Tag Archives: women

Women Brewers Unite

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March is National Women’s History Month here in the United States. It is an annual celebration of women and their roles in history, sponsored by the National Women’s History Project. As with so much else, the realm of beer seems dominated by men. It is primarily men who are marketed to, primarily men who are the brewers and homebrewers, and primarily men who write about beer. But not entirely. The blogosphere is no different. So, to celebrate Women’s History Month, Hop Talk is taking time out to get to know some of these women.

This is a guest article by Teri Fahrendorf.

The Pink Boots Society was founded by me in 2007. I had quit my job after 19 years as a professional brewer in order to depart on a massive 5-month road trip. During this road trip I visited 70 breweries and brewed at 38 of them. I blogged my trip live from the road at www.roadbrewer.com.

During my trip, I met several women brewers. I also met many men brewers who had never encountered a woman brewer before. After enjoying the company of fellow brewer Laura Ulrich at Stone Brewing Company near San Diego, I determined to keep track of the women brewers I met or heard about during my trip. After many requests for my “List of Women” brewers, I christened it the “Pink Boots Society” and posted the list to my website at www.pinkbootssociety.com. The list is updated as often as I get new information, which currently means weekly.

As of March 8th, there are 57 active women brewers listed in the USA section, and that only includes one brewer pink-boots.jpgfrom any of the large international mega-breweries. The other 56 are all women craft brewers! Once the large breweries start sending me the names and locations of their active women brewers, you can expect the Pink Boots Society to at least double.

There are also 17 former women brewers on the list, and 26 active women brewers from outside the USA. The list at www.pinkbootssociety.com is by no means conclusive, and I continue to seek the names, locations, and breweries of all the currently active and former women brewers that I can find. If your local brewer is a woman and she’s not on the list, please ask her to email me.

The very first Pink Boots Society meeting will be held during the Craft Brewers Conference, in San Diego April 16-19. For more information go to www.beertown.org. The PBS meeting will be an all-estrogen event, as only active and former women brewers will be attending, as well as women beer writers to document the event. Many women brewers have expressed excitement about this historic (herstoric) meeting, and look forward to meeting other women brewers and tasting their beers.

If you are interested in the doings and happenings of the Pink Boot Society, please subscribe to the e-Newsletter at http://visitor.constantcontact.com/optin.jsp?&m=1101801813325&ea=. Just think: a room filled with 30-40 professional women brewers and their beers. It couldn’t get any better than that, unless the meeting was held during March’s Women’s History (Her-story) Month.

Here’s your challenge for March. Study the list at www.pinkbootssociety.com, find a beer brewed by one of the breweries where a woman brewer is employed, chill and crack open with a toast to Ninkasi, the ancient Sumerian Goddess of Beer. Cheers!

Teri Fahrendorf is the Road Brewer (RSS feed / Atom)

Read Hop Talk’s interview of Teri Fahrendorf

Women of the beerosphere: Teri Fahrendorf

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March is National Women’s History Month here in the United States. It is an annual celebration of women and their roles in history, sponsored by the National Women’s History Project. As with so much else, the realm of beer seems dominated by men. It is primarily men who are marketed to, primarily men who are the brewers and homebrewers, and primarily men who write about beer. But not entirely. The blogosphere is no different. So, to celebrate Women’s History Month, Hop Talk is taking time out to get to know some of these women.

Teri Fahrendorf

What is your name?
Teri Fahrendorf

What is your location?
I live in Portland, Oregon.

What is your blog?
www.roadbrewer.com

Do you have a favorite style of beer? What is it?
I enjoy all well made beers and prefer to seek out the rare or unusual beers and styles.

How did you come to write a blog about beer?
I was the Brewmaster at Steelhead Brewing Company for 17 years. When I quit I went on a 5-month road trip where I visited 70 breweries and 3 distilleries, and brewed at 38 breweries. Family and friends wanted email updates, so instead I wrote a blog live from the road. My blog is attracting readers still, even though my trip was from June to October 2007. (Last summer.) [We covered Teri's journey in Beer walkabout. -Ed.]

What prejudices have you had to overcome?
About the blog? Or about being a woman Brewmaster? Or what? Not too many prejudices, but I would love to see brewing as a profession attract and employ an equal number of women brewers as men brewers.

