E235 Katie Black

This week's guest is Katie Black. He joins us from Austin, Texas. Katie is a seasoned industry pro who specializes in defense planning, distilling, and R&D. In our interview with Katie, we talk about her experiences growing up in Texas, particularly Wichita Falls.

Katie discusses her early jobs in the service industry, working in chain restaurants and steak houses. We talk about Katie's passion for her theater and music and how this led to her moving cross country to attend college, her eventual pivot into the service industry full time, and Katie's deep dive into gastronomy and distilling. We also talk about her appearances on the TV show, Moon Shiners, Master Distiller, as well as What's Next for her career, as well as a host of other topics as always. To see what Katie's up to next, you can follow her on Instagram at probablyKB or check the show notes as always for all the links.

Enjoy the show. Welcome back to another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kit. This is Dan.

What's going on? Not too much next, yourself. Same ship, different week? Yeah.

I'm going to start to a lovely work week. So yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff as always for you.

But the weather's nice and hot. And you get to watch it from your window. Yeah, it's like being in prison. I should have a scenario where I work from home all the time.

It is kind of like, you know, obviously, you know, it's not going to be a wine. You just don't have that change of leaving the house all the time. Yeah. And also.

You got to kind of give yourself reasons to get out of the house. Totally. So a good thing that liquor stores walking distance. So that's a good excuse to get out.

Perfect. And with many bars along the way to liquor stores. So it works so well. Yeah, I'll tell you through it.

Yeah. We have a great guest as usual. Before we get to her, we should mention that if you like what we're doing here on the industry podcast, the best way to help us out is to subscribe, follow, rate, review, or just tell a friend. Yeah.

It's easy thing to do. Just tell one other person. That takes about a minute tops to tell them where you can find us. And it's going to wait to spread the word of the podcast and show the stories that we have to tell.

And you have them. Many of them. And yeah, if you'd like to be a guest on the show, or if you'd like to provide support for the show, the easiest way to do that is to email us directly info at the industry podcast club, or you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram. That's where you find the great artwork from zakana at zakana.co.

I should also mention if you are in the Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge area, you should come check out my bar. It's sugar run downtown Kitchener. At sugar run bar and it's going on there. If you are interested in wine and or spirits for your restaurant bar or just your home, it's kip at Babylon Sisters.ca, kypp at Babylon Sisters.ca.

That is Wine from Malaguar, Winery and Terroir imports, and also Spirits from a Lord is Dilling Company. So check that out. What else? What else?

You should check out our friend Alkamis Ali at alkamis.ali on Instagram. She does well. She does it all. She will do cocktail classes.

She will do events at your home or business. Yeah. Or if you're throwing a rent at a hall and you have a bartender at some bar service, Alis, your girls will help you out. Or you're having a wedding anniversary birthday party just to get together, something like that.

She can definitely assist. If you cry her assistance with a bar program perhaps, you're running a bar itself. Give her a shout out to alkamis.ali on our show notes, as always. Yeah, consulting, training, anything else you need.

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Download the app today. You won't be disappointed. I think that's about all we need to talk about, which is great with that. I would agree.

Great. Let's move on. Do I guess joining us today from Austin, Texas, it is Katie Black. Katie, how are you?

I'm doing great. How are you guys? We're all right. Yeah, very well.

Thank you very much for joining us on this lovely Monday. I hope it's fine weather down where you were as well. Yeah, I think it might be our last cool day of the week. I think we have the 100th weekend tomorrow, actually.

I'm enjoying my shady day. Nice. So you grew up in Austin, correct? Yeah, born and raised in Texas.

I went in Austin. My parents are from here, but I also spent time in North Texas as well. And a small, little town called Ritzchall Falls. So got the best of both sides of Texas that people don't necessarily always get exposed to.

So I had our version of city life here, as well as very agriculture and oil filled heavy. So a little bit of everything. Yeah. So what's the scene in Texas?

In general, you're growing up there. You mentioned in your bio that you sent a little bit about the Friday night lights situation in Texas. So high school football is obviously still huge there. High school football is massive here culturally, but specifically in different regions.

