An exploration of the existence of stereotypes and sexism in the UK brewing industry and culture
ALES &
FEMALES
Britain’s first brewster festival to return for third year
31 July 2015
This beer was brewed by a woman
Credit: FEM.ALE festival
The first beer festival in Britain solely selling ale brewed by women is set to return for the third time in summer next year.
FEM.ALE festival was launched in 2014 as part of the wider City of Ale Festival in Norwich.
Following its success, the Plasters’ Arms pub swapped its regular pumps again in May this year for 31 different beers all brewed by women from across the country.
Festival organiser Erica Horton is already
planning for its 2016 return, with a view to expanding nationally and even globally.
She told ALES & FEMALES: “We're speaking with other, bigger venues and we're hoping to curate some other events to bring more brewster beers to bars elsewhere in Norwich.
“We're also talking to pubs across the UK about hosting brewster beer festivals and there are some great networks of female brewers that span across the globe that we'd like to get involved with.
“It's not just us celebrating women in the beer industry. There are some amazing women working really hard to build communities of female brewers and are producing some excellent beers in the process.”
She said the first festival in 2014 was the Plasters’ Arms’ busiest weekend of the year according to its landlord Ben Thompson. This year’s four-day event brought a similar result, with almost all its brewster beers selling out.
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But Horton, who is also a Television Studies PHD student at the University of East Anglia, said not everyone initially understood the point in the festival.
She told ALES & FEMALES: “We get some fairly obvious comments about whether or not the beer is different because it’s made by a woman or why someone would run an event that sells beer exclusively made by women.
“But it doesn’t take long to explain that no, the beers aren’t fundamentally different and women are very much underrepresented in the brewing industry so to celebrate the talented women that make such great beer and to give them a
specific celebration certainly seems important to me.
“I think any industry where a certain group of people are underrepresented in the workforce should look hard at why that might be and that's what we encourage people to do at FEM.ALE.”
The festival, which is funded by the Norwich Arts Centre and grassroots-supporting company Norse, also featured tasting sessions, live music and female speakers from a variety of positions within the brewing business.