Blonde beers go pink, here come the girls
Beer seems to be a man’s world but, in truth, in Egyptian times it was women who made it and today there are many breweries run by women We can do it
We can do it FemAle Sweden
Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
It was a German nun who once realized that adding hops made beer last longer and this permitted the beginning of industrial productions of the famous blonde beers. Women have had an important role in the history of beer, including the goddess Nin Kasi who overlooked its production by the Babylonians and today they are beginning to be important even in the very masculine world of breweries.
Meg-Gill
The Drinks business has put in a row the top 10 calling them “brewsister” as was done in the medieval guilds.
They can be found all over the place, Australia, UK, USA, Sweden…. Italy. They are often born from small artisanal breweries, during the last 20 years, and in the majority of cases after the year 2000. All these wineries have had a boom in growth of around 20% per year. Women owned breweries win prizes, just as Sara Barton does, brewer of the year 2012 in UK and with the many medals won by the The Waen Brewery belonging to Sue Hayward. Women are begin to appear in the button rooms for great conglomerates , like Emma Gilleland is head brewer, the first woman in 179 years, of the British brewery Marston, and Gwen Conley is production manager of the Port Brewing in California as well as being a very famous beer taster. These stories always tell of courageous women, like the youngest female Brewster in the US , Meg Gill or Kim Jordan CEO of the third largest artisanal brewery in USA, the New Belgium Brewing Company.
Birroir
The most revolutionary case. Is of a group of Swedish women coming from all different professions. They have created the first brewery in their nation calling it with the name of a world war 2 campaign slogan in USA that invited women to take on roles previously destined for men “WE CAN DO IT. The venture of the Swedish lady brewers FemAle starts from the point of refusing exclusion. No more phrases such as <<too dark and too strong for you love>>. Women can drink and produce everything, for this reason their beer is not destined just for women, but wish to put all consumers on the same level. This is why it concentrates on educating women’s taste << bring your mother, sister, girlfriend, aunt and grandmother se we all can learn more about beer>> A silent revolution, a courageous and real one too, in lifestyle and in marketing too. Well done! It must be said that in the past all campaigns and the studies to produce beer for women have had scarce results while maybe it the news action “woman to woman” might work.
There are also in Italy some artisanal women run breweries such as Birroir in Lucca born tank to 4 courageous young women who inspired by the territory and have called their production with a term that associates two French words: bière and terroir.