Ritzchall Falls is now a bigger town than it was, or I guess, technically it classifies that when I was growing up there in high school, every year we went to state we were four a five a day. Now they're probably closer to five a six a, which is the biggest division you can get in Texas. It's a huge cultural, like I said, part of upbringing here. What you see in Friday night lights on the movie or TV show is very much what Texas football culture was, as well where I was at too in North Texas.

It's very much a way of life. Everything in town shuts down for it. I grew up to your living, just a very, very straightforward Texas upbringing as a female I had. I mean, JT Barrett's a great name to come out of it.

Ohio State JT Barrett went to high school with me. We had a ton of guys get drafted into the NFL at different times. Soccer, just athletics in general was really, really massive baseball soccer. Everybody kind of went it away out, so you had a couple of ways to do that.

Scholarships with college, join the military, or stay in town and try to make something of yourself there. So I found myself definitely itching to get away, but yeah, athletics definitely kept it interesting. So when did you get your first job in the service industry? Was that when you were still in high school or after?

So I did a lot of hospitality stuff prior, but my most memorable times would have been in different like chain state houses. It was really kind of coming up the ages to work at Texas Roadhouse back in the day, or what I'm gonna stay house up in which all of where I graduated, we didn't have a lot. Our food and beverage scene, even to this day, I questioned still a little bit behind on the times just because of where it's located. So we had a lot of chain restaurants and a few mom and pops, but for the most part, when we would go out to eat, it was all the garden for Italian, the state houses or another small catfish parlor area.

I didn't have a lot of different cuisines until I was well out of town, to say the least. So yeah, kind of started doing that, shots and beer in Texas, the culture, especially back then with bartending, or anything related on that side was you had to earn your keep. So you were gonna start serving if you ever wanted to bartend. Nobody was able to walk into that position.

Very different from other places that I've lived. And that was kind of how it all started for me, but because of how my life panned out after high school and some of the choices that I had made, but also just within my relationship, I was moving every two years, give or take, anywhere in the country or around the world was on the map. So I didn't have a lot of time to hold down a long-term job. If you look at my resume and you know nothing about me, you're like, what is going on with this trick?

But I'm so transparency, it's because we were getting stationed in different places and trying to get your time in place was really difficult for me. And I always found that front of house and house hoteli food and beverage was the one backbone I could rely on no matter where I was. Of course, anybody that does this knows that in the back of your pocket at any point in time, you'll probably be back behind your bar. If you left, you'll probably end up boomeranging yourself in.

I always talk about how it's such a beautiful relationship that not everybody gets to be a part of, but also can become toxic depending on where you fall into those things. And it's a relationship that I've continually come back to in different parts of my life. Good and bad. And it ended up really taking a full spectrum formula later living in Europe.

And now I can't see myself doing anything else. Yeah, so before we get to that, you did have a little strange detour where you moved into Jersey for film school? So I'm about to be 32 if you told me at 18 that I would do anything else besides theater. You told me at 20 probably.

I still would have, I think anyone that knew me in that time of my life all the way up until my 20s would have agreed with me that there was nothing else I had my eyes set on. My entire life, extracurricular is a very huge part, but theater and music were the complete constant. From third grade, I want to say, all the way through high school. It's the one thing that I wouldn't give up.

And it actually got me a full rights scholarship in the college. So rolling back to trying to get out of this small town, I would go to Nebraska every year in the summer and do theater workshops. We call them theistians like if you're into that. And my junior year, coming out of my junior year into my senior year, we had the opportunity to pick two incoming seniors from any high school to audition for a multitude of colleges at one time.

So me and another girl I went to high school with were interested and that kind of changed that whole projection for me. I got a few different offers, but New Jersey being right outside of the city was what made the most sense to me. Was like, if we're going to go all in, let's get out of Texas, let's go do the damn thing. And at 18 being from such a different cultural area in the country, I had that typical big New York city, concrete jungle dream.

And that's how I ended up in New Jersey for a little bit. What was the name of the school? It's fairly Dickinson. So I could have never afforded this.

