their other hobbies, including hiking and biking in the Utah countryside. Diaz was “three beers deep” at the time, she says unapologetically, and thought it would be fun, a way to share their adventures in the industry. 

Since they launched the account in July 2020, however, it’s become a go-to source of information about the Utah beer scene, as well as a broader celebration of Brown women in beer. As their feed has become more popular, their following has expanded from industry friends to other Utah beer lovers and even out-of-state visitors. A recent feature in the Salt Lake Tribune took their reach further.

“We gained something like 1,200 followers in 46 hours or something—it was insane,” says Diaz. “It was never intended for us to do that.”

FRIENDSHIP FORGED IN FIRE

When Rose and Dahud met working at Slackwater Pizzeria & Pub in Fall 2019, Rose experienced a moment of immediate connection. “It was literally like being a little kid at school,” she says. “I walked right up to her and I was like, ‘We’re going to be friends. I’m going to make you my friend.’” Shortly after, Diaz and Rose met at Salt Lake City’s Toasted Barrel Brewery when new-in-town Diaz dropped off her resume at the taproom, having just relocated from Las Vegas, and the pair clicked instantly. 

In early 2020, Biesecker met Diaz when visiting Salt Fire Brewing Co., and she echoes this sense of recognition. “As soon as I met [Diaz], I knew that she was the kind of person who I could easily be friends with,” she says. Today, the four have similar roles in the industry, reinforcing their connection. Diaz bartends and works on social media at Bewilder Brewing, Biesecker works in retail sales and social media at Red Rock Brewery’s Beer Store, while Dahud bartends at Level Crossing Brewing Co. and Rose bartends at Slackwater. 

With so few women of color in the Utah craft beer industry, it’s unsurprising that the four gravitated to one another—but to chalk up their connection to a lack of other options doesn’t do it justice. The energy the foursome exudes as a group is visible; it reminds me of the electric sparks of a band delivering a set so tight the members’ connection feels telepathic. Interviewing the women over Zoom is almost a frustrating experience, because I want to be in the room with them, hanging out and sharing beer. They are luminous in each other’s presence—and they know it. 

“I think it’s our chemistry—how we mesh well together,” says Dahud. “We just have this energy going, and it makes people intrigued and want to talk to us more.” Diaz agrees. “I feel like when the four of us are out together, we are kind of a tidal wave—especially if we’re at a brewery.” 

I know from the start of our chat that transcribing our conversation will be a nightmare. The three Brown Gradient Beer Wenches who join me on the call—I talk to Biesecker later, as she is unavailable on the day we speak—rarely pause for breath, overlapping each other’s sentences and regularly bursting into fits of laughter that I can’t help but join in with. In between, they show me the 9% Bewilder Belgian Tripel they’re sharing. It’s easy to forget in the scope of our conversation that being Brown women working in a white-male-dominated industry—and especially in an extremely white state (the recent census states over 90% of Utahans identify as primarily white, and 77.8% as white only)—means that they regularly face situations in their working lives that make my jaw drop. 

“I think it’s our chemistry—how we mesh well together. We just have this energy going, and it makes people intrigued and want to talk to us more.”

“The amount of times that someone has told me, ‘Oh, I’ve never had sex with a Black girl,’ is insane,” Rose tells me unflinchingly, before quipping, “If you wanna go have sex with a Brown person, like, go to Miami.” We all hoot with laughter, and I get a real sense of how Brown Gradient Beer Wenches functions as a communal space where threats and barriers can be broken down by being shared, and digested with humor. 

Being tokenized and fetishized in your place of work is an unacceptable—and lamentably common—experience among the women, and Utah’s ubiquitous whiteness means that unwanted attention can also come in the form of creepy exoticism. 

“Men and women will say, ‘Wow, you’re so pretty, I love your skin tone.’ I know it’s meant to be a compliment, but it’s off-putting,” says Rose. “You could answer back, but you’d lose your job,” adds Diaz. I’m reminded of my privilege as a writer discussing diversity issues from behind a screen, while women like the Brown Gradient Beer Wenches tackle unrelenting, in-person prejudice every day, and still love their Brownness. It leaves me in awe.

LOW-ABV ≠ LOW-QUALITY

How many of the issues that the women face are the result of Utah’s strict alcohol laws? In the Beehive State, beers over 5% cannot be served on draft, even at brewery taprooms, and the state permits only 1.5oz of liquor per cocktail—an onerous restriction that stands out from most of the rest of the country. 

“It was a culture shock for me for sure—a completely different world from what I’m used to,” says Dahud, who moved to Utah from New Jersey. “It was weird to kind of adapt to that and learn the drinking curve of humans here,” adds Diaz, who had previously lived in Las Vegas and Austin. That curve creates an additional pressure for workers behind the bar. 

