QC Women In Beer
Last weekend Geneseo Brewing Company’s brewery was taken over by women brewers and beer enthusiasts for the annual “Pink Boots Collaboration Brew Day” which takes place on International Women's Day each year. Several women were gathered around a steaming mash tun ready to transfer hot wort to the boil kettle. Head Brewer, Rachel Leiby, was explaining the proper way to attach the sparge arm so you don’t “get blasted in the face”. By the end of the day these women had created an extremely unique IPA.
Alewives & Witches, Seriously?
The brewing industry is currently very outnumbered by men but that hasn’t always been the case. For 7,000 years humans have been drinking beer and the earliest brewers were women. The use of hops in beer are even credited to Hildegard von Bingen, a German nun who wrote about using them in her recipe in the 12th century. Brewing was primarily performed by women up until the 1500s. It wasn’t until some women began taking the “household duty” of brewing into the marketplace that things began to change. At that time a smear campaign was put in place to push women out so that men could capitalize off of the industry. What kind of smear campaign? Well they were viewed as witches, of course.
Tall pointy hats, cauldrons, cats, broom sticks, and other iconic “witch” associated symbolisms at one time all were practical traits of “Alewives” before witches. The pointy hats were worn so they could be easily spotted in the marketplace, cauldrons were the kettles used to brew their product, cats were kept to keep mice out of the grain used in brewing, and broomsticks were placed over their door to show that they had fresh product in stock. Witches creating “potions” in their kettles with herbs and other uncommon ingredients was actually quite the common practice for alewives before the wide use of hops. The brewers included them from their medicinal attributes, something that was easily transformed as “spells and black magic”. The religious movement of the 16th century pushed for “gender norms” and was very strict on banning whatever they believed to be considered “witchcraft”. If you were a woman brewing beer at that time, you would be considered a witch and the consequences were extremely dangerous.
Modern Brewing Diversity
Today’s macro beer industry is still extremely male dominated, with the top ten beer companies all being run by male CEOs with mostly male board members. Craft breweries are a little more diverse with 17% of breweries having a female CEO, but even within those breweries only 4% of them have a female Brewmaster. Here in the Quad Cities, of the 14 breweries on the QC Ale Trail, we currently only have a few female Assistant & Apprentice Brewers and only one female Head Brewer, Rachel Leiby of Geneseo Brewing.
Rachel is a member of the Pink Boots Society, a nonprofit organization which supports inclusion of females in the brewing industry by offering education and scholarship opportunities to women currently in or trying to get their foot in the door of the industry. Rachel has recently taken steps to form a Quad Cities chapter of the Pink Boots Society to further diversify our local industry.
There are several ways for anyone to find their way into the industry whether you get a formal education like Rachel, who has a professional certificate from St. Louis University in Brewing Science & Operations, or you’re taken on as a Brewer’s Apprentice like Tiffany McMillin at Radicle Effect Brewerks. There is definitely a place for women in a management role as well like Debbie “QC Ale Girl” Davis at Crawford Brew Works and Anna Stamer of Five Cities Brewing.
What Did They Brew?!
The IPA features a unique hop blend called the “Pink Boots Blend” from Yakima Chief Hops in Yakima, WA, which are selected by Pink Boots Members at the Great American Beer Festival. Since 2018, more than $257,000 has been contributed to the PBS scholarship fund from the sale of these hops. This year's blend consists of Cashmere, Anthanum, Citra, Loral, and Sabro hops. So expect tropical, herbal, citrus, and woody aromatic qualities. Rachel decided to kick up the unique flavor profile even more by using “Bonanza” yeast from Omega Yeast Labs in Chicago. This yeast is specially selected to produce big banana flavors. Be on the lookout for this beer to be on tap and available in 16oz to-go cans at Geneseo Brewing.
You can find out more about the wonderful women in our local brewing industry by checking out the wonderful interviews on CraftQC.com.
About The Author:
Charlie Cole is a professional brewer and multimedia beer promoter. He is a graduate of St. Louis University in Brewing Science and Operations, a previous brewer at three different Quad Cities breweries, a certified beer server through the cicerone program, and hosts the What’s Tappening podcast and weekly local beer segment on 97X FM.