My family could not have either is a private liberal arts college. So there's two campuses. I went to the liberal arts side. And it's crazy small.

I was able to finagle more scholarships than I got into an honors society. So I didn't even have the typical freshman dorm experience. I ended up in an honors dorm and very interesting time in my life. But also, everybody was really disappointed that I was the only one coming out of Texas.

And I didn't sound like Sandy from SpongeBob. So a lot of new norms for I think all of us. So did you finish the program? I did not.

I actually did a never say never at this time. And I actually got married within that first year of college. My ex has been in the military. So that kind of really played a part later on.

And a lot of what I know I'm grateful for in my life experience. We got engaged before I went to college. And he deployed to Afghanistan. And I was like, I'm going to go do my own thing.

See you and get back. But Hurricane Sandy actually hit that first year. And I was sending him off to unemployment. So I got my dean to sign off on my midterms.

Then I got stuck in Texas for two months. So I decided to withdraw out of the program because at that point I was going to fail out and being on scholarship, I wasn't able to do it. And that rolled me into working in hotels and back to service industry again to get back to college in the South. And rolled me into dental school.

I feel like I'm just somebody who can't pinpoint what she wants to do. So I'm really loving that. And that was my career through the rest of that chapter with my ex. And you know, and Trump continued to fight like, kept finding service industry jobs to do on the side.

So how did you decide on going to dental school? You know, because it's such an opposite side of like from everything you're doing. Yeah. Yeah.

So very interesting time for me to be around a ton of military spouses who also were like, what are we doing? I had a career. I worked at a tanning salon. That was one of my jobs.

Very Texas culture as well back in the day. And my boss also, formerly military spouse was enrolling in this dental program. And I was like, well, I like learning about new stuff. How have you been I pick up?

What is this? And I started thinking about what I wanted to do career wise because at this point, I was still in school. I liked doing service industry, but I really wanted to have my own identity. And I felt like after I left college the first time and also being associated with somebody whose career always had to be the dominant factor.

I was like, I just want to do more. I'm in, I'm 21 at this point, maybe I'm 20, 20, 21 at this point. And it was so hands on and so nerdy and really important to me because my parents and my sister are all diabetics. So I watched a lot of health declining within their dental part of their life.

And I remember watching my parents growing up lose a lot of confidence based on not feeling great within their smile. And so when I started thinking about what I wanted to do and I had, you know, talked more with my coworker about her career path in this program, I was like, that's kind of great. Like maybe I'll dive into dental school because I love serving people. I'm passionate about wanting to make people feel good.

And this kind of fits everything. I can move with this job. I can transfer when I need to. I can also give back to people in a way that's beyond anything you could have imagined.

So that was really enough for me to lean into it. Yeah. And I loved it. I loved it at the time.

I wanted to go to dental school to be kind of a benefit before my life took another 180. So it definitely, I mean, I got a fly to flash chat to you. I got a month ago and it happened to have a string of teeth. I would have never gotten this on my own, but I would have wanted to do my cast.

Nice. And then so at some point you pivot back into service industry and there's like period where you were in Germany? Yes. So with that, we got stationed in Germany.

I couldn't get a job to save my life. It was so hard. Oh, we need to say. We didn't French for it.

But the base there. We were so he was army. So we were in Bavaria. We were not at the Air Force base.

That was I which tells us that Air Force town Air Force gets the good stuff. We were on the opposite side of the country in a small village called Vilsec, Vilsec Grafenbir. It's a joint base with the German military. So within that contract of us being stationed there, the US had to agree to hire at that point.

I think it was 80 to 90% of local nationals. So the majority of employees on the military base as government workers had to be Germans and citizens, which I actually think is fantastic. It made it hard for dependents and spouses to get jobs. But I think it's so much more important that we serve the community in which we're present in any form.

So at some point I was volunteering to do dental work at the American Red Cross and I hated it. It was the worst experience I've ever had. And yeah, so I just ended up working for the government for the time being. I was able to get a contracting job and just kind of keep my feet on the ground until I left.

