It's funny how much people can contribute to a conversation about women and beer.

 

As I spoke with Erica in a pub in Brighton, the landlady Jen, overhearing our conversation, was keen to join in.

 

"So many people don't know women were the original brewers of beer," she sighed, before suddenly dashing upstairs as if she'd just remembered something she'd been waiting for the right moment to talk about.

 

She returned with a bottle of apple and vanilla wheat beer, pointing at the label.

 

"This is from Elgoods & Sons but there aren't even any sons in their family! It's brewed by three

sisters but they have to keep the name," she told us.

 

The belief that women brewers - or brewsters - are don't get enough credit in their profession is

what formed the foundation of FEM.ALE festival.

 

For the last two years in a modest pub in Norwich, the regular pumps have been temporarily

swapped out for beers brewed exclusively by women from all across the country.

 

And both years, that weekend for the Plasters' Arms pub has been the most profitable of its year,

Erica tells me on good authority from landlord, Ben.

 

Though, that could be one of the reasons why Erica's idea didn't initially have the full support of her

university.

 

"Perhaps it was seen as a commercial venture and I was seen as a paid promoter - I'm not - and so the concern was with its relationship to private business rather than the conversations about gender that it started."

 

Erica told me when she approached staff in her media department at UEA, they said they didn't think her taking time to put the festival together was "appropriate" during her PhD.

 

She still ponders why, even now.

 

"When I'm feeling snarky I wonder, was it not appropriate because it's an event about women or because it's in a working class space?"

 

She describes pub culture as a "fascinating and vital site for analysis" but despairs at what she believes are notable gaps in academic research on the topic and on brewsters in general, which suggest that not everyone sees it that way.

 

"How could a space associated with bringing communities together, with being a home away from home, where people come out of choice to construct their leisure time and their own personal identities NOT be a site for cultural analysis?

 

"And how could you not think gender is a huge part of that?"

 

Erica's advisors seemed to come round in the end, as she was nominated for an academic engagement award for FEM.ALE because "it started conversations about feminism and cultural ideas of 'appropriate' gendered behaviours in a space where academia doesn't normally reach," she proudly tells me.

 

She also lets me in on a little secret - plans are already underway for FEM.ALE to branch out for 2016, and talks are circulating about bringing the event to one liberal, southern seaside town in particular...

 

Watch this space.