Shaysa Sidebottom
There’s a widespread perception of beer as a man’s beverage, brewed by and for dudes in flannel. That image is partly based on marketing, but there’s also some truth to the stereotype of a bearded bartender who assumes women aren’t knowledgeable about beer and don’t enjoy big, full-bodied stouts and IPAs.
Robyn Klinge knows it’s true, because servers commonly direct her away from anything strong, bitter or hop-forward — or they’ll assume she doesn’t want beer at all and hand her the wine list. Those subtle-yet-discouraging, gender-based assumptions of taste are why Klinge founded Females Enjoying Microbrews (FEMs), a Facebook group of dozens of women who meet once a month to talk about and enjoy beer at different locations around Madison.
“Because we get handed the wine list, or bartenders assume that we want the light or fruity beer, a lot of women feel like they can’t comfortably explore beer. It’s a boys’ club,” she says. “FEMs is a safe, comfortable space for women to freely ask questions, learn, explore, and try styles they normally wouldn’t.”
Women represent just one-quarter of weekly craft-beer drinkers, though that figure is rising, according to the Brewers Association. However, women ages 21-34 drink craft beer more frequently than the national average, perhaps signaling a greater demographic shift to come. And as women drink more craft beer, they’re getting more involved in making it — breaking down barriers in the industry along the way.
That’s certainly the case locally. As one of the co-founders of Madison Craft Beer Week, a 10-day festival beginning in late April (now organized by Isthmus) that has grown to encompass more than 450 events at various locations, Klinge has friendly working relationships with a cohort of established and up-and-coming woman brewers in the area — Ashley Kinart-Short, the brewmaster of Capital Brewery; Jessica Jones, co-owner and brewmaster at Giant Jones Brewing; and Kara Hulce, brewmaster at Boulder Brew Pub in Verona.
Giant Jones opened its production facility and tasting room on East Main Street in June. Jones is an advanced cicerone, a beer-centric title equivalent to sommelier (the wine expert at fancy restaurants). She’s basically a craft-beer black belt.
“I like drinking beer, but I love making beer,” she says. “If I could just make beer all the time, constantly, that would be perfect.”
Jones, who co-owns the brewery with Erika Jones, describes herself as a perfectionist who “isn’t interested in ‘okay’.”
So, it stings a little when her hard work goes unrecognized, as it sometimes does when Giant Jones participates in beer festivals. “At a couple of beer festivals we’ve been at, we’ll have friends help us out with pouring so we can, you know, use the bathroom,” she says. “Our friends happen to be guys, so people walk up and assume they’re the brewer. Even people we’ve met before will forget that we’re the ones running the brewery and start talking to the guy. It’s like, ‘Of course, the white guy with the beard is the brewer.’ Which is often true.”
The disproportionate ratio of men to women in brewing is a relatively new development, considering that the history of women in brewing dates back to ancient times. In fact, before the Industrial Revolution, brewing was more the woman’s domain. “Women made beer until it turned into a factory commodity and porter was made in commercial breweries in the 18th century,” Jones says. “Women were brewers before that. It was cooking, and beer is food.”
Klinge believes a number of socioeconomic factors may help explain why men — white men, especially — were in the thick of things when the homebrewing and craft-beer movements took off in the 1970s and ’80s.
“They had a higher income and more free time to experiment,” she says. “As craft breweries opened starting in the 1970s, men had more access to funding than women.” She also points to the responsibilities of motherhood and caregiving as a primary factor: “That’s becoming more and more of a shared responsibility, thankfully, but it’s hard to start a brewery — or even have a brewing hobby — when you have to take care of the kids.”
Today, brewery owners and brewmasters are still overwhelmingly male, but the industry as a whole is shifting to reflect the rapidly diversifying American workforce (a study by Auburn University finds that women represent 29 percent of brewery workers).
Take Erica DeAnda, a brewer at Octopi Brewing in Waunakee. She says she maintains mutually respectful relationships with her male coworkers and doesn’t believe the perception of her gender has negatively affected her career in any way. But she does hear the occasional snide remark from visitors while she’s guiding tours through the brewery.
“I’ve definitely heard, ‘But I wanted somebody who knows what they’re talking about!’” she says. “I’m like, ‘Okay, dude, I literally do it every day, but what do I know?’”
Though these notions about woman brewers’ knowledge and ability linger, women are increasingly asserting their value in a space that has long deemed them unworthy of respect.
DeAnda, for her part, believes in beer’s potential as an equalizer.
“Everyone can drink this drink, everyone can sit around and talk about it,” she says. “It’s helping break down barriers. Craft beer can bring everyone to the table.”