But culturally my time away from the military base, my time traveling and exploring shaped you know what I had told you with gastronomy and this relationship culturally of beverage and food and in the wise, I grew up here where we just pick up a beer to pick up a beer and celebrate. But craft beverage at the time of my upbringing, if US people bought craft beer in New York, Texas, you might start at the end of the blue in this craft beer. You know, it's very different and being in a small village in Germany where beverage was keen. Everyone had their own recipe and it was generations passed down.

Is the whole reason why I got alcohol production and you know this whole chapter of my life just because I happened to sit down with all these random Germans and talk to them about their life and those random people became my really, really life long friends. So, so yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. So you obviously get a love for the whole idea of gastronomy and distilling, etc. And then how is it that you eventually sort of bring that into your professional life?

Yeah, so the curiosity really bit me and we were coming up on the end of that duty station, but we were also coming up in the end of our relationship. So I had a lot to process at the time and I applied to a couple schools for fermentation sciences, landed on North Carolina as a huge area for beer for just all these crafts, but specifically beer and never looked back at that point. I needed a year to kind of get back on my feet after that. So I moved in with my friend in Washington State where she's from.

Just to see if the culture was more of the vibe that I want to get into wine and saved up money, moved to North Carolina, never enrolled in my program and started working at breweries, making beer at home, learning more about the craft from anybody that would give me time of day. And yeah, I think life just at that point, I thought could never challenge me more than it had in every year from the time that I left Germany up until probably this year. It's been a curveball of personal experiences that have absolutely shaped the way that I look at everything that I do. And I think there were a lot of roadblocks at times that were telling me not to do it.

If I'm being honest, now that I'm kind of getting away from it again, but I just kept persevering and ended up enrolling again in school in 2020. Don't recommend if we ever hit a pandemic, I will never go back to school. I thought that was a great time. Yeah.

So you're talking a little bit about potentially getting into the culture and but you chose the sort of brewing side instead, but you're also obviously interested in the stealing process. So I think that's the commonality between those three processes and how are they different? Yeah, that's a great question. So I actually ended up somehow managing to I call them the four points, cider wine distilling and beer.

I got to end up doing all of them, which is fantastic. What's great about fermentation as a practice is everything has a linear crossover, whether that's sanitation or aging styles, yeast experience. When people in distilling Asiabot beer or on the flip side, people in beer as we go out distilling. I'm a better brewer because I'm a good distiller and I'm a better distiller because I'm a good brewer.

I'm such a cohesive relationship, but where it gets easy, you know when people talk about skiing and snowboarding and one is easier to learn, one is easier to master. Same thing with beer. Beer is a quicker turnaround. Your faults come out a lot sooner.

There's a lot less money down the drain. And ultimately a lot more people can master beer. When it comes to distilling, you can kind of toss a lot more into a situation and it will probably benefit you in the short term. But in the long term, there's so many nuances about what makes a fantastic distiller where they're at, but also when it comes into the blending process and the wood aging and the chemistry that goes into that more so.

So I always say brewing sanitation is harder to get down in the practices in which make it more efficient at the beginning, but it's easier to master distilling. I would argue is the opposite. Interesting. So you also at some point ended up on this show, Master Distiller as I was called.

I'm not familiar with the show. So Master Distiller. Yes, MoonShiners. Tell us about that, Paul.

How did you get hooked up with that? And what was the process like? I don't even tell me the concept of the show, but I'm assuming it's similar to like a top chef or drink master's type show, competition show? Is that basically what it is?

Yes, it is just in a shorter format. So on discovery for the last decade plus, there's a show called MoonShiners. They followed a lot of legendary moonshine, just prophecies essentially, a lot of them in the past and most recent years in the Appalachian Mountains, crossing through Georgia all the way up to the Virginias. And from there, some of those guys that were doing backwards moonshining became legal distillers within that time.

And through that, decided they wanted to start a spin off series called MoonShiners, Master Distiller. It essentially brings in people from two different walks of life, whether that be a legal professional distiller or an at home slash backwards distiller. And they toss you into different challenges to see who is going to deliver, but they also give you no tools. So there's benefits to having both guys of experience, but I don't have a thermometer outside of my still.

