Shropshire Star: These girls are for real

While this article focuses on how “real ale” doesn’t seem to appeal to women in the U.K., an awful lot of it is true on this side of the pond as well. I mean, when was the last time you saw a commercial from an American industrial brewer featuring hot men and women with beer bellies?

Having sampled a selection of real ales – including several from the award-winning Hobson’s brewery from Cleobury Mortimer, which topped national polls with its gold star for Hobson’s Mild – all of the women are quick to raise their glasses to toast its taste.

The problem – if there is one – is getting females to try an ale in the first place. And that, perhaps, is where image comes into it.

Historically, ales were served to workers in the fields or in the factories and this liquid lunch was thought to help combat the dust in the work environment. Some workers were even paid, in part at least, in beer.

That earthy image has stuck and many ales still trade on the tradition, placing images on beer bottles of men in flat caps and ploughing the fields.

Recognizing this problem, Harriet Easton from Shrewsbury has begun marketing Rushing Dolls Beer for Girls.

Says Harriet: “I like drinking beer but there was never one for girls. Rushing Dolls tastes a bit different, with a zest of lime – it’s very light and hoppy.”

“Girls are much more into the whole image of it, so that is part of it too.”

Other suggestions for bringing more women “into the fold” is smaller bottles and glasses, and fewer labels appealing to hefty men of the earth.