THE GIST
Early last month, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Briess Malt & Ingredients Co., one of the largest malt suppliers in the country, with 16 workplace safety violations totaling $174,351 in proposed fines. The company was found by the agency to be short of OSHA protocol for things like the sanitization of respirators, providing sufficient warning signs in dangerous areas, and offering additional staff training.
The six-figure fine and accompanying press release were somewhat atypical—about 16 inspections with violations were reported at major malting companies in the past decade, with initial penalties in the range of $5,000–$15,000, and the previous high was $154,563 for Briess in 2017. For production breweries, even a $10,000 initial penalty would be a high mark. OSHA expected to perform about 31,400 inspections in 2022, but only 76 cases of enforcement resulted in a news release. Despite the novelty, OSHA’s area director Robert Bonack said in a release that the violations Briess was cited for were “common in the manufacturing industry.”
“Briess employee health and safety remain our first priority,” Ron Schroder, Briess’ director of marketing, said in a statement to Good Beer Hunting. Schroder said their discussions with OSHA were ongoing, and he could not provide further comment.
While the violations may have been usual for such a space, they were uncovered because of a complaint shared with the agency in August 2022. That itself is somewhat unusual—businesses in and around beer actually tally fewer safety violations compared to national figures.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports from 2020, the most recent year of available data, the beer industry had about half the reported injuries due to slips and falls, exposure to harmful substances, and overexertion than the beverage manufacturing industry or private sector industries as a whole.
In the past five years, breweries have been cited for OSHA violations far less than other industrial businesses that also use large-scale machinery and hazardous chemicals, such as fabrication (568), manufacturing (2,701) and plastics (775). By comparison, only 262 violations have been issued for companies with names containing “beer,” “brewing,” or “brewery.”
But the numbers tell little about the hazards of working in beer, where getting hurt is not only commonplace, but expected by many. In an industry where human resources, health insurance, and safety training are sparse, the true impact of workplace injuries is difficult to measure—beyond the scars that most brewers wear on their bodies.
WHY IT MATTERS
There’s more at stake than mere fines, and without reliable, consistent reporting, it’s impossible to know the true cost of getting injured for a brewery. Even though grievous injuries and big fines sometimes make national headlines, the public is largely unaware of the inherent danger in making beer.
That danger pervades every step of the process—from the people boiling wort to the companies providing the raw materials. Since December 2017, Briess has been cited in seven different inspections, most recently in 2019, including an event where a worker was sprayed with boiling water, sustaining second- and third-degree burns. In 2021, an employee cleaning an auger gashed his hand, resulting in three fractured fingers, two popped tendons, and nerve damage.
Things can be just as serious when making beer, which is why, every year, Teri Fahrendorf shares the same story on her social media and in online beer forums.
In 1989, the 29-year-old Fahrendorf had been brewing at California’s Golden Gate Brewing Company for four months when an improperly measured batch boiled over, flooding the brew floor with 50 gallons of scalding liquid. She was trapped between the kettle and a staircase, but she was able to escape from the 200-degree deluge by slipping through the bars of a handrail and up the steps out of the brewhouse. The damage was done, though. Her left boot had been filled with boiling water, and when she pulled her leg out, the skin was falling down in weeping bulges.
Fahrendorf was hospitalized for a month with burns on 11% of her body. It took a skin graft from her own scalp, but Fahrendorf was able to recover and resume brewing. She didn’t want to dwell on the injury, fearing it would make her look weak. It wasn’t until 2001 that her friend Bill Owens, a writer for American Brewer, convinced her to write about her experience in the magazine.
“I was determined that no one would know that I had an accident unless I chose to tell them,” Fahrendorf says. “Sometimes, you get a choice in life to be a victor or a victim. I definitely wanted to choose to be a victor.”
Fahrendorf went on to work at three other breweries through the early 2000s before founding the advocacy group Pink Boots Society in 2007. She worked at Great Western Malting as the company’s malt innovation center manager until March 2022. Now, Fahrendorf is full-time ceramicist, staying involved in the beer world through the Pink Boots Society and beer judging. On May 1, her “burn anniversary,” Fahrendorf reposts the account she originally wrote for American Brewer to help her colleagues understand how easily they could’ve been in her place.
Many brewers injured today have similarly long hospital stays or time out of work, according to BLS stats. For most of the past decade, the most-reported number of days out of work was 31 or more. Stints between three-to-five days or six-to-10 days were second.
Fahrendorf shares her story not to solicit sympathy but to demonstrate how widespread accidents like this are in beer. The media has covered a few high-profile injuries in recent years, including tragedies like a Stone Brewing employee killed in 2013, severe burns suffered by a brewer at Idaho’s Edge Brewing Co. in 2015, and another accidental burning at Minnesota’s Summit Brewing Company that resulted in a $56 million settlement handed out last year. Even the most experienced, well-respected brewers like Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver have scars—though widespread discussion is still an exception and not the rule.
“I feel like I’m doing a good service by getting the word out there,” Fahrendorf says. “If this helps one person to avoid what I had to go through, then it’s absolutely worth it.”
What’s at stake is the “hidden cost” of brewing, notes Van Havig, master brewer of Oregon’s Gigantic Brewing Company. Havig says back pain, aching shoulders, chemical burns, or damaged hands are generally accepted as everyday matters in the brewhouse. Injuries to a person’s shoulders, arms, hands, or wrists are also the most common area for injury, per the BLS, and “sprains, strains, or tears” were the most reported type of injury. But for Havig, it’s the “reported” part that matters.