I don't have usually I don't have access to a lot of stuff that I'm using. I'm told I'm using. I don't have a refractometer or a hydrometer, so I can't check my proof. It is merely based on full-scale science and knowing, like knowing your shit, to be honest, it is a very humbling experience.

How did you get hooked up with that show? Like, how did you have to apply to be on it? Yeah, and it just shows you because based on like what this feeling had you done up to that point that gave you the experience that they thought would work on the show? Yeah.

So it really has only I think I'm season seven. I know COVID kind of it's a half an hour before COVID started, and I had gone to a trade program in Asheville in COVID from 2020 to 2022 before a brewing distillation and fermentation associate of science. So within that we learned honestly everything I can accredit to for the most part. I thought I knew a lot by reading and learning.

This program is fantastic, and I will argue it's the best in the country. It now has more competitors who have started to branch off and do their own programs. But within that I chose a distillation and persist because legally it's a lot harder to do that on your own. It's also not a safe.

It's a process to brewing. Let's dive into distillation. So for two years I studied distillation, the entire chemistry, lab work, everything you can think of that happens in a major facility. We had to completely learn.

And my thesis program went fantastic throughout the end of that program, my director, Jeff Irwin. He ended up calling me and sent out an email to all of the graduating class, basically being like, we have this opportunity. They've reached out to our program because I know we're located here, apply if you want to. So I applied when I was working at consulting at Massachusetts that year, and they give like no heads up so they asked if I could be available within a week.

And it was the week I was moving back to North Carolina. So thanks, but no things can have to pass on this. And fast forward two years later, it was divine timing. It was their first year of filming in Asheville.

I was back in Asheville and worked out perfectly. So I came on and filmed last summer and then pretty much had to be quiet about it until it premiered back in February. So how long was the filming sessions? Like were they several weeks or?

So they film the entire season within about a month, which is to give or take 18 to 20 hour days for them. Because of the way it's formatted, it's not as intricate as Drink Masters, for example. It is one episode per challenge. So my episode was about four full days of filming, 18 hour days in the heat of summer, but also in a studio like room.

So imagine having a house in the way of conditioning on in a small room and you turn on a gas oven and you leave it running all day. That was my. And what was like the challenge? So they tell you to steal a certain type of liquor or just to describe to us exactly what you're supposed to be doing.

Yeah. So every episode of the different challenge, mind specifically, the only context we were given for my episode was you need to bring a sugar source, bring it east. You're going to firm it for about, I think it was three to five days. And the first challenge is who can make the highest, who can get the highest alcohol percentage of the time.

So at that point, I was like, money in the bank. I've been playing with this really fun, non-traditional East and the brewing side. I'm going to bring it in. I'm going to bring it in here and I'm going to see if this works out.

I ended up, I don't know, do we want spoilers? Yeah, I think we can do it. Yeah. Like we'll just say, if anyone's listening to this right now and wants to watch this episode before they find out what happens, stop listening now, come back and listen.

Come back and listen to the rest once you watch the episode. How's that? I'm like, I don't know, maybe, ended up winning that challenge by the inside. And I really full circle the credit that to the education that I got.

A lot of people really looked down on the idea of getting a formal education within alcohol production. I think to each of them, I don't think there's a right or wrong way to be these things, but there's been more times than not within my career that all of those instances not only set me apart to be able to have a place in that conversation, but also challenges me continually to be better and to do better. And that was fantastic. We had to do a bait booze challenge, I think is what they titled it.

They gave us pastries, essentially, of all different styles. And depending on how we lined up our random straw, I think we did a straw test. There's a lot of something that don't show you because obviously they can't fit it into 40 minutes. That dictated the next challenge.

And then from there, you got choice of still pick. So I ended up getting in the final two out of that, two out of three, did my final choice, and then we had to make that into a sip and cream. So you also play into pH and emversions and a lot of things that go into also bartending with balance and acidity. So that actually was really fun for me because a lot of my bartending practices, a lot of infusions and a lot of things that we would do on the fly helped me within the challenge that we had at the end.

