Megan Hanley
Able Baker Brewing | Las Vegas, NV
April 2026
Megan Hanley wasn’t always interested in beer. A California native, Hanley moved to Monterey when she was 18 and started working at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., first starting as a server, and eventually made her way up to a supervisor. During her free time, she would go to Alvarado Street Brewing, where she explored different styles of beer. Her interest turned into day trips to San Francisco breweries, which further sparked her interest in how beers develop their different flavors. During the pandemic, she started working at Home Depot while simultaneously calling local breweries to try to kickstart a career in beer. But Hanley did not have brewing experience, and realized practical skills were what breweries were looking for. She got a job with a draft-line cleaning service and went to different restaurants cleaning tap lines and kegs. So, when she applied to work at Kelly Brewing Company in Morgan Hill, she finally got her foot in the door—first cleaning lines, and then as an assistant brewer. There, Brewer Ross Kelly taught her open-fermentation brewing and the importance of closely following the numbers and data.
She moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and cold-emailed every brewer in town for a job, and Brewer Joe Cuozzo at HUDL Brewing Company was the only to respond. They didn’t have an opening, but he invited her over for a beer. Hanley worked as a beertender at Beer Zombies before Cuozzo called Hanley to let her know there was an opening. She started as a cellarman in 2023 for around six months before she joined the team as a brewer. From Cuozzo, Hanley learned closed fermentation and how to rely on her intuition, not just the data, while brewing. In September 2025, Hanley joined Bad Beat Brewing as head brewer, adjusting and perfecting existing recipes while creating her own like the Cloudy Daze hazy IPA. She now works at Able Baker Brewery, where she’ll collaborate with and learn from a team of eight brewers, and soon create her own recipes there.
