Sarah Lee’s Curiosity Nabbed Her a Head Distiller Role

Sarah Lee asks all the right questions. The environmental education major followed her natural curiosity to a job at a craft brewery and, eventually to her current role as Head Distiller of Black Frost Distilling.

As Sarah has navigated the craft spirits world and the craft beer world before it, she’s followed her instincts and used her skills to excel as a maker, avoiding the far-too-common boys’ clubs across both industries.

Always ready to learn something new about craft beverages of all kinds, Sarah charges on, developing flavor profiles for the products she’s creating today.

Piqued Curiosity

College enhanced Sarah’s natural interest to learn. She studied environmental education with the goal of learning lots of new things. That actually prepared Sarah for life at the still. She set out on a path to become a guide to nature but what she learned in the process actually made her an incredible candidate for the craft beverage field.

“I really thought that I would go on to be a nature interpreter,” Sarah explains. “I thought that I would be taking in boatloads of information and then regurgitate it so to speak to people who had an interest or had questions and really help guide them in those intellectual steps.”

“When it came to working in a brewery,” she continues. “I realized I could take boatloads of information about all different styles of beers, what was in the market, specialty releases, things you know from an international market and really help guide the customers through finding something that they really liked.”

Even before stepping into craft beverage as a career, Sarah was making beer, wine and cider on her own. She clearly had an interest in the process of brewing and distilling and a passion for learning more about it. It makes sense that she’d walk into a brewery, strike up a conversation with the owner, ask a bunch of questions and nab herself a job. Although, as she tells it, the job offer came more in the form of a test.

“He gave me a little challenge and I said, challenge accepted,” Sarah recalls. “And I started working there at the end of that week.”

The job she took on at the brewery didn’t involve crafting beer. Instead, Sarah provided marketing support, event management, tending bar and other non-brewing tasks.

During her tenure, which began in 2006, Sarah witnessed the boom that craft brewing experienced.

“It really became like my whole life which is great,” Sarah tells us. “But I felt like I had just been in it and I was just so deep in it that I wanted a little bit of a breather to maybe just explore some other stuff.”

Next Question

After nine years of working at the same small brewery, Sarah made the difficult decision to quit her job and start looking for a new challenge. She didn’t really know what she was going to do but she had the time to think it over.

As luck would have it, yet another visit to a tasting room – this time at a local distillery in Duluth, Minnesota – led Sarah to her next career move.

“I went to Vikre Distillery, which is the small distillery in downtown Duluth, to see one of my favorite bartenders,” she remembers. “And he asked me what was up. I was like, ‘you know, I just put in my notice at my job and I don't know what I'm gonna do.’ He invited me to come work there to tend bar.”

Bartending was not something Sarah had a lot of experience with at the time. But, being the inquisitive person she was, she caught on and started making impressive cocktails for the community while also asking a lot of questions about the ingredients and spirits she used.

“As the months passed, I had a lot of interest in how it all worked,” she discloses. “I just had a zillion questions.”

Her curiosity caught the production manager’s attention and soon she was invited to join the team behind the scenes, making spirits instead of mixing them.

Asking for a Friend

Seven years later, Sarah reconnected with Jace Marti, a fellow craft beer ex-pat who was on the cusp of opening his own distillery. She’d kept in contact with him via social media and soon started asking questions.

“I was really initially trying to help find him someone to work [at Black Frost Distilling],” Sarah claims. “Asking a little bit about personality and backgrounds –like what was he really looking for in distilling staff? And he asked me if [I was asking] for me or for someone else, and I said for someone else, of course.”

However, the photos of beautiful equipment being delivered and the distillery coming together that Sarah witnessed across social media spoke to her. Soon she wanted that job. So she decided to leave Vikre for the opportunity to become Black Frost’s Head Distiller.

Sarah relocated to Southern Minnesota to take on the task of creating the distillery’s spirit portfolio.

“I've been working on some gin recipes for a small batch of gin that we'll put out,” She reveals. “We've been working on some rum and then I've been working on modifier recipes. And just trying to find our place in the market here in – and obviously the greater region. But for now, really just finding our place here.”

Seeking More Answers

Admittedly, the area around Black Frost is very rural. It’s something that Sarah finds very challenging. As she seeks collaboration with fellow distillers, she admits that it’s hard to connect when she’s so far away from the nearest distillers.

In fact, Sarah hopes to see more collaboration across the entire industry. “I feel like many people really try to hold everything very close to themselves and they don't want to share recipes or talk about yeast strains that they use because they believe they need to hold it private as proprietary information,” she says. “And I feel like the more information we all have and the more the industry grows, the tighter knit we become and the more we can support each other.”

On the other hand, Sarah tells us that she has not encountered challenges related to being a woman in a male-dominated industry. That’s primarily because she avoids them and seeks out opportunities where she is welcome.

“If I'm in a situation where it feels like it's, quote, a boys’ club and they're not looking to have anyone else show up, I don't wanna be invited,” Sarah quips. “I don't wanna be a part of a party [where] I'm not wanted.”

In the seven years Sarah has been in the industry, she’s been happy to see female representation grow.

“There's not always been a good representation of women either on the ground making spirits or running their own distilleries,” she observes. “That has very much grown. It is exciting because I think that craft spirits needs more diversity across the board.”

When it comes to women entering the industry, Sarah shares some sound advice: “Ask all the questions that you can when you have the opportunity to do so.”

Meanwhile, Sarah continues working toward the goal of creating fine spirits and hoping that she’s remembered for having done everything with a passion – and maybe even a curiosity about what will come next.