So, we'll see. I know that's a quick question. The sipping cream. What would that be like?

So like a Bailey's. Oh, like a Bailey's sipping. I don't know about sipping. I don't know about drinking.

I'm really faking. You're drinking chocolate. That's a super fast, seemingly possible. That's great.

Makes it really off my coffee. Yeah, they've re-marketed it. I definitely had a time in my life where I was definitely putting a Bailey's in my cereal. Good for you.

Yeah. I mean, it tastes fantastic. And now it's flash forward a decade and a half later, people are, you know, milk washing, with cereal and all kinds of things. We were just ahead of our time, you know?

How did you enjoy the overall process of the filming, though? Do you like, I'm sure there were, I'm just, we're just interested in this because we have to be, we have interviewed people who were on the bar message show, but like, they couldn't tell us a whole bunch about it because of Netflix, because of Netflix. But what parts of the filming process did you enjoy? What parts did you find challenging?

What parts did you find annoying? Yeah. Great question. I'm really different to the producers now.

So I'll say I'm good. I know if not, you know? The filming was pretty fun. I mean, with anything, I think just because of my theater background and film background, it was a very natural.

Yeah, it's probably easier for you than other people on that part, right? Sorry, not to interrupt you, but like, yeah, you came from a theater background. So for the sort of quote unquote on stage part of that show, you know, that's your world. Yeah.

It was probably a little bit more difficult for some of the other people on that background. It was very interesting because I mean, mind you, we're in, I'll set up the stage for you, the pen intended. We're inside of a distillery itself. So then we have studios in there.

There's multiple shows filming at the same time. So sometimes they're like screaming through their headphones, like, tell your cast to like, stop blending their sipping cream. There's something going on next to where, because there's just walls between us. So there's so much heat radiating.

And I think, you know, I can't speak for anybody else besides my own experience, of course, but because I'm used to stage lights, I'm used to the heat that that radiates off of not putting on a ton of me. I don't think I wore any makeup that entire filming because I'd watched the show long enough to know that I was going to be sweating my life out in pretty much detoxing in entire years worth of like Monster Alistair's Sticks. If you watch it, you'll see you can tell when it got hot for us because we were sweating sometimes. People were drinking a little too much wind shine, but for the most part, it actually is the heat that's making everybody just completely flushed.

I think a lot of people have a misconception that this show is staged. Obviously certain things are lined up because it is made to be a challenge. Any game show you're on, guys grocery games, et cetera, et cetera. You know, there are cut points where like, hey, we didn't have a camera catch that.

That was really great when we did, you know, that is more of like how they direct this kind of stuff. It's not, we don't have a script for reading whatsoever. What you see is what you get. And 95% of the time the cameras were just rolling and we were yapping.

Really fortunate. They really enjoyed our episode. So they put us towards the end of the season. I think we were the second to last episode.

Jason, this guy that I competed with, he is such a character. Huge, no hawk, like glued up to, I don't see it. It's massive. He's just, he looks a certain way and acts another.

And I think people have a misconception of the kind of person who is based on how he presents himself. But he taught me so much. And I think that's a huge part of the song that you probably get on any, any show. If you're able to get away from a competition and enjoy being in the moment and the experience that you're actually getting, you're going to learn a lot more.

And I did see that happen a lot with other competitors. I took it a little too seriously and it ended up biting them in the butt in the long run. And I think you can even say this thing happens within cocktail competitions too that I see. Find not balanced.

Find not balanced and fun and competition that's healthy for you. But also show up and authentically continue to be yourself. I know Megan Webby was on here recently. She's a good friend of mine.

She talks that that's a huge part of her bartending and her component. And I think within, you know, if you have the opportunity to do a TV show or a competition series, it's huge. I think the one thing that I would have wanted more of is just more time. If I get the opportunity to go back, I'm absolutely, I poke them all the time.

I'm like, bring me back. I want a redemption episode, which they do sometimes. So hopefully I'll have it to go back and redeem myself. Well, redeem, but you sound like you did pretty well.

