women – BrewMinds

Ohio Girls Pint Out Inaugural Meeting

Look out Cincinnati! Lock up your husbands’ and sons’ beer taps because Ohio women have a new drinking club and we are officially open for business. Girls Pint Out is a loosely organized national group with many local chapters but they are all dedicated to bringing together women who love craft beer.

Girls Pint Out originated in Indianapolis, Indiana in early 2010. The Girls Pint Out movement quickly spread to Arizona and Texas with charter chapters. Today, Girls Pint Out has more than 15 chapters nationwide giving women the opportunity to socialize and learn more about craft beer. While educational events are planned with women in mind, our social events are co-ed to encourage craft beer drinkers both male and female to further their journey into the craft beer community.

I was so happy to be able to attend the first meeting of the newly formed Ohio chapter of Girls Pint Out. Terri Houston, the Ohio coordinator of the group, did a fabulous job setting up the event held at Tap House Grill. We had one of the distributors from Mt. Carmel Brewing company there to talk us through a flight of their beer and to answer our questions. We started with a pitcher of the Blonde Ale and I have to say I was very impressed by that one. It was a perfect summer ale; light, refreshing, mildly sweet with a hint of citrus and easy on the hops. I could have drank that all day.

We had a nice selection of appetizers to share and of course we also had to have at least one other pint as well. The Tap House does have a pretty decent selection of beers on tap as you might expect from the name. The conversation was great. I got to finally meet Lindsey from Love Beer Love Food as well as hang out with several other good friends. We discussed our favorite types of beer and breweries, and shared the story of how we got into craft beer. A common comment I heard was basically, “I tried beer in college and it was gross so I never really bothered with it. Then one day I tried good beer and a whole new world opened up.” This experience fits nicely into my own theory of why it is that fewer women drink beer. I believe that a great many women and men try the gross stuff when they are new drinkers and think it is disgusting. But since women aren’t expected to like beer anyway and there are alternatives, they head over to Arbor Mist or Mike’s Hard Lemonade and never give beer another thought. Men, on the other hand, probably grew up seeing their dads and other men drinking beer and their friends give them a hard time if they drink something ‘girly’ so they keep chugging the gross beer until they develop a taste for it. But I digress. The point is that this was a super fun event and I hope to see more women at the next Girls Pint Out. The next meet up is July 15th at the Moerlein Lager House. It will include a beer tasting and talk by Brewmaster Richard Dube. The cost is $15 and includes taster samples and some light appetizers. Space is limited for this event, so please reserve your spot today by emailing terri@girlspintout.com or RSVP on the facebook event page. I plan on being there and I hope to see you there too.

In response to “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer (Part II)

[This is the second half of a guest post submitted to us in response to “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer“. You can find the first half here. Thanks again to Andrea for this great submission! -J]

But. (There’s always a But.) The idea that introducing gender into the conversation is inherently unnecessary or somehow offensive is a little off the mark. And this is where I have to stop taking issue with The Brew Professor’s post and see where he’s coming from.

Advocacy groups like the two aforementioned still exist… why? Well, for the same reason this post wasn’t titled “Newbies, Don’t Fear The Beer.”

Because men have never been taught to fear beer. Men don’t have decades of marketing to unlearn. Men have not been overlooked as consumers, creators, and connoisseurs. Men have very likely never been whispered at, “That has a lot of calories, honey.”

Women are fairly well represented in the craft beer world, but the “mainstream” drinking woman is still heavily favoring wine over beer (see stats above). And here’s the rub. How does one entice a wine or cocktails gal over to “our side”? Clearly not by insulting her current beverage of choice, or her intelligence. (And let’s all agree not to place beer in any kind of antagonistic position to either wine or spirits. If anyone suggested my bourbon, gin, or champagne was inferior to beer in any way, I’d laugh at them.) You drink what you want and what you’re in the mood for. I’m not here to judge anyone. So how do you gently suggest that someone, who might not otherwise be so inclined, try a beer?

Continue reading “In response to “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer (Part II)”

In response to “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer (Part I)

[After the Bew Prof’s “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer” started a good conversation on gender and craft beer, I was contacted by Andrea to do a guest post in response. Like the earlier mentioned article, this one will be split into two parts. The first will address some issues Andrea found in “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer”, while in the second you will find an good analysis of women and beer and some recommendations of her own. Andrea, thank you so much for putting this together and welcome! -J]

A recent post on this blog caught my attention, since I’ve been thinking, reading, and writing a lot lately about women and beer. I’m a woman who genuinely loves beer, and I don’t do it to “be one of the lads,” or to show off, or to look cool in front of guys. I’ve loved the beverage ever since I can remember. As a kid, I begged for sips of my dad’s beer (he only ever let me have the tiniest sip of the foam); as a teenager, I visited the Czech Republic, where my mom is from, and reaffirmed my love of beer. Now, I trade feats of connoisseurship with my husband, who is only too happy to while away hours poring over the selection at our local emporium and spend entire holidays in Belgium with me. I love beer so much that when I meet someone who doesn’t care for it, I sort of want to convert them. So I understand the impulse behind “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer.” I believe it was a well-intentioned missive that came from a good place and had an honorable goal – to see more women get into craft beer. Still, there were a few missteps that rightfully irritated some of the commenters, and I wanted to address them here in a little more detail.

First off, The Brew Professor admits that his post contained “generous helpings of broad assumptions and stereotyping. Most of this is observational ‘fact’ that I have experienced personally.” This weakened his argument upfront, which is a shame, since literally two minutes of research would’ve yielded some statistics that might have strengthened his position. Let’s take a look at a recent Gallup poll for starters: the alcoholic beverage most consumed by men is, by a wide margin, beer (55%); for women, it’s wine (52%), followed by a fairly even split between liquor (22%) and beer (23%).

So instead of throwing out some nebulous anecdotal evidence, he could’ve started with something a little more concrete, and then maybe we could’ve had a real conversation about those numbers, and what they mean.

Secondly, he chose absolutely the wrong wording in the wrong forum. On this blog, you’re dealing with a constituency of beer drinkers, male and female. To speak to this audience from the position he took, e.g. that women need instruction on the ways of beer, was somewhat poorly thought out. Granted there are some spaces where this might be appropriate, but this blog wasn’t one of them. Furthermore, statements like “The problem with experimenting with real beer is that the selection process can be extremely intimidating” are in no way gender specific. It is no more intimidating to women just getting into craft beer than it is to men just getting into craft beer, which many commenters pointed out.

Finally, and this speaks again to the issue of research, The Brew Professor says:

“Okay, ladies. Why is the craft beer movement mostly driven by men? What is holding you back from trying more beer? In my experience, it is inexperience.”

Hmmm, wrong. The craft beer movement isn’t where the women aren’t (if you follow me). There are plenty of female brewers, sellers, journalists, and drinkers in this milieu. There is still a small imbalance to address, granted, but advocacy groups like the Barley’s Angels and Girl’s Pint Out are working to educate and empower women to buy, drink, and order beer with confidence. On the consumer side of things, it’s the macro brewers who have much, much more of a gender problem than the craft beer world.

Come back tomorrow to catch the second half of Andrea’s piece!

Andrea Janes lives, drinks, and writes in Brooklyn, New York. When not trying new beers, she writes horror stories and leads ghost tours of the city. Her story collection, BOROUGHS OF THE DEAD, is available on Amazon. She can be found on Twitter @SpinsterAunt and on Untappd (Andrea J).

BrewProf – “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer” Part I

BrewProf – “Women, Don’t Fear the Beer” Part II

Andrea Jane – In response to “Women Don’t Fear the Beer” Part II