Stephen Beaumont on
Beer and Gender
While you are at the bar making observations, there is another matter into which you may wish to delve, although it will only be observable in a bar with a decent beer selection. It is, in a way, the single most liberating consequence of the craft beer renaissance and perhaps the most dramatic, too. For the first time in centuries, women are claiming beer as their own.
It may not seem like much of a development, but after decades of "Bud men" and "me and the boys and our 50" (the latter a long-time Labatt ad), the fact that craft beer has opened its arms to the female gender represents no small turning point. You can see it at the bars and you can see it at the beer festivals; craft beer has (mercifully) become a genderless drink.
I first observed the female part of the craft brewing equation at the 1992 Great American Beer Festival. While I had certainly noticed that many women were entering the industry on the production side, I had not until then taken stock of the role women played on the consumption end of things. At the GABF, however, it was an unavoidable fact: women in twos, threes or larger groups were to be found all around the festival hall, enjoying their beer and talking about it amongst themselves. And with nary a stereotypically beer-bellied boyfriend in sight.
The female role in the profile of the average craft beer consumer has not gone unnoticed by the industry, either. Microbreweries are now keenly aware that women constitute a significant portion of their market and they are responding appropriately. Most brewpubs, or at least those that emphasize the quality of their beer, present female-friendly environments devoid of the trappings of the male domain, and microbreweries take care to avoid any hints of sexism in their advertising. In the 1990's, no smart small brewery owner is about to ignore up to half of his or her customer base.
If the gender factor in craft brewing is one that is worth developing further, John Hall is the man who is developing it. Hall is the owner of the Goose Island Brewing Company in Chicago and, by my experience, one very observant man. For it was John who took my suggestion that women were enjoying craft beer as much as men and enhanced it one step further. Women, he said, were not only enjoying good beer, they were more experimental about doing so than men.
John's observation, made in a semi-secluded corner of his brewpub, was that women were more likely than guys to try darker, heavier and stranger brews. The inclination to try new things, he maintained, seemed to come more easily to women than men and it showed in the beers they chose, or at least it did at Goose Island.
To illustrate his point, we walked out to the packed bar area and observed the many bi-gender groups drinking at the pub. Sure enough, at almost every table, most men were sipping lighter lagers, while the majority of women were enjoying darker and heavier brews. That one night, at least, the women certainly seemed to be in a much more experimental state of mind than the men.
Since that time, I have observed this practice on numerous occasions, but have seen the theory fail many times, as well. As much as that side of the equation calls for further research, the pivotal role that women are now playing in the development of the microbrewing industry is beyond dispute. For the consumer, this refreshing development means that men and women have finally found a common beverage bond.
A Taste for Beer © Stephen Beaumont, 1995
For Ordering Information, Please See Merchandise