I, in my eyes, I won. But I did not leave the winner. Gotcha. Okay.

So a little redemption still to be had. And so before we start recording, we kind of talked about, like, you might have some upcoming projects that you're not sure about yet. So we don't want to get too in depth into that. But like, do you plan on staying in the world of distilling and brewing or you wanted different things now?

Yeah. I'm glad that you brought that up because I'm sure a lot of people question what the hell I'm doing. Fair. I'm glad that you really have a fellow to replace.

I decided when I left North Carolina last year that in order to make career moves, I needed to just completely cut the umbilical cord. I had gone to a point where when I started brewing distilling professionally almost six, seven years ago, I wanted nothing more than to own my own space at one time. I couldn't see anything else less than that. And because of COVID and just my job experiences working within the different facets, I ended up being on a lot of consulting projects or opening team projects, which was fantastic.

I couldn't have asked for a better experience. But within that time, I not only was humbled deeply. I found out I did not want my own brewery. I did not want my own distillery.

I really enjoyed building other people's dreams, but realized in that time that mine was no longer there. And last year, I hit a ceiling that I think an everything new was coming. I could continue to learn. Of course, I think there's always room for learning, but when it came to career growth, I did everything I wanted to do, which is crazy to me.

I just had some really, like I said, great experiences that would not have come without the pandemic, but also had a lot of people in my corner who knew that I wanted to expand that experience as well. And I went to Camp Runamoc in 20, 20, 22 years ago, to take about to actually go to Camp this week, so two seasons ago. And I knew that I wanted to get back on the bar side, in front of House Hospitality, in some way, shape or form. I had friends that were brain ambassadors for different companies.

You kept being like, hey, you've got formal education, you've got this background. Do you know how to talk to people? Why are you not doing this job? I was like, I'm not ready to leave again.

I have more to do. Jokes on me. Within like six months, I was like, yeah, you're right. I went to camp, talked to a lot of people who now are great friends.

A lot of them have been on your show. And they were really, really huge cheerleaders for me who continue to always be able for questions. But I credit so much of my confidence with imposter syndrome to be able to come into a world that I've not been in for a long time. I've been in a small mountain town doing amazing things on the beverage side of the world.

But when it comes to the bar side, I hadn't been a cocktail competition. I had it worked in a prominent bar. There's a lot of things for me where I was like, I don't know if anyone's going to take me seriously making this transition. And I was so wrong.

I moved back here to Austin in September. And because of my connections at camp, because of my background, people scoops me up and gave me jobs left and right. And I'm so grateful. And because of that, hopefully, hopefully you'll see me behind the brain myself here very soon.

Yeah, having some exciting conversations. Currently, I'm also consulting for a friends' meetery and building a small batch program for them in Marble Falls, which is about an hour's west of here, building a product line that doesn't really exist on the market. So that's been really fun challenge. But I definitely have no interest at this time in my life going back into off-production.

I actually want to get away from it outside of this consulting and lean more into advocacy and education. So that's our amount now. And you've done a whole ton of it though. I mean, especially considering you're still quite young, that's crazy to think that this is part of your career.

You'll be putting on the back burner. And not to say you can't return to it at any point, obviously, but the fact that you've done years and years of this and you're already thinking, okay, I'll do the next thing. That's impressive. What are some of the distilleries and breweries that you worked at that our listeners might know about?

Or what were some of your favorites? Yeah. So I worked twice, actually, with the same brewery. When I was in school, I had to have a three-month internship.

I was about to have to be with a brewery or a distillery, a winery, whatever it might be. And I opened up a pizza shop during COVID. One of the new jobs that I picked up, which was fantastic for me at the time. And I had tossed down, mind you, for context, this is July, August of 2020, nothing's really open yet.

No one knows what I'm going to be doing. I had tossed down probably 20 resumes in person to any brewery I could in Nashville. And if you're not familiar with Asheville, it is called Beer City. It's one of the biggest beer methods in the country and for quality.

