Whether through images of the early English barmaid, American sitcom brewery workers Laverne and Shirley, or the Miller Lite Girls passing out promos at sports bars, women and beer have had a dynamic, sometimes complicated relationship through history.
For Deb Loch and Jill Pavlak of
Urban Growler Brewing, however, it’s pretty simple.
“We happen to be women and we happen to brew beer,” Pavlak said before a screening last week of
“The Love of Beer,” a documentary about women fighting to end gender stereotypes surrounding the craft beer industry in the Pacific Northwest. The film and discussion, part of the
Minnesota Museum of American Art’s First Friday Film series, also showed how women are taking hold in the craft brewing industry all over the country.
According to Doug Hoverson, author of
“Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota,” who led the discussion with Loch and Pavlak before the screening, temple priestesses in ancient Mesopotamia are credited with beer’s invention.
Women also brewed the family’s beer during the early Colonial era. In Medieval England, housewives would make ale and advertise their brew by hanging a broom over their door. These pop-up alehouses were so successful, the aristocracy eventually levied a tax against them, Hoverson said.
Marketing beer by using images of women is a familiar strategy. But marketing beer to women isn’t a new concept, either. One ad from the late 1960s—a time when women purchased most of the beer for the household—shows a bottle of beer nestled amongst a bouquet of pastel-colored flowers. In the 20s and 30s, Guinness was billed as a nutritious beverage for gestating and nursing mothers.
In 2011,
Chick Beer ruffled some feathers with the release of “the first beer specifically for women.” The bottles, covered in labels shaped like black cocktail dresses, were packed in purse-like cases with white sequins, thus embracing a hyper-feminine stereotype. “Marketers insist on marketing beer to a particular vision of women, which doesn’t always fit,” Hoverson said.
In contrast, neither Urban Growler’s logo nor messaging identifies the company as women-owned and -run. Loch says the product appeals to women, instead, with flavorful, quality beer—sometimes with a more moderate alcohol content. The brewery opens this spring in the
Creative Enterprise Zone of Saint Paul.
“We want to be pretty much gender neutral,” Pavlak said. “We have lived our lives believing we can do whatever we want to do, and have felt a lot of craft brewers are very inclusive. We want to continue that tradition.”
Pavlak and Loch aren’t the only women making suds in the industry. Deborah Carey founded New Glarus Brewing Co. in Wisconsin as a gift to her home-brewing husband, Dan, in 1993. “Dan makes amazing beer, but Deb is in charge,” Hoverson remarked. New Glarus teamed with German-based Weyermann Malting, also led by a woman, to release the Two Women American style lager in 2010.
“Hopefully,” Hoverson added, “we’ll get to the point where this will not be particularly newsworthy anymore.”
Source: Jill Pavlak, Deb Loch, Doug Hoverson
Writer: Kyle Mianulli