“She brews good ale, and thereof comes the proverb, Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale.”

Thank Bill Shakespeare for the title of this blog!

There are precious few female brewers in the world right now, and even fewer female home brewers. While finding exact metrics for women involved in the craft at home would be almost impossible, Brew Your Own's female readership in 2005 consisted of a mere 2% of their total subscribers. This might not seem strange to anyone used to the usual gamut of Bud Light commercials, featuring typical average looking guys A and B sharing what is questionably called "beer" with generic hot blonde C.

Side note! You have to hand it to AB and their Bud Light commercials. They have had some of the funniest campaigns in the world... Here's a good web only one that doesn't fit the formula above.

(Warning, the theme might not be safe for work... But a blog about alcohol probably isn't either!)


Anyway, where were we? Oh right: Every once in a while someone writes an article about how women are breaking through the glass ceiling in the brewing world. They often highlight the *first* brewster (female form of brewer) in a country, the first female in a particular sector, etc. I put first inside the funny asterisks there because the idea that you can be the first member of your demographic to breakthrough in a field that was literally invented by your demographic makes my head spin.

That's like congratulating Americans for manufacturing cars... Sure, there are times we have sucked at it, but welcoming all of us back to an industry that wouldn't exist without us goes a little too far!

The analogy might not be perfect, since presumably women left brewing as monasteries began to brew more and not because of shitty products let loose on consumers (I'm looking at you Pinto... and Taurus... and all late model Thunderbirds). I invite you to read this blog, which links to some detailed accounts of the history of beer. Notably, that historically women were the brewsters, distributors, and creative ambassadors of beer.

Today, most people look at monasteries as the historical home of beer. In fact, for women, the rise of monasteries (and the taverns that followed) marked the beginning of the end for women in beer. It is sad the rich history of artisanship heralded by women is often neglected, and sadder still that some point to the heritage usurped by male-only monasteries as justification for the current state of brewing.

To me, we are doing a disservice to the art of brewing by discounting its true history. We can't undo what happened and pay the alewives of lore their due (besides, would Budweiser be any better if it was marketed as the Queen of Beers?!), but with the resurgence of craft beer and the sheer number of people flocking to homebrewing, we have the opportunity to call women back into the art. After all, it wouldn't exist without our super ancient mothers and their super ancient brew kettles.