AKA ‘the history of brewing’.
For most of human history, if you wanted a beer, you went to see a woman.
Beer was women's work. For thousands of years across countless cultures, brewing was domestic art, music like cooking or child-rearing, performed in the home by women for their families and communities. Women invented beer, perfected it, commercialised it and then were pushed out of, and erased, from the industry they built.
It all began around 7000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria. This is where the first evidence of beer production has been found- and it was women brewing and selling it. There was a Sumerian goddess named Ninkasi who was the deity of beer and the oldest known beer recipe is a 4000 year old poem known as the ‘Hymn of Ninkasi’. Women weren’t just brewers, they were priestesses performing sacred rituals.
Beer was a dietary staple in ancient Egypt as it was safer to drink than water. Women brewed it in their homes and sold it in the markets. Workers who built the pyramids were even paid in beer. In medieval Europe, brewing was still the domain of women. Ale-wives and brewsters produced beer in their homes, it was an extension of baking bread. Once again, beer was safer to drink than water, as well as being nutritious and calorific. Women in every household brewed using grain, water and whatever herbs or spices were available.
Alewives weren’t only brewing for their families- many were running businesses. Women sold beer from their homes, at markets and in rudimentary alehouses. Alewives were quite successful and were respected artisans and entrepreneurs. That is, until men wanted in on the action.
By the 15th and 16th centuries brewing was becoming very profitable. Hops were introduced and the once domestic trade began industrialising. Men with capital decided they wanted to professionalise and control the trade.
And so the witch hunts began!
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of women were accused of witchcraft and executed across Europe and Colonial America. Alewives were disproportionately targeted.
Think of the stereotypical imagery of a witch: a cauldron, a pointy hat, a broomstick, potions and a cat. Alewives used a cauldron (a brew kettle), wore tall pointy hats to be seen in the marketplace, they hung a broom outside their homes to advertise a batch of ale was ready for sale, and often kept a cat to keep mice away from the grain. The witch stereotype was lifted almost directly from the alewife.
Accusations of witchcraft became a convenient tool to eliminate competition and reinforce patriarchal control. Alewives were accused of using witchcraft to make their ale more potent and of poisoning customers. Many were tried, tortured and killed.
The association between brewing and witchcraft tainted the trade. It became dangerous and socially unacceptable for women to brew commercially. Legal and economic systems continued to attack women, with brewing guilds excluding women. Laws were passed requiring brewers to be licensed but licences were rarely granted to women. Women were forced to sell their breweries or hand control to male relatives.
By the 17th century, commercial brewing was a male-dominated industry. Thousands of years of women’s work and knowledge was co-opted and rebranded as men’s work. The industrial revolution supercharged the erasure of women from brewing. Brewing moved from small alehouses into huge factories. By the 19th century, brewing was an industrial, scientific and ‘masculine’ profession. Beer advertising reinforced the shift, depicting beer as a drink brewed by men for men.
Fast forward to the late 20th and early 21st century and the craft beer revolution. Small-scale brewing, alongside creativity and diversity, became viable again. Despite the prevalent ‘bro culture’...women made a comeback. The beer industry still has a long way to go. It’s still male dominated, and sexism, harassment and exclusion remain to be problems. But, the momentum of women in beer is undeniable. Women are now brewers, brewery owners, cicerones, educators and industry leaders, and they are pushing the industry towards inclusivity and sustainability.
Beer always has been, and always will be, women's work.