Women representation in brewing : From Ninkasi to Modern Industry

Since 2014, women brewers, or brewsters, worldwide have been celebrating International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day on March 8, to raise awareness of women in brewing. The event was intended to be part of the United Nations International Women’s Day which pre-dates the Collaboration Brew Day by a few decades, to 1977, itself having the general objective of recognising the achievements of women.

What better way to celebrate both events for 2024 than to consider some of the many achievements that women have made in beer and brewing? Please note, that we’re only going to touch on a couple of highlights. let’s go back far beyond 2014, or 1977, to circa 3000 b.c.e. when brewing, was arguably started by women. Not just any old garden varieties of women’s minds, but priestesses!

The Priestesses of Ninkasi

The historical origins of brewing involve the Sumerian goddess of beer and brewing, Ninkasi, and most importantly her followers; the priestesses of Ninkasi. Ninkasi’s history is interesting and often confusing, but rather than wallow in historical idolatry, let’s just accept that Ninkasi was non-human (a goddess after all), so as iconic as she may have been, what’s more relevant to this article is the priestesses, as they were both human and brewers or more correctly brewsters!

Beer in those times was considered a gift from ‘above’, and when one factor in that beer was a potable (safe to consume) drink, unlike some of the more readily available water sources and was a nutritious form of cereals, with a longer shelf-life than bread, it was both a staple food source as well as a euphoria-inducing drink – indeed a gift from a goddess!

Records show that the workers who constructed the pyramids were paid in part, with beer rations, which were essential in fortifying them for their toils. As beer was a gift from a goddess, it was brewed in temples by Ninkasi’s priestesses, which gave them both social acceptance as brewsters but also divine protection.

The prevalence of brewsters in the brewing industry continued for many centuries particularly as brewing largely remained an unregulated cottage industry, however beginning in Europe during the 13^th to 14^th century, the emerging use of hops, which gave improved shelf-life of beer due to the anti-bacterial properties of hops, coupled with a more commercialized approach to brewing through economies of scale and production efficiencies, led to brewing became increasingly dominated by capital-intensive groups of brewing companies formed through the formation of brewing guilds. Cottage industry brewing, and brewsters, would shrink until a more ‘enlightened’ era dawned which afforded women more equal opportunities. Let’s look at some examples of this.

Professors and Presidents

An area of immense importance in the brewing world is that of leadership in academia. Academia, of course, is where much of the brewing world’s research and education has been conducted, without which the majority of brewing would have remained an art with no scientific explanation. In the 1970s, Professor Anna MacLeod was appointed the world’s first female Professor of Brewing and Biochemistry at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland.

She was also elected to be the first female President of the Institute of Brewing, now the Institute of Brewing & Distilling. Both of these appointments have in many ways set the modern trend of female brewing Professors and Presidents, with several brewing universities worldwide (at least Heriot-Watt University, and Nottingham University both in the UK), having appointed female brewing Professors.

The various global brewing industry associations, such as the Institute of Brewing & Distilling, the American Society of Brewing Chemists, and the Master Brewers’ Association of the Americas all have also had, or currently have female presidents.

Industrialists

It’s not just as Professors and Presidents where women have achieved success, but also as brewery owners and workers. In 2019, The Brewers’ Association, which represents small and independent US craft brewers, reported that 23% of their member brewery owners were women, and 8 and 9% of brewers and production managers were women. In 2021, a Canadian Craft Brewers’ Association survey indicated that a third of management positions in breweries were held by women.

As an aside, these figures appear significantly different, so are we to conclude that much is different between the respective North American craft brewing industries, or much has changed in 2 years, or perhaps that the methodologies behind the two surveys were markedly different? Beware the power of statistics!

Membership of the Institute of Brewing & Distilling was reported in 2015, to show a bias towards younger female members with 22% of female members under 40 years of age compared to 9% of those over 40 years old.

Pink Boots Society, Women's Day — On International Women’s Day, female brewers from Utah gather to participate in the Pink Boots Brew Day, a special event that celebrates and unites women in the brewing industry. This annual occasion is organized by the Pink Boots Society, a global nonprofit dedicated to supporting women beer professionals.

Women as Supertasters ?

A function where women have been shown to measurably excel in the brewing industry is that of a beer sensory analysis or beer tasting. Beer tasting, despite often being labeled as a ‘hobby’ by the recreational drinker, is an essential analytical technique used in brewing to determine the presence and intensity of desirable and undesirable beer aromas and tastes as determined by human tasters, rather than analytical equipment more at home in the chemistry lab of your school days.

Such testing is done by the discerning brewer to ensure that their beers are free of undesirable flavors and aromas and that the desired flavors and aromas are present in the correct quantities and intensities to match the desired beer style, and if necessary allow corrective changes to be made in raw materials and/or the brewing process.

Tasters are trained to identify an array of defined beer aromas and tastes at varying concentrations. Women tasters can detect a range of aromas and tastes at concentrations much reduced than the norm; in short, they are super at tasting…or supertasters, if you will! Studies suggest that 35% of women are supertasters compared to 15% of men.

Other Studies suggest that supertasters have increased numbers of taste buds on their tongue compared to normal or non-tasters and that female supertasters have enhanced numbers of cells and neurons in the region of the brain that receive signals from the nose, which may explain the physiological justification for female supertasters. Interestingly women of childbearing age are better tasters than younger or older women which adds some support to the thesis that taste ability is related to the presence of sex hormones.

Elsewhere it is thought that women have evolved this enhanced taste ability as a survival means to identify mates, children, and family members in large groups, or as a means of detecting potential food that wouldn’t be safe for human consumption, particularly children. Whatever the physiological or evolutionary reasons, women as supertasters are much prized as members of brewery taste teams and are often champion beer tasters.

Close-out

We’ve covered a few selected highlights of women’s achievements in brewing yet there are undoubtedly many, many more. If you’re taking part in celebrating Women’s Day on the 8th of March this year, perhaps whilst guzzling a beer or brewing your beer, then consider the achievements of women in brewing and raise a glass, or two…cheers!

Bob Stafford is an accomplished engineering and beverage consultant with over 25 years of experience in industry and academia in the fields of process & product design, process & product research & development, process improvement & innovation, value-extraction, and training & education.

Resources

Beer Notes: Could you be a Supertaster? Shore Craft Beer
Are Women Better Tasters Than Men? NPR
Brewer’s Association, Brewers Association Announces 2023 Industry Award Winners
The Hymn to Ninkasi, Goddess of Beer, World History Encyclopedia
The truth of woman and beer: Ninkasi, BrewHopping
Brewers Association Releases Brewery Employee Diversity Data for the First Time, CraftBeer.Com

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