On my Beerbox #3: Brief Thoughts on Women in Beer

    It's time again when I pluck something from the news and rant a bit about it... On my Beerbox #3!

    Featured in the beery news this week, Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) founder Jim Koch has been catching a bit of heat for his seeming neglect of women when it comes to membership on the company's board of directors.  Now, as I've only read a couple of articles on this, I don't feel justified commenting on the issue directly.  Those of us who have seen the documentary Beer Wars might remember that one of the main focuses was on Rhonda Kallman, former founding partner and Executive Vice President of sales and brand development for Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams).  So, evidently, Koch can't eaxctly be accused of not having women in a position of power in the company, even if there's been a decided lack of gender diversity on the board.  Again, I'm sure there are any number of people that could "well, actually" me either way with the facts about what's going down at Sam Adams, but this ain't about that.

    I kind of got thinking about "perception" in craft beer when I was out at some random sports bar the other night.  This has been a pretty big thing in the "craft vs crafty" argument that's been going on since the day before forever.  Anyway, as I sat looking over the tap list, I found nothing that interested me at all and thought "why can't they just have one or two craft selections".  Taking a step back, I actually counted the taps and, thanks to several selections from both Sam Adams and Harpoon Brewery, found that in fact MOST of the taps were craft.  There was also a couple of Goose Island Beer Co taps (and it could be argued either way if this company deserves the "craft" moniker or not), one tap of Curious Traveler Shandy from the Sam Adams-backed Traveler Beer Company, one tap of Guinness Draught and then you Buds, Bud Lights, Shock Tops, etc.  But, to a spoiled Bostonian Beer geek like moi, this initially registered as no craft at all.

   At this point, you might ask yourself what the hell this has to do with women.  I think it had something to do with the number of backwards baseball caps and pitchers consumed with 25 cent wings at this place.  See, these are the craft beers that toe the line.  The beers that are technically craft, but are cheap enough and palatable (lack of flavor, IMO) enough to appeal to the bro bar crowd.

    It seems a dubious honor that the most successful craft beers are rewarded in this way, being pounded by bros whose exposure to the cross section of women and beer looks something like a bartender in tight pants or the girl in the bikini on the commercial.  This is the crowd that creates the stereotype that men like beer and women like wine or... I don't know.  Fruity drinks or maybe a low carb beer or some other awful concoction.  Patriarchy aside, stereotypes are only true insofar as the size of the lens you use.  While this bar I was at might have been representative of one corner of the beer world (or, sigh, more like three corners of it), there are more women in beer than you can non-threateningly shake a stick at.

    My bottle shop of choice, Craft Beer Cellar is owned and operated by two very capable women, Kate Baker and Suzanne Schalow, who know more about beer than a thousand of me, and they have the Cicerone accreditation to prove it.  Hampton, NH now has their own little craft beer store, Top Shelf Brews, run by Susan Hutchinson  Nearby in North Hampton, NH, Throwback Brewery is also wo-manned by two intrepid ladies, Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier.  Several area nano and gypsy brewers are made up of teams consisting of one male and one female, so let's not forget Idle Hands Craft Ales' Grace Tkach, Pretty Things Beer and Ale Projects' Martha Holley-Paquette, Somerville Brewing Company (Slumbrew)'s Caitlin Jewell and Backlash Beer Company's  Maggie Foley.  Now, this is just the women I could think of off the top of my head with no extra research, based on one very small geographical area.  I'm not saying women are represented enough in beer (not by a long shot), but suffice to say no one shouldn't dare say there aren't women in the beer business.  There are excellent women in the beer business.

    So maybe there will be an over-reaction to the Jim Koch thing.  Maybe there will be exactly the right reaction, and the continuous push against the brown glass ceiling will be reinvigorated yet again.  All I'm saying is while we rage for how it should be, let's take stock of what we already have.  You can look at these big craft beer companies that have made it to the bro bars and you'd be forgiven if you got the wrong impression, but from where I'm standing, the women are indeed working it, even if it's from the ground up.  And that's how you win a war.