It’s a Woman’s World: Stephanie Geiling of Relic Brewing

Photo credit: Melissa Jones

One of the promises I made to myself when I started dabbling in this particular column was that I’d do the opposite of only covering female chefs. I wanted to dive deeper into the hospitality industry to highlight those doing meal prep, perhaps a barista at a popular coffee shop, bakers, and in this case, a woman who works in a brewery.

When I began my introductory search via Instagram stories, Stephanie Geiling came up as a suggestion more than a few times. Steph, as it turns out, is the operations manager at Relic Brewing Co. in Plainville.

The former psychological researcher at UCONN sort of stumbled into the beer world after she chose to leave the research field. She ended up at Relic after stopping into the tasting room one day and Mark Sigman, Relic’s owner, offered her a job.

“It was my first time ever going to a brewery and I said to myself, I have no idea what I’m doing, this is going to be a joke, but I’m going to do it anyway,” she says. “I helped in the tasting room, and I was still working in research and at a liquor store. I left research for personal reasons, and I started to enjoy the liquor industry. I also felt like this was a more supportive and inclusive environment.”

In addition to her career at Relic, Steph plays guitar and belts it out in a doom metal band based in Plainville called Lightkeeper, and she just started training in martial arts.

There’s more in the Q&A about what she does as Relic’s operations manager and we got into the widely publicized topic of sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexism, and the like as it pertains to breweries.

For context, brewer Brienne Allan (@ratmagnet on IG) helped expose the black eye by sharing thousands of anonymous responses she received on Instagram’s “Questions” feature.

Read on and be sure to give Steph a follow @relic_brewing_steph.

What do you do at Relic Brewing?

When I first started, I worked the tasting room. Then I started helping Mark dry hop beer and clean kegs, and I still do that. It’s super fun here and I like the creative aspect. When I made the pineapple gose, that was fun to put together. I came up with the recipe for that one, usually we come up with them together but this particular one is all mine because he doesn’t like those type of beers A lot of times, I drive the truck or load the truck, unload pallets of beer, I run the tasting room, on Saturdays I run the kitchen, cooking, I order from distributors, contact customers. I’m a jack of all trades.

What do you like to drink?

I love really well-made traditional style of beer. I do like IPAs, but I can get burnt out on them really quickly. Right now (end of summer 2021) I’m drinking our Kolsch. I love it. It’s my favorite summer beer and it’s so easy to drink. Here, I like our lagers, the Oktoberfest, and I like sour beers. The first beer style I got into were Belgian lambics. I wasn’t much of a drinker until I turned 25 and before that I’d exclusively drink lambics, which were like adult sodas.

What are your goals in the beer world?

I’ve been very lucky. Mark has been a great employer in terms of providing me with opportunities. He paid for me to go to Scotland to study how to make scotch. Also to Prague to study Czech pilsners, to Kentucky to go on the bourbon trail, and to a bunch of conventions. I’ve had a lot of incredible opportunities because of an employer who values experiences. Mark and his wife and my husband Peter (who designs Relic’s beer labels) and I will go on vacation together. We’ve gone to Madrid, Prague, Istanbul, Rome. It’s fun stuff. You have to immerse yourself in it.

How are you a pioneer in this industry?

You know…I don’t really think I am! I feel thankful for the people I’ve been surrounded by. If I didn’t have supportive people around me and people who are full of knowledge and generous enough to share that knowledge, I wouldn’t have anything in terms of a career. I feel lucky that they passed all of that on and helped me grow. The best thing that I could continue to do would be to keep learning and continue being open minded and keep exploring what I don’t know. What I’ve dug into the past few years was checking my ego at the door and being able to embrace that discomfort of growth, because growth is always uncomfortable. It’s never going to feel comfortable, but you’ll always get to a better place by embracing it.

How has it been for you navigating a male dominated industry, especially in light of the recent swarm of social media allegations exposed by Brienne Allan?

It has been interesting. I’ve definitely experienced some craziness. I would say the biggest area where I’ve experienced this has been at beer fests. People just get drunk. There are multiple times where I’ve been groped and that sucks. A lot of times—and this is the unfortunate part, this learned helplessness—I don’t feel comfortable reporting getting groped because if someone is drunk enough to grab you, you don’t know if you’re safe being like, “Hey, stay right here while I report this and get you in trouble.” It’s a double bind. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They should have just been keeping their hands to themselves all along. It’s a safety issue for me, personally, because I’ve had people physically assault me at beer fests.

What about people who come into the taproom and simply underestimate your knowledge because you’re a woman?

Because we have whiskey, bourbon, and scotch customers occasionally come in and don’t believe that I have any knowledge of, let’s say, scotch, and I’m like, “I went to study this stuff!”