“If you want to find brewers with injuries, just go find someone who’s been in a brewery for more than a couple years,” he says.
Havig has worked as a professional brewer for nearly three decades, and for 28 years, he’s dealt with trigger finger in both his hands, a tendon injury he developed from lifting kegs. To this day, he can’t grip a bowling ball because of it. He says the injury was unfortunate—and probably unavoidable over a career—but adds that it’s simply part of a “blue collar” job. Repetitive stress is going to wear you down, regardless of how many violations are reported. Havig’s experience connects to the broader issue among reported cases—beer looks like a safety success on paper, compared to other manufacturing roles. Real life is different.
“Beer doesn’t make itself,” Havig says. “Injuries are inevitable, but if you have a good safety culture, you’re trying to keep those injuries to the point where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m sorry, that happened. That sucks. We can come back.’”
According to U.S. law, companies with fewer than 10 employees aren’t required to keep a record of work-related injuries and illnesses unless they result in in-patient hospitalization, amputation, loss of an eye, or fatality. While exact staffing counts aren’t readily available, many of the country’s small breweries may fit into this category.
“We all romanticize brewing, but it’s an extremely dangerous profession, this can’t be repeated enough,” says David Berg, brewer at Schell’s Brewery, a 27-year veteran of the industry. “Truth be told, I probably got lucky many times and managed not to seriously injure myself. I have many friends that aren’t that lucky.”
Berg points to the fact that as a male-dominated industry, beer may suffer from toxic masculinity—men may feel like they don’t need to ask for help when overexerting, and can end up doing things “that are absolutely ruining their bodies.” This can run a range of instances, he says, like over-lifting, taking longer shifts without breaks, and handling toxic inhalants without using masks or goggles. These are all examples Berg says he has witnessed over his career.
Havig also cites brewing’s “tough guy” culture as a reason for underreporting. He says brewers will brush off paperwork to avoid looking weak or unreliable. “You might tell someone, but it’s not gonna change anything for you, the worker,” he adds.
That said, Havig has filed standard OSHA reports required of his 27-person company. Berg has made reports to Schell’s HR, though he says he’s never been injured seriously enough “to miss work.”
“I'm not really sure that reporting injuries, although they should all be reported, will accomplish much in terms of protecting brewers,” Havig says. “HR departments aren’t actually there for this sort of thing, they just fill out the workers’ comp claim and make sure it’s followed. OSHA is there to penalize, they have little interest in actually helping.”
Havig and Berg represent only two voices from those who work at the almost 9,000 American craft breweries, and their attitudes around regulatory agencies, trade organizations, and HR don’t necessarily represent the attitude of all brewers. But their long-tenured experience speaks to a persistent distrust.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported concurring evidence when it surveyed Colorado breweries in 2012, finding that, “Employees felt the issues would either not be addressed by the employer or that reporting would result in a negative outcome, such as disciplinary action.”
But that hasn’t stopped organizations like the Brewers Association (BA) from investing more and more into education about workplace safety and injury prevention. Since 2019, Steve Finnie has given a seminar at the annual Craft Brewers Conference titled The Ergonomics of Brewing: Avoiding Injury and Staying the Course in the Brewery. Along with being co-owner of Minnesota’s Little Thistle Brewing, he’s also a Mayo Clinic-trained physiotherapist. In each presentation, he provides brewery staff with exercise and ergonomic tips that can help prevent injury.
“The presentations I’ve done have been guided towards anyone with a limited budget on what they can do on a shoestring,” he says. “I’m not really sure what the answer is, but the BA are trying to do the best they can to provide wonderful resources.”
The concepts that Finnie teaches—like lifting techniques and preventative stretching—might’ve been scoffed at in Berg or Havig’s rookie years, but now they make up the practical foundation of the organization’s growing safety library, which includes 159 training and educational resources added since the BA established a Safety Subcommittee in 2013. There will be five safety-focused seminars at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference that include information to help staff avoid electric shocks, heat disorders, and kettle boilovers, like the one that injured Fahrendorf years ago
Chuck Skypeck, technical brewing projects director at the BA, has seen how some brewers bristle against its preaching about safety. But nonetheless, about 17,500 people from production breweries have passed the organization’s online brewing safety course since it was introduced in 2014, making it among the BA’s most-used resource, according to Skypeck. The BA has also allied with OSHA offices in Colorado, Massachusetts, Ohio, and, recently, New York to provide informational resources, guidance, and training to BA members. Skypeck admits that relying on only reported data provides an incomplete picture, but it still looks like progress to him.
“It’s an uphill battle,” Skypeck says. “We’re still growing, and the industry is still growing, even if it’s not as fast as it once was.”
The effort, however, is one that can truly never be completed. There’s no future where the number of injuries—reported or otherwise—dwindles to zero, and there are always new employees onboarding without experiences that could help them prevent injury. But progress is incremental, and despite some earnest grumbling, Skypeck says things are improving.
“Even if we managed to convince only one [person] that safety was important, we might have prevented an injury there,” Skypeck says. “I think we’ve changed people’s minds. A lot of stuff that we preach is doing hazard analysis, developing [standard operating procedures], and training people, and we see more and more people doing that.”
Words by Jerard Fagerberg