International Women’s Day & International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day 2021
The team for International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day 2020
Today is International Women’s Day - a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This includes women in the beer industry and community.
International Women’s Day is very important to me, and to women in the beer community and industry. For so long beer has been thought of as a man’s drink, but women have been brewing beer for as long as the beverage has existed.
International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day
The team on International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day 2019
Started by Sophie De Ronde of Burnt Mill Brewery, IWCBD encourages collaboration between women in the beer industry and education to women interested in beer. Many breweries around the world take part through events such as brew days, beer tastings, educational opportunities and meetups.
I, as an individual, have taken part in 2019 and 2020 at Wild Card Brewery in Walthamstow, London. Jaega Wise, the head brewer has been offering an open brew day to any woman who wishes to join, whether they work in the industry or not, for several years.
Cleaning lemon peel for the 2019 brew - Unite Forage
2019 was my first year. IWCBD provides a theme that can be used to design collaboration beers and 2019’s theme was Forage. On arriving at the brewery I was welcomed into the fold, and the work of brewing our foraged beer - a botanical brew with yarrow, nettle and mugwort foraged from the Walthamstow wetlands - was in full swing. The brew also needed a huge number of lemons - the juice and the peel - so a production line was formed and I was put to work. I spent most of the day cleaning the pith off of lemon peel and I loved every minute of it! To be part of something that encompassed so many women and encouraged so many was really amazing! The skills I learned on that day I still use in my brewing now. I also met other brilliant women, both working in the industry and part of the beer community, who I now consider friends.
Cleaning is 90% of beer brewing!
In 2020 the theme was Tribute. Up to Walthamstow, I travelled once again from Kent, this time bringing one of my beer-loving friends with me. Again, brew day was in full swing when we arrived - an IPA to pay tribute to Ada Lovelace was on the agenda this time. The IPA needed less hands-on work from everyone visiting the brewery this time. Jaega had instead organised a lesson on hops. We got into groups and smelled a selection of hops, taking note of what they looked and felt like as well. We were then set the task of identifying the hops again from blind samples. The winning team got a case of beer! This is where my identification of Mosaic from it smelling like broccoli came in handy as we swapped some of our answers after I found the hop that smelled like broccoli… and of course we won! I’m also very proud to say I got to add the last hop addition to the beer and had great fun cleaning out the mash tun ready for the next brew - as they say, 90% of brewing is cleaning!
The last hop addition to Unite Tribute 2020
International Women’s Day 2021
Unfortunately this year we can’t get together to brew, share beers or learn together in the same way. However, IWCBD will continue. You can check out all the events that are happening here on the IWCBD map. I have officially signed up Love Beer Learning and Women’s Pint Club for our first year. Women’s Pint Club have virtually selected, via a series of polls, the style, ingredients and name of a beer that I have home brewed in my kitchen. We chose a jam doughnut stout called Beer is our Jam. If you would like to see the process for this, the live stream is available to replay on the Love Beer Learning Facebook page here.
I’m also going live to talk about Love Beer Learning and Women’s Pint Club on the IWCBD Instagram page at 3.30pm today (Monday 8th March). There are live streams all day from many notable women in beer including Sophie De Ronde, Jaega Wise, Natalya Watson, Mel Mason from Cloudwater, Luci Clayton-Jones from Double Barrelled, Amber Dermulc from Polly’s and Audrey Silver from Pretty Decent Beer Co, to name a few.
Beer Events for International Women’s Day
There are also lots of other beer events happening for IWD. Wild Card Brewery are hosting a beer tasting via their Instagram page from 7pm. Cloudwater are also hosting a live stream discussing their beers and sodas with the women in their team that makes up 50%.
I’m also going live with Craft Beer Pinup aka Kimberly Owens on her Instagram at 4.30pm. She is interviewing people throughout the day. She has a blog post detailing all the events that we currently know about here.
A Woman’s Brew: The Podcast & IWD 2021
American Pale Ale by Mothership Beer
At A Woman’s Brew: The Podcast we’ve also put together a special episode for International Women’s Day. We talk about International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day, drink beer from Mothership Brewery and bring you the viewpoint of women in the beer community.
We gathered women from our Facebook beer group Women’s Pint Club and over a few beers chatted about our experiences, what it’s like to be a woman who enjoys beer and why we love it.
A big thank you to Rachel, Tamsin, Carrie, Jackie, Lucy, Pam and Lisa for sharing your thoughts with us. And if you’d like to join us in Women’s Pint Club you can find us here.
Don’t forget you can listen to more episodes of our podcast here or watch us on YouTube here.
Have we missed anything? Let me know in the comments!
