International Women’s Day 2018
International Women’s Day takes place on March 8th every year, and celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women. IWD also begins a year of campaigning under a particular theme, which in 2018 is #PressForProgress.
This year, DeskBeers has chosen to leverage its platform to highlight the contributions to the beer industry of three women in particular. We put together a special edition of the DeskBeers Craft Beer Box, which we’re sending out to our customers all of this week. We hope this gives a small idea of the significance and variety of contributions women make every day to this industry.
Three very different brews, from three very different breweries, which have in common the fact that they’re run by women who make awesome beer. This is a period when craft beer is becoming more diverse in terms both of its producers and its consumers: let’s take a minute to celebrate this development, and some of the people who are making it happen.
Brewster’s
SARA BARTON, FOUNDER & BREWSTER
Sara undertook the Master’s Degree in Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in 1987, and afterwards worked at Courage Brewery, initially on their graduate scheme. Before establishing Brewster’s, Sara completed an MBA at the Bradford School of Management. She founded Brewster’s in 1997, and they began brewing in early 1998. In 2011 she began Project Venus, an initiative encouraging collaboration between female brewers. In 2012, Sara became the first woman to be awarded the British Guild of Beer Writers’ Brewer of the Year Award.
PALE ALE (5%)
Brewster’s Pale Ale was inspired by classic American Pale Ales. The combination of lightly roasted malts and intense aromatic Pacific Northwest hops such as Centennial & Chinook produce a light golden beer bursting with juicy hop flavours. It has a fruity, gently citric flavour, and a gratifyingly long, bitter finish. Brewster’s Pale Ale won an International Beer Awards Gold Medal back in 2011 and is still one of Sara’s favourite beers.
‘Brewster’ is a term for a woman brewer attested since the turn of the fourteenth century. Its early references tend to be suggestive of a degree of contemporary disquiet around women traders (most canonically, the unscrupulous Beton the Brewster in William Langland’s Piers Plowman), but the word has been transformatively reclaimed in recent years as an affirmative way of indicating beer designed, developed and brewed by women. We reckon it’s a term you’re going to be seeing more and more. If you’re interested in learning more about this burgeoning movement, why not check out Fem.Ale, the annual brewster festival? It’s taking place in Brighton and Norwich, early this summer.
Fuller’s
GEORGINA YOUNG, HEAD BREWER
George began her brewing career at Smiles Brewery in Bristol, after completing her Master’s Degree in Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. She then ran the pilot brewing facilities at Brewing Research International, before joining Fuller’s as Production Brewer in April 1999, becoming Brewing Manager in 2003. After a period working as a science teacher, George returned to Fuller’s in 2013, as Brewing and Packaging Manager. She was promoted to Head Brewer in January 2017, and is currently Chair of the Southern Section of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling, and a member of the Worshipful Company of Brewers.
FRONTIER CRAFT LAGER (4.5%)
Fuller’s call Frontier a ‘new wave craft lager’, and it’s easy to see why. Hand crafted and unpasteurised, with a blend of New World hops and Fuller’s yeast, this is a lager with serious body and flavour. Notes of citrus and spice are well balanced, adding a craft feel to the beer without compromising that straight-up thirst-quenching quality you only get from a lager.
Wild Card
JAEGA WISE, HEAD BREWER
Hailing from Nottingham, via a Chemical Engineering degree at Loughborough University, Jaega left a job as a chemical trader in the City to help set up Wild Card Brewery. Wild Card originated as a ‘cuckoo’ brewery, using other brewers’ equipment, before establishing its own site in Walthamstow in 2014, where it also has a popular tap room. Jaega is also a recording artist, and an increasingly prominent speaker about sexism and other forms of discrimination in the brewing industry. In January 2018, Jaega was elected Director of the Society of Independent Brewers’ South East region.
QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (5%)
Wild Card’s flagship IPA, Queen of Diamonds is UK craft beer royalty. A winner in the Beautiful Brew category at the 2016 Urban Food Awards, Queen of Diamonds is an IPA with many facets. It’s a continuously hopped IPA, which means that hops are added regularly throughout the boil, rather than at the beginning, middle and end (the traditional way). This results in a lushly complex flavour profile, at once bitter, tropical and spicy, with notes of lychee and grapefruit.
Thanks again to George, Jaega and Sara and their teams for the great beer they brew. We’ll be sending this box out to DeskBeers customers all week. Sign up here if you’d like to try these beers!
We love craft beer and finding out about the people behind them. If you do too, why not subscribe to our low-frequency newsletter to be notified when we publish the next interview?
