A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs

by Nurin, Tara; Fahrendorf, Teri

• ISBN13: 9781641603423
• ISBN10: 1641603429
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2021-09-21
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Summary

• North American Guild of Beer Writers Best Book 2022

Dismiss the stereotype of the bearded brewer.

It’s women, not men, who’ve brewed beer throughout most of human history. Their role as family and village brewer lasted for hundreds of thousands of years—through the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization, the reign of Cleopatra, the witch trials of early modern Europe, and the settling of colonial America. A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse celebrates the contributions and influence of female brewers and explores the forces that have erased them from the brewing world.
 
It’s a history that’s simultaneously inspiring and demeaning. Wherever and whenever the cottage brewing industry has grown profitable, politics, religion, and capitalism have grown greedy. On a macro scale, men have repeatedly seized control and forced women out of the business. Other times, women have simply lost the minimal independence, respect, and economic power brewing brought them.
 
But there are more breweries now than at any time in American history and today women serve as founder, CEO, or head brewer at more than one thousand of them.

As women continue to work hard for equal treatment and recognition in the industry, author Tara Nurin shows readers that women have been—and are once again becoming—relevant in the brewing world.

Author Biography

Tara Nurin is the beer and spirits contributor to Forbes and an adjunct Beer 101 instructor at Wilmington University. The former major-market TV news reporter has been the Libations columnist for New Jersey Monthly, the women-in-beer columnist for Ale Street News, and the cohost of the What’s on Tap weekly beer TV show. Her work has been published in more than fifty newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms such as Food + Wine, USA Today, and Wine Enthusiast. She is certified by the Beer Judge Certification Program and serves as a frequent expert and host in the media and in educational programming. She lives outside of Philadelphia, PA. Teri Fahrendorf is an American brewer and founder of the Pink Boots Society, an organization that supports women in the brewing industry. She is notable for being one of the first women in the craft brewing industry and her brews have been widely awarded from organizations such as Great American Beer Festival and the Brewer's Association. 
 

Table of Contents

Foreword
      Time Line
      Introduction
1    The Rebeginning
2    Planting the Seed
3    Rainbows End down That Highway
4    The Hymn to Ninkasi
5    The Birth of Beervana
6    Of Goddesses and High Priestesses
7    Decentralization
8    Brew Like an Egyptian
9    The Great Eastward Migration
10  What’s Past Is Prologue
11  Relax, Have a Homebrew
12  It’s a Sahti Paati
13  Slow Food, Slower Beer
14  B(eer) Is for Barbarians
15  The Last of the First Craft Brewery Women
16  The Fatherland
17  Boom and Bust
18  The Image of the Journalist as Wallflower at the Orgy Has Been Replaced by the Journalist as the Life of the Party
19  Alewives Unflattered
20  Beer’s Bridge over Troubled Water
21  Strange Brew: Did Renaissance Brewsters Practice Fermentation  . . . Or Witchcraft?
22  These Boots Are Made for Brewing
23  Coming to America
24  From the Back Office to the Boardroom
25  Rivers of Lager Flow Toward Temperance
26  The Customer Is Sometimes Right
27  Prohibited from the Halls of Power No More
28  Big Boss Ladies and the Family Ties That Bind
29  Don’t Worry, Darling, You Didn’t Burn the Beer
30  Beyond Beards, Beyond Breasts
31  It’s a Woman’s World After All
32  Raging Bitches
33  That’s Right, the Women Are Smarter
34  Sisters Are Brewing It for Themselves
      Acknowledgments
      Bibliography
      Index