Any other passions?
I am founder of the Pink Boots Society. If you know of any women brewers not on my list at www.pinkbootssociety.com, please send me their contact info or the name and location of their brewery. My passion is to promote women and professional brewing, especially craft or microbrewing.

Any parting thoughts?
All this beer talk is making me crave a beer. See ya…

Teri Fahrendorf is the Road Brewer (RSS feed / Atom)

Women of the beerosphere: Boak

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March is National Women’s History Month here in the United States. It is an annual celebration of women and their roles in history, sponsored by the National Women’s History Project. As with so much else, the realm of beer seems dominated by men. It is primarily men who are marketed to, primarily men who are the brewers and homebrewers, and primarily men who write about beer. But not entirely. The blogosphere is no different. So, to celebrate Women’s History Month, Hop Talk is taking time out to get to know some of these women.

Boak

What is your name?
Boak

What is your location?
London, UK

What is your blog?
www.boakandbailey.com

Do you have a favorite style of beer? What is it?
Not really – my tastes are pretty catholic, and it really depends on my mood. Sometimes I crave a dark fruity Belgian ale, sometimes only a hoppy IPA will do.

How did you come to write a blog about beer?
We (that’s me and my other half, Bailey) were on the train back from a beer-holiday in Germany. We thought it would be interesting to start a blog – it would lend some focus to our drinking and would help us keep track of what we’d knocked back…

What prejudices have you had to overcome?
When I started blogging, I chose a gender-neutral name because I didn’t want people pre-judging my opinions or not taking them seriously because I’m just a girl…which is something I’ve had plenty of in the “real” world.

I’ve been patronised on a couple of occasions by homebrew shop owners trying to convince me that I want something different (or rather, that my boyfriend wants something different!), and I generally don’t bother trying to talk about beer with any men that I don’t know really well. But worst of all for the female beer lover is going into a pub on your own. It may be the twenty first century, but it appears you still need a chaperone. More on that later…

Any other passions?
Good food, cooking and travelling – all very compatable with beer!

Any parting thoughts?
It would be nice to have the alcohol capacity of a man sometimes…sometimes you do just have to accept there are gender differences.

Boak is half of the writing team at boakandbailey.com (RSS feed)

Women of the beerosphere: Jasmine

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March is National Women’s History Month here in the United States. It is an annual celebration of women and their roles in history, sponsored by the National Women’s History Project. As with so much else, the realm of beer seems dominated by men. It is primarily men who are marketed to, primarily men who are the brewers and homebrewers, and primarily men who write about beer. But not entirely. The blogosphere is no different. So, to celebrate Women’s History Month, Hop Talk is taking time out to get to know some of these women.

Jasmine

What is your name?
Jasmine Smith

What is your location?
San Francisco, California. I’ve been here for about a year and a half, and it’s nearly impossible not to get excited about craft brewing here. I was born and raised in Wisconsin, though, and spent several years in New York City.

What is your blog?
http://www.beeratjoes.com/
At Beer at Joe’s, we like to make a lot of beer videos as well as writing about it. It’s a fun way to be able to see the color of the beer we’re drinking or the atmosphere of the event we’re attending. It also helps us to give our readers (or viewers) information without resorting to standard lists of alcohol content and ingredients. You can get that information anywhere.

Do you have a favorite style of beer? What is it?
I consider myself fairly new to the world of craft beer, and that means that my favorites are changing constantly. It used to be wheat beer, which I still love. Now I’ve discovered that my favorite “everyday” kind of drinking beer is usually an amber or brown ale. Recently I tried a few kinds of Scottish ale and loved them, but it’s not a style I’m familiar with so I’m going to have to try a few more before I declare it a favorite!

How did you come to write a blog about beer?
Here in the Bay Area, there are all kinds of microbreweries doing really neat things. The tipping point, though, was when Joe and I attended one of Chef Bruce Patton’s (known as the “Beer Chef”) beer dinners. We had so much fun, took so many pictures, and learned so many things in just that first night that we wanted to be able to share it with other people. We also realized that night how many really passionate and interesting people are involved in the beer world. Our blog is a great way to connect with them.

