Annie Johnson is an award-winning brewer who won the prestigious American Homebrewers Associations' Homebrewer of the Year award in 2013, becoming the first woman in thirty years, and the first African American person ever to ever win the award. In 2012, she won Pilsner Urquell's Master Homebrewer Competition held in San Francisco, where Master Brewer Vaclav Berka said the beer tasted like he was home. After an extensive career with the California State Legislature she began working for PicoBrew, a product development company in Seattle, WA that specializes in automated brewing equipment. In addition to that work, she is a Nationally ranked judge for the Beer Judge Certification Program as well as serving proctoring and grading exams. Shortly after she had heard about winning the AHA 2013 award she quickly accepted her job offer to be part of PicoBrew’s recipe developer and Pink Boots Society which promotes women as beer professionals in the beer industry. Johnson now considers herself as an old-school classic brewer.
Biography
Born in Germany, Johnson was exposed early as a child to beer and food culture in Europe. Her birth mother Colette, an Irish immigrant, met Johnson’s father who was an African-American soldier stationed in Germany. Colette worked as a housemaid in Germany. Colette, pregnant with Johnson, feared religious repercussions returning to her Irish-Catholic family in Ireland. Colette made the decision to put Johnson up for adoption before she returned to Ireland. Johnson had been adopted by Collette’s employers, the Johnsons, at four days old. Johnson’s adoptive parents worked for the U.S Department of Defence which required traveling across Europe. Johnson traveled the world exploring various beer and food cultures which inspired Johnson to start home-brewing when she moved to the United States. Johnson was particularly fascinated with her adoptive mother’s beer stein collection which complemented the thriving European brewing scene. In 1999, Johnson and her friends bought a home-brewing kit while living in Oakland, CA. Johnson experimented with American Lagers, Czech Pils, and American IPAs. Johnson fell in love with home-brewing while her friends viewed home-brewing as a hobby. Johnson’s friends moved to Delaware, but left all the home-brewing equipment with Johnson which allowed her to keep brewing. Johnson continued to brew on her own while also entering various brewing competitions in California. Johnson’s first win came in 2001 when she entered The California State Fair homebrew competition with an American Amber Ale. Just prior to winning the National Homebrewer of the Year Award in 2013, Johnson relocated to Philadelphia where she attempted to reconnect with her birth father. Shortly after, she became very ill. After series of tests, she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease. With a low expectation of winning, Johnson won the National Homebrewer of the Year award in 2013. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Seattle to start a new career for PicoBrew. Johnson stands as PicoBrew’s head brewmaster today.
Professional history
Annie Johnson’s history includes working as an Information Technology Specialist with the Office of Legislative Counsel, State of California, where she spent over seventeen years, ranging from May of 1994 to August of 2011. Following her departure from her position with the State of California, as well as leaving California itself, Johnson became the Director and Brewmaster of PicoBrew, a Seattle based company that produces brewing equipment to make homebrewing easier and more accessible to the common man, as well as producing different recipes that get uploaded to the digital library that the PicoBrew equipment -such as the Zymatic home brewing system- and anyone who owns it has access to. Also following her relocation to Seattle, Johnson started working as the Brewmaster for the Bluebird Microcreamery and Brewer, which is a brewery/ice cream shop that specializes in dessert beers. Respectively, Johnson has been with the companies from January 2014 and August 2016 to present.
Notable accomplishments
As her first big success in the brewing industry, in 2001 Annie entered in the California State Fair as her first big competition and ended up winning first place with her American Amber Ale. -Later in 2014 she shares her recipes for winning the 2001 California State Fair publicly.
In 2004 Johnson was awarded with the Queen of Beer award. Here she had won four first place categories specifically as best in show.
In 2012 Johnson entered and won the Pilsner Urquell’s Master Homebrewer located in San Francisco, California.
As 2013’s National Homebrewer of the Year, Annie won this prestigious award against the 8,200 beers entered in the competition, with her Lite American Lager and Mow the Dam Lawn brews.
Annie Johnson serves as a national beer judge and also has contributed many recipes to PicoBrew’s library.