“It does cause a bit of a stressor out here for us, to still be fun and bubbly but not lose your job,” Rose says. As they share stories of upselling doubles in previous, out-of-state bartending roles, Dahud points out that they also need to be extra solicitous to non-resident customers, who may not be familiar with Utah’s restrictions and can become aggressive as a result. For people of color, that can make a challenging industry even more hostile. 

“I personally have taken cases of beer to Vegas, given them to the owners or the head brewers of businesses that I know out there. And they’ll crack it open. And they’re like, ‘Wait, this came from Utah?’ ”

Despite these complexities, the group remains passionate about Utah beer. When I question the state’s restrictive feel, they respond protectively.

“There’s such a stigma around Utah that, ‘Oh, your beer must suck because you’re only stalled at 5%,’” says Diaz, before reminding me that there is no ABV limit on Utah’s canned beer. “It actually takes a lot more work to make a beer at a lower ABV and it tastes good, but people don’t think that way,” says Dahud. “They just think, ‘Oh, it’s low-ABV so it’s trash.’” Rose agrees. “If anything, it makes us work harder.” 

The BGBW enjoy subverting those expectations. “I personally have taken cases of beer to Vegas, given them to the owners or the head brewers of businesses that I know out there. And they’ll crack it open,” says Diaz. “And they’re like, ‘Wait, this came from Utah?’” 

The satisfaction is palpable, and it underpins the current role that the women see for themselves, as champions of their local breweries and beer scene. “It’s not so much about us and what we’re doing personally,” says Diaz. “Right now, our focus is to highlight our local breweries that accomplish great things in the community.”

THE BATTLE FOR RECOGNITION

If championing Utah beer is a key objective for the Brown Gradient Beer Wenches, so is overthrowing prejudices and preconceptions, particularly when it comes to how people of color, and especially women of color, are treated in taprooms and in the industry. 

I ask what advice they would give to breweries to make their spaces more inclusive, and they all feel that abandoning assumptions is paramount. “Don’t assume that … a woman or a man of color that comes up to your bar doesn’t know about beer,” says Diaz. “Just treat everyone equally.” 

This is also their own goal for moving forward as a group: to create spaces that promote inclusivity. As they recount their experiences as the only Brown women at Utah’s Pink Boots Society meetings, the four are clear that their plans for future events will be very different. 

“I definitely want to make more inclusive spaces for people of color and the queer community,” says Dahud, who identifies as LGBTQ+, as does Rose. They discuss the idea of hosting bottle shares and tasting events, with an emphasis on ensuring everyone is welcome. “I want to create a space where nobody feels intimidated and we can all just go pick each other’s brains,” says Rose. “That’s hard to find out here.”

With these barriers in mind, the BGBW have their work cut out when it comes to bringing other women of color into the Utah beer scene. One of their main objectives is using their knowledge and understanding as craft beer professionals to make newcomers feel more welcome. 

“I want to create a space where nobody feels intimidated and we can all just go pick each other’s brains. That’s hard to find out here.”

Diaz describes how she successfully steered a new customer, a woman of Mexican heritage, towards a beer she would enjoy by talking through her preferred flavor profiles. “It’s about guiding your guests, making sure that they enjoy the beverage that’s in front of them,” she says. Rose agrees. “When people tell me they don’t like beer, I always say, ‘You just haven’t found the right beer.’” 

As they talk me through the different beers they’ve been drinking and pouring, I ask if they feel they have to work harder to be taken seriously as women of color in the industry. “We work twice as hard just to get that little bit of respect and recognition—and we’re intelligent human beings,” says Rose. Diaz tells me how a white male guest recently asked her if she even liked beer. “The assumption that just because I am a female, but also Brown, was to him just this anomaly that never happened [before],” she says. “Well, I specifically picked the job that I have because I really enjoy beer,” she says she retorted, before finding him a beer that he was happy with. 

The group recently had its first encounters with BGBW “fanboys,” and they were delighted not just to be recognized, but to be asked for beer recommendations. “That was our first, ‘Whoa, our page is making somewhat of an impact’—the fact that they walked up to us and they felt confident enough to be like, ‘We know you guys know what the frick you’re talking about. What should we have next?’” Diaz says. “And you know, they listened to our suggestions.” 

“It was a nice feeling,” agrees Rose. “I want to have that feeling more, where it genuinely feels like someone gives a shit about what we’re doing and what we’re trying to share with the world, and they want our opinion and our advice.” 

Although BGBW’s reputation is starting to precede them, they are very aware that their Browness in a very white state makes them more visible than they would be elsewhere, and that there’s something bittersweet in that. “If we were trying to do this almost anywhere else, it wouldn’t really be a thing,” says Rose. Diaz agrees. “I think if we were in literally any other state, we would be drowning in the tide of a Brown gradient.” 

Not that this in any way detracts from the BGBW’s achievements, professionalism or capabilities, or from what all four aspire to do next. “Now we get to talk to strangers about beer,” says Diaz. “And that was kind of the whole point.”

Words by Ruvani de SilvaIllustrations by Ben Chlapek