Throughout history, women have been the driving force behind the production of one of the world’s most popular beverages: beer. Though beer is considered a “man’s drink” today, this association only started in the last couple hundred years. Now, connecting back to their lineage as brewmasters and alewives, women are starting their own breweries and becoming head brewers again.
In the long history of women and their connection to beer, one notion has captured particular attention: the concept of witches and witchcraft may have come from 16th-century alewives.
Before delving into this witchy side of beer, it’s important to understand how women dominated this field for much of history and how their once-revered role as the primary providers of beer shifted to one of being persecuted and disenfranchised by men. “Beer represents and parallels the myriad ways men have historically harnessed control of women,” says Tara Nurin, author of A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs.
Image Courtesy Of: Whitemay/Getty Images
Women in Beer: An Abridged World History
Women have been associated with beer making practically since the dawn of time, from the earliest documented evidence of beer brewing in 7000 BCE. Some of the greatest historical evidence of women’s role in beer making starts with the Sumerian civilization. If you’ve ever had a beer from Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewing, you were paying tribute to Sumerian goddess of beer Ninkasi. Priestesses who worshipped Ninkasi brewed beer for temple functions as well as privately for their families, making these women highly revered, as beer was not only used as a form of currency at the time but also considered a dietary staple.
Nurin’s book delves into the history of many civilizations whose women were in control of beer making. Many women sold their excess beer at market or even opened taverns, garnering them a bit of economic independence when they had so little in many other areas of their lives. Oftentimes unfortunately, this profiting from beer incentivized governments and rulers to impose restrictions so that they themselves could serve blander, cheaper beer from industrial breweries without competition. This resulted in women being disproportionately punished if they disobeyed the laws, sometimes being drowned or even burned to death.
Researching her book and finding this pattern of disenfranchisement throughout history made Nurin feel, as she told me in an interview, “disheartened, shocked, and disgusted to realize how deeply pervasive and ancient misogyny is and how little it’s actually changed. We really see some of the same things repeating today that were happening in only slightly different forms thousands of years ago.”
From the Sumerians and Babylonians, beer-brewing practices crossed the world. From Egypt, where goddesses Hathor and Tenenet were worshiped as beer deities, to Scandinavia, where the Vikings only allowed women to brew beer, to South Africa, where women were traditionally in charge of brewing homemade beer umqombothi.
Eventually, beer making made its way to Europe, where women continued to dominate this sphere and be worshipped in the form of deities like Osmotar, the Finnish goddess of beer. In Northern Europe, many beer festivals were held in the forest and outdoors, with things getting pretty wild—people dancing naked for instance (perhaps contributing to the pagan/witchy view of women in connection with beer). It was around this time, in various areas across the world, that superstitions began to take hold. The notion that women being involved in beer making would turn the beer bad—something Nurin attributes to patriarchal society’s view of menstruating women as “unclean”—became rampant.
As the plague ravaged Medieval Europe, wives began brewing even more ale to give their families—the home-brewed beer was safer to drink than possibly contaminated water, after all. Of course, these entrepreneurial women began selling off the excess, once again creating independence and economic opportunities for themselves.
As more and more people were killed by plague, survivors began to demand higher wages and had more spending money, creating a greater demand on local alehouses. While the patriarchy continued to attempt to set prices and limit women earning profits from selling their brews, these alewives rebelled, often receiving harsh punishment for doing so.
Soon, the formation of guilds started to force women out of the beer-making industry. As the 16th century and 17th century progressed in Europe, brewing started to become a more commercial operation, which only stunted women brewers further.
This period coincided with the prosecution of witches, and as the patriarchy attempted to force out those women who might profit from this burgeoning industry, negative depictions of alewives began to circulate, often referring to them as “witch-like,” “untrustworthy,” “corrupt,” and “grotesque.”
Alewives=Witches?
There are numerous connections between witches and 16th-century alewives: cauldrons, cats, hats, and brooms, to name a few. Without the professional equipment and stainless-steel vats we have available today, women brewed beer in what they did have: big, black cauldrons. To sell beer at the market and be visible to customers, women wore big, pointy hats. Alewives kept cats close to keep mice out of the grain that they used for making their beer. If selling out of their homes, they would keep a broomstick propped next to or above the door to signal potential customers that there was beer inside. Case closed!
Well, not quite. While that’s a fun twisting of certain details, a few scholars and researchers have investigated these so-called connections for veracity. “It’s a very compelling story that makes a lot of sense and speaks to very true issues,” says Nurin, “but the actual facts don’t line up.”
In Nurin’s book, and using information she learned from historian Dr. Christina Wade, she dispels some of these connections, like how the first depiction of a witch in a pointy hat didn’t come about until the 18th century, in a children’s book. Or that the notion of a witch riding a broom predates this time, with a 13th-century poem referring to a woman riding a broomstick. Ultimately, the fact that women who were accused of witchcraft tended to be poor laborers, single or widowed women, or married to yeomen, means that they were the population most likely to be brewing beer for profit. As a result, they were disproportionately accused of witchcraft.
“It is hard to know whether alewives were accused of being witches because they were alewives or due to their poor social position—little extant evidence remains to be able to discern this without a doubt,” says Wade. “However, what is very clear, is that both the language used to describe alewives and accused witches, and the socio-economic position of the two groups, is remarkably similar, as we have seen.”
With commercial brewing growing and women being persecuted both for their craft and potential of being a witch, this marked a time when women took a major step back from their role as beer sellers and stuck to making it in the home for their families, as they always had.
Current State of Women in Brewing
As women retreated from the beer market, the idea of beer being a “man’s drink” started to solidify. This narrative sadly continues today, and female brewers, once so prevalent throughout history, now only represent 4% of the industry. Only 2.9% of breweries are founded solely by women, according to 2019 data released by the Brewers Association. The marketing of beer toward men has taken hold in society as well, with women only accounting for about 25% of total beer consumption in the U.S.
But some women are fighting to take back their rightful place as brewers. The Pink Books Society was founded in 2007 to help women advance their careers in the industry. Various events and festivals celebrating women in the industry have popped up, and there’s a lengthy list of breweries in the U.S. either co-owned or owned by women. Christy Cain, owner of Olive Pit Brewing in Lisbon Falls, ME, became the town’s first brewery owner. Olive Pit is also the first 100% woman-owned brewery in the state. She says she’s seen an increase in twenty- and thirty-something-year-old women switching from wine to beer, particularly as she sees taprooms being an important social setting.
Dyke Beer was started in 2020 by grassroots activists Loretta Andro Chung and Sarah Hallonquist to honor and celebrate LGBTQIA+ spaces and history, during a time when the two saw a lack of good craft beer in lesbian bars. When asked why we see so few women in this field, Hallonquist said the better question is whether these women are being given the opportunities to learn brewing or encouraged to get into it. “It creates a disadvantage for women who want to take this career path. It’s the working of patriarchy to keep women in a certain role (less power) and men in another (more power).”
Entering a space that’s so male dominated can be intimidating for those women trying to break into this field, and in addition to that isolation, there are also instances of harassment or unequal/unfair treatment. “Like with anything,” says Nurin, “women in beer have to prove themselves over and over because people don’t expect to necessarily see women in breweries. Despite our strides, there is still a very long way to go.”
Perhaps that’s why it’s so gratifying to hear the response Nurin has received since her book was published four years ago. “It’s been unbelievably gratifying and moving,” she says of young women in the industry telling her they didn’t know the lengthy history of women in brewing. “They tell me they feel connected to the past, present, and future of people like them being in beer. It reassures them that there is a place for them in this industry.”
Main Image Courtesy Of: Clu/ Getty Image