Sierra Nevada, New Bell, Gemma, a lot of the main hitters are in that area. And I just got to get my foot in somewhere in here because I'd come down the mountain from another mountain town and ended up at a brewery called Desolver. They were coming from Massachusetts in Boston, working Fortnite, shift in Lord Hoebo, which are also huge names in the beer world. And they took me in for a whole year, taught me a whole hell of a lot, became great friends of mine and offered me a full-time job within that year mark.

And I saw how to year left in school as well. And I remember looking at me in the time, Vince Tersey, fantastic human, and also stupid smart. I looked at him and said, I really love what you're doing. I appreciate your time.

And I know anybody would kill to have this position. I'm not ready to stop my curiosity yet. And within that, that's when I jumped into wine and cider and distilling for the next couple of years. And somehow I went back in his facility three and a half years later to run his wine and cider program alongside his beer program.

So they have a huge place in my heart within my production career. And Ryan is a distiller that I worked for. They are known for Amaro, but specifically Appalachian Amaro. So we did a lot of foraging on the mountain and honed in on different styles of bitters.

Within that, we also cultivated and helped bring back within the college, like agricultural program we brought back a heritage rye that was going extinct. And we're able to make a whiskey from that, as well as a gin and a vodka. Very sharp. So, that was a lot of experience playing with that.

But within that time, I also was in front end, run the bar and distill on the same place at one time, which was not what I was attending at first. But it's one of those things where you start telling people too much and you end up doing too many things. And that's when I applied for camp was when I was working there. But I think that that experience, again, made me a better bartender because we were not legally allowed to use any other distillate than what we were making.

So my entire bar program was only based off our Amaro's that we were making for the most part. And so, I really specifically your components. So it challenged me on the cocktail side of the world to find things that people were interested in drinking. So that was a really fun time.

To consider yourself a restless person by nature or do you think that it's just an inherent curiosity that necessitates the restlessness in your career and life? Both ADHD also plays a role in that for sure. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a family and in an environment where the sky's a limit and was never discouraged from following the things that I wanted to do. And I know some people look at my life or look at my career and I've had people say, you've got to pick something, you have to pick something.

And for me, it's just never going to work. Stagnessy is not something that settles well with me. I think leaning into moments that challenge you are important and keeping that sense of curiosity alive, taking risks. And for me, I think I thrive in the uncomfortable where there's a lot of people thrive in being in a state for space, which is absolutely fine to each his own.

I just don't know anything other than that. So now I am looking for more stability. I'm looking for long-term growth and within the brand and agency side of this world, all of that experience gets to play into one role and I couldn't be more excited to be able to utilize so many chapters of my life. Like, how lucky am I to be able to find that?

I think through all of these different courses, I found more of who I was as a person, which is the most important, a career won't last forever. But my happiness and my person will. And anyone that's listening, that's not ready to make that step or is waiting for that sign. You might not get it.

Sometimes you just have to do it. So yeah, I think that's more of where I'm at in my life. That's good advice to leave this on. Well, we're excited for you because it sounds like no matter what is next for you, it's probably going to work out.

Do you seem to have, definitely, like I said, there's like an inherent curiosity in your nature where you're always into trying the next thing, but you seem to have good instinct that you end up in the right spot. So I'm sure that's going to work out for you next move as well. And thanks so much for joining us, Katie. This was super informative and fun.

Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Can't wait to hopefully chat again when things change.

Yeah. Yeah. You let us know what happens next. And a quick question before you go, if everyone wants to check it all you're up to these days, how can they find you and the social media wise?

Yeah. I've got LinkedIn if you ever need me to help you out with anything or be share. But I am on Instagram. That's probably the best place to keep up with my adventures.

My handle is probably KB. A lot of people call me KB. And I'm not sure if you're going to talk to anyone here, you're going to get Katie Black, or you're going to get KB. Yeah.

And let's connect. If you have questions or are ever curious about trying something new, if I don't know anything about it, I'll find you some of who does. I'll put it right to show notes for everyone. Thanks again, Katie.

Great meeting you. Thank you. Thanks for talking.