What prejudices have you had to overcome?
I’m not sure I’ve encountered a lot of prejudice, at least not openly. Sometimes I think being very young is a more difficult obstacle to overcome than being a woman. I’ve been to more than one beer event where I am the youngest (or close to it) person in the room. You tend to not be taken seriously when talking about beer or your blog when that happens. The toughest part for me about being a female beer drinker is the size of the glasses. When I find a place that will serve their beer in half-pints or as a bunch of 3 or 4 ounce samplers, that place automatically gets on my “favorite places to drink” list. I think this is one of the biggest barriers to bringing a lot of women over to the beer side. One pint and I’m full, so it’s tough to learn about a lot of different kinds of beer when it’s hard to taste a lot of different ones.

Any other passions?
Writing in general. It was easy step for me to write about beer, since I tend to want to write about everything. I write fiction and also run a blog about short stories (with a focus on women, go figure).

Any parting thoughts?
Recently, the world of wine has been trying to make good wine accessible to everyday drinkers, and I’ve found that a lot of the advice coming out of that movement applies perfectly in the movement towards good craft beer. Drink widely to develop your taste buds. Drink what you like, not what the so-called experts tell you to like. It’s okay to sometimes drink a large amount of cheap, watery beer (or boxed wine) just because you feel like it. Don’t feel like you have to be able to discuss the beer at hand, just drink it.

Jasmine is half of the writing team at Beer at Joe’s (RSS feed)

2008: The year of the (beer) woman?

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I read a lot of blogs. (Most of the blogs about beer and related topics that I read are listed over there in our “beerroll”.) I probably read too many. I’m a voracious reader, what can I say?

One upside of reading so many different sources is that I can often recognize trends. Or, at least, if not trends, current fads.

While catching up this morning, I read Lew Bryson‘s piece on Portfolio.com about how beer is under-marketed to women.

Beer marketing reeks of testosterone. The staples include sports, cowboys, rappers—male rappers—big powerful animals, physical labor, and frat-boy humor. When women appear, they’re either carrying a tray of beers or standing around looking beautiful.

Yep. I happen to be a big NFL fan and try to watch as many games as I can. (With two young children it can be a challenge.) Now, I don’t know if I’m just becoming more mature or the ads more peurile, but I often can’t stand to stay in the room (or on the channel) when the game breaks for commercials. (And that can be quite often, as you know.)

(I would like to get my girls interested in football, but the marketers are so locked in that the only people watching football are males 18-29 years old, they show some wholely inappropriate commercials in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. Enough with the “Saw III” (and other horror films) commercials! Who do I have to write to to get them to knock it off?)

My wife likes beer, and she likes good beer. That’s my influence, though. If she went by the way beer is mass marketed, she wouldn’t touch the stuff.

Acme beer advertisement from 1940

Anyway, not ten minutes after reading Lew’s piece, I happened across a recap by Wilson of Brewvana about his experiment of having six women, spanning six decades, sample and rate six different craft beers.

First off, it was a whole lot of fun. I provided a little background on the brewing process, as well as the ingredients involved. We talked about aromas, flavors, mouthfeels. We talked about their drinking experiences and preferences (which ranged from beer to mixed drinks to wine to margaritas to straight up tequila). And we talked about macro-advertising’s failure to engage them.

There was more than just the tasting, of course. Part of his article includes opinions from the women on how beer could be better marketed to them.

“Point blank, breweries could do a better job explaining their different beers in their commercials.”

“Women (buy based on) labels, cool names. Education (would help).”

“They could start by not focusing on men.”

“Show women enjoying beer.”

Hear, hear! Wilson concludes with a number of sites where beer and women intersect. (I am proud to say that of the blogs he listed, I already read all of them.)

So, is 2008 when brewers, large and small, start marketing to women in a serious way? Where else have you seen beer and women intersect in a positive (non-exploitive) way?

Update: Stan Hieronymus has apparently noticed the same thing and cites some more examples.

Why don’t more women drink beer? It’s not marketed to them.

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Shropshire Star: These girls are for real

Emma Hesbrook and Sue Burford compare notes on their pints of real aleWhile 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.