It’s women, not men, who’ve brewed beer throughout most of human history. Their role as family and village brewer lasted for hundreds of thousands of years—through the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization, the reign of Cleopatra, the witch trials of early modern Europe, and the settling of colonial America. A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse celebrates the contributions and influence of female brewers and explores the forces that have erased them from the brewing world.

It’s a history that’s simultaneously inspiring and demeaning. Wherever and whenever the cottage brewing industry has grown profitable, politics, religion, and capitalism have grown greedy. On a macro scale, men have repeatedly seized control and forced women out of the business. Other times, women have simply lost the minimal independence, respect, and economic power brewing brought them.

But there are more breweries now than at any time in American history and today women serve as founder, CEO, or head brewer at more than one thousand of them.

As women continue to work hard for equal treatment and recognition in the industry, author Tara Nurin shows readers that women have been—and are once again becoming—relevant in the brewing world.

A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse

Foreword by Terri Fahrendorf
Time Line
Preface

1. The Rebeginning
2. Planting the Seed
3. Rainbows End down That Highway
4. The Hymn to Ninkasi
5. The Birth of Beervana
6. Of Goddesses and High Priestesses
7. Decentralization
8. Brew Like an Egyptian
9. The Great Eastward Migration
10. What’s Past Is Prologue
11. Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew
12. It’s a Sahti Paati
13. Slow Food, Slower Beer
14. B(eer) Is for Barbarians
15. The Last of the First Craft Brewery Women
16. The Fatherland
17. Boom and Bust
18. Wallflower at the Orgy
19. Alewives Unflattered
20. Beer’s Bridge over Troubled Water
21. Strange Brew: Did Renaissance Brewers Practice Fermentation… Or Witchcraft?
22. These Boots Are Made for Brewing
23. Coming to America
24. From the Back Office to the Boardroom
25. Rivers of Lager Flow Toward Temperance
26. The Customer Is Sometimes Right
27. Prohibited from the Halls of Power No More
28. Big Boss Ladies and the Family Ties That Bind
29. Don’t Worry, Darling, You Didn’t Burn the Beer
30. Beyond Beards, Beyond Breasts
31. It’s a Woman’s World After All
32. Raging Bitches
33. That’s Right, the Women Are Smarter
34. Sisters Are Brewing It for Themselves

Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
About the Authors