Women’s recognition, stake in Colorado beer scene growing
Only 21 percent of breweries out of 2,500 surveyed by Stanford researchers had at least one woman in a top role, the most recent research from 2014 shows.
Despite the low percentage — or perhaps because of it — more than 40 women working in Colorado’s beer industry teamed up on International Women’s Day in early March to create a collaborative beer named Equal Hopportunity Pineapple IPA at the Blue Moon Brewery in RiNo.
“Supporting each other is really important,” said Emilie Stewart, Blue Moon’s pilot brewer and one of the women behind the Denver chapter of the Pink Boots Society, an association for women in the beer industry. “Women in the brewing industry have grown from what it once was, but it’s still not where it needs to be.”
The Pink Boots Society held the collaborative brewing event on March 8. Chapters across the nation, and a few across the globe in places like South America and Australia, brewed their own styles of beers using the same mix of hops. The beer will soon be available at select breweries starting April 10.
During the brewing process, about a dozen women watched Stewart send malt
and water through a mash tun. Meanwhile, others tasted beers while more swapped stories from their breweries.
Pink Boots Society had been trying to start a chapter in Denver but it never took off until April 2017. Among the women present during the brew day, there appeared to be a consensus: More and more women are both joining the beer industry and being accepted in the male-dominated world.
Dev Adams, an advanced cicerone who runs Miss Lupulin Libations, and Bess Dougherty, head brewer of The Grateful Gnome, have both been in the local industry for quite some time. When they started, there were only a handful of other women. Of those, most worked in marketing positions instead of as owners, quality assurance analysts or brewers. The number has skyrocketed in the past six or so years, Adams said.
There is very little data available for the number of women in the beer industry. In 2007, Pink Boots Society founder Teri Fahrendorf created a list of every female brewer following a five-month road trip visiting breweries and distilleries across the country. It was only 60 women deep. Now, the organization’s Denver chapter alone has more women than that — although, the chapter includes women in the industry who are not brewers.
Additionally, data from the national Brewers Association said women made up 28 percent of weekly craft beer drinkers in 2016, up from 25 percent the year before. Similarly, in 2016, women accounted for more than one-third of new craft drinkers.
“It’s been amazing for me to see how women in the industry have been growing,” Adams said.
Yet problems still exist, notably a lack of women in leadership roles. There are other lingering issues, too.
“One of the biggest ones for me is people believing and trusting that I know what I’m talking about,” said Gates Minis, who works at the front of the house for Woods Boss Brewing Company in Denver.
Adams, Dougherty and Barbara McDonald, an assistant brewer at Dean & Co. Brewing, were chatting with Minis at the brewery and agreed with her frustration.
The four added that it can be hard for women to find someone to give them a chance to break into the industry. Or, even after getting the job, a brewery may not trust a woman enough to let her do it. There are other times women may be doing a job but not getting the title that goes along with it.
The four said they now work with men who trust their expertise. Much of the dismissing they experience comes from people either out of the industry or others who don’t know them, they said. Adams said what the industry needs more of is men acting as advocates for women.
Despite this, women are still willing — and wanting — to join the boy’s club. Part of that growth is driven by women seeing others who have already carved a path, Dougherty said, pointing to industry giants like Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewing co-founder and CEO Kim Jordan.
“I think a lot of it is the loud people that came before me being outspoken and vocal,” Dougherty said.
And that’s where groups like the Pink Boots Society come in. Fahrendorf, the first woman craft brewmaster west of the Rockies, created the organization in 2007 following her road trip.
Stone Brewing’s small batch brewer Laura Ulrich held the society’s first meeting in San Diego the next year with 16 women brewers present — and six women beer writers. Now there are more than 2,700 members.
It’s for women working in all areas of the beer industry from brewing and front of the house to owning and marketing. The society’s focus is education, bringing in experts from the industry to talk about everything from the brewing process to the legal side of owning a brewery.
The society has been trying to build a chapter in Denver, where the annual Great American Beer Festival takes place, but there was never enough volunteer power to really get it off the ground, Executive Director Emily Engdahl said.
Last year, the society put out a call for Denver’s beer women to start up a chapter. Three women — Stewart, Melissa Bosak, who was director of operations at Crazy Mountain Brewing Company last year but now works at MillerCoors, and Erin Cox, who is a quality assurance analyst at Great Divide Brewing Company — answered.
About 15 people showed up at the first chapter meeting. Now, less than a year later, the chapter has 83 members.
And the Pink Boots Society isn’t the only group trying to make the industry more welcoming to women.
Girls Pint Out is a national organization born out of Indianapolis that works to build a community of women who love craft beer. Women Enjoying Beers is a consulting firm in Oregon focused on marketing beer to women. And last year, the national Brewers Association changed its advertising and marketing codes to crack down on sexually explicit, lewd or demeaning brand names and labels.
Despite some of its problems with a lack of female leadership and support, the women of the Pink Boots Society love the beer industry, talking at length that day at Blue Moon Brewery about how collaborative and supportive it is.
“The more of us there are, the more noise we make, the more welcoming it’ll be,” Dougherty said.