Thumbs up for Women In Beer!

Happy Women’s History Month, dudes and dudettes! Lift your beer to all the chicks in the world, ‘cause you know, you wouldn’t have a beer to lift it weren’t for us bitches!

Quick history lesson on why ladies are as awesome as beer: we started brewing the stuff back in ancient Egypt and Sumeria and continued to be the brewers up through colonial America, fermenting the grain while men cultivated and hunted and fought about one thing or another. (Dudes never have their priorities straight.)

But when the Industrial Revolution brought brewing into big business, men stuck their…fingers in the mix and look what happened: just a few brewers producing the majority of what’s drunk in America — and producing the majority of it poorly, I might add. Insult upon injury: women were then relegated to the ads, drinking piss-colored swill while in bikinis, playing beach volleyball, possibly the stupidest and most transparent excuse for men to cross their fingers and hope for a little glimpse of lady business that I’ve ever seen outside anime.

But times, they are a-changin’. Nowadays women can be found again in breweries. A recent article looked at five awesome female brewers at Stoudt’s Brewing, Three Floyd’s Brewery, 10 Barrel Brewing, Blue Jacket, and Deschutes Brewery. Rock. On. It is inspiring to hear that women are not only becoming more comfortable learning about and ordering craft beer, but also becoming a larger part of the industry on the brewing end.

Fun Fact! A female brewer is actually called a brewster. When a male brewer told me this in passing during an interview, the line of questioning screeched to a halt. “Really?” I asked. “Like…Punky?” And then we both laughed uncomfortably, as one does when a former-child-star-slash-current-porn-star is accidentally brought up in polite conversation. But despite the less-than-ideal name, brewsters are kicking some ass in the craft beer world.

When I lived in Boston I was invited to join Women in Beer, an organization that supports and promotes women who work in the beer industry in any capacity. I got in for being a beer blogger, which seemed like a little of a stretch, but I wasn’t about to turn down a chance to hang out with beer-lovin’ ladies who, and maybe I was stereotyping a bit here, weren’t going to bore me talking about their kids’ hygiene habits or something (this has happened). I even have a little T-shirt that says “Women in Beer” on it, which has lead to more than one quizzical inspection of my chest.

They are not the only group of their kind, either! There is another group called the Pink Boots Society for women in the beer industry. Their name and logo reference the boots traditionally worn by brewers while making the actual beer, since it’s a rather messy job. Pink heels, for example, wouldn’t cut it. This group works hard to educate themselves and other women about beer and raises money for educational scholarships.

I pitched an article to Beer Advocate about the Pink Boots Society and the new role of women in the beer industry, but never heard back from them. I expressed frustration with this at a Women in Beer meeting and was told that they never tackle the topic. Any article that may hint at sexism in the industry was always going to be cut down before it’s even written. Which, in my mind, is not only an implicit acknowledgement that sexism exists, but is also a sexist stance in and of itself.

But I digress. Tonight, raise a pint to the beerific women in your life. You owe them.