‘It’s hard to explain the magic of beer’

Jane Kershaw, recently crowned Brewer of the Year, has tapped into a very special heritage, says Angela Epstein

It’s first light on a bitterly cold winter’s morning and Jane Kershaw is beaming over what appears to be a giant vat of porridge. A slight figure in a polo shirt and baggy overtrousers, she plunges an oversized dipstick into the container and offers a beatific smile. “It’s just wonderful, isn’t it?” she says of what appears to be Daddy Bear’s breakfast.

You and I might struggle to share such enthusiasm, especially at this time of the morning. But for Kershaw, an award-winning brewer at the Joseph Holt brewery in Manchester, overseeing the contents of a huge fermenting barrel is about as close to heaven as it gets. Especially since, every day, this one container alone produces about a third of the 155,000 pints of beer made by the company.

“It’s hard to really explain the magic involved in making beer,” continues Kershaw, 33, who was recently crowned Brewer of the Year by the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group. “But I love everything about it. Like when the coppers are boiling at 101 degrees. I love the yeast and the fermentation process. The smell of the wort and the hops. It’s all magic.”

For many, the beer world has always been, well, quintessentially male. All that blokeish barroom philosophising while overhead a TV set screens the latest Sky Sports football match. But change is in the air.

Last year, in a move to stamp out old-fashioned discriminatory attitudes, the Campaign for Real Ale banned beers featuring sexist names at its flagship Great British Beer Festival. Out, too, went pump clips featuring scantily-clad buxom women. Yet such seaside-postcard sexism is only part of the story.

Kershaw believes that pubs themselves are now so much more accessible and inviting to all. Not just men but women who come in alone or with female friends, families, and solo diners. “Of course we want everyone to feel comfortable in our pubs,” she says, “and to enjoy our food and award-winning beers. But there are things that women in particular appreciate in a pub. Having really lovely lavatories or lighter, more quirky décor. So they can walk in by themselves and not feel remotely uncomfortable.”

Certainly it’s an ethos reflected in the 127 pubs owned by Joseph Holt across the north-west of England.