So, hot on the story about female influencers in beer, I read about women in the industry who become parents while working.
On the one hand: it’s pretty cool to see people working jobs they love for as long as they feel capable. On the other, the stark contrast between the brewer in Australia and the ones profiled in America remind me that we have a long way to go as a country, to enhance the lives of citizens.
With the sale of the CBA-which notably includes Portland’s Widmer brewing and Seattle’s Red Hook, here’s a bit of inside baseball on the subject.
According to the article, the former owners of Widmer have no regrets and I’m not here to insist that they should have them. But I can’t help feeling as if something important is now lost. That notion that the best thing you can do with a business is sell it to someone bigger feels…puny.
In addition, it’s interesting to see how the seeds can be planted for future exploitation. Perhaps exploitation is too strong a word but: from the very beginning, A-B was in position to take advantage of those breweries and to me, their being sold off was inevitable. There was never a plan to expand beyond what A-B was going to give them or get out from under A-B, and once A-B became ABInBev, it was too late.
Mark my words; in ten, fifteen years tops-long enough for those people who are working there now to forget that it was ever an independent entity-Widmer will no longer exist, even in name. It’ll be Budweiser’s Hefe and I think we’ll all be poorer for that.
I thought this was an interesting essay on the roles that female beer influencers play in the craft community. I don’t really have a take on it, though. While I’m suspicious of marketing in any form, so long as it isn’t hurting anyone and the people involved aren’t being jerks…carry on with your bad self?
That said: It’s also another reminder that the industry has a ways to go when it comes to how we treat women. Because they’re making great strides in other countries…the same should be said of the US.
NPR recently did a neat interview with Theresa McCulla of the Smithsonian, who I first heard about in 2017 and probably has one of the coolest jobs ever!
I’m sure that no one will really be surprised that the craft brewing industry is full of white men.
This is expected but sad for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that brewing has a history filled with women and people of color.
However, the bigger issue is that brewing being full of white guys means that the rest of us suffer. If 99% of the input is from the same user, then where do the new, cool ideas actually come from?
This isn’t to dismiss the efforts of talented people who helped create the craft brewing industry as we know it. It’s just to acknowledge that there were women and not-white people who also did that and deserve the opportunity to make contributions and be acknowledged on the same level.
A friend sent me this article about hops and their purpose in brewing, along with a list of every variety out there and their general purposes.
Inside that article is this link that goes to a Google doc spreadsheet which has overviews of damn near every ingredient one might put in a beer.
Which seems pretty helpful to me!
I suppose it was only a matter of time, once brut IPAs were developed that brut lagers would be a thing. I know myself well enough to know that I’ll try one, if I see one, but I have a strong suspicion that adding brut characteristics to a lager goes against what lagers are supposed to be about.
Sometimes that works…but not frequently.
