Female brewers are back – 500 years since their heyday

Telegraph

07-03-2025

In the Middle Ages, beer was a staple part of the diet and brewing was a woman's game. English alewives would brew the beer for their household and sell a portion to their neighbours. This side hustle might supplement the family income for married women, or provide a vital financial lifeline for those who were single or widowed.
'Women have always been present in the history of beer in the UK,' says historian Dr Christina Wade,the author of a new book Filthy Queens: A History of Beer in Ireland. 'Scholarly consensus is that factors like the increased demand for ale after the Black Death coupled with the rise of guilds and use of hops resulted in many women being pushed out of commercial brewing in favour of men over a period of centuries.'
Those lucky enough to survive the plague epidemic saw their quality of life improve. With a smaller workforce available, wages were higher and prices went down. People started to move to urban centres and developed a taste for drinking in alehouses rather than at home – the ancestors of our modern pubs.
Gradually, this led to the commercialisation of ale and men sniffed an opportunity to make a tidy profit from brewing for the first time. Over the centuries that followed, the brewing industry slowly developed and was regulated and taxed for the first time.
Women brewing in the traditional way were marginalised and even slandered as men sought to divert the profits to their own pockets. In 1540, the women of Chester were banned from selling ale, for fear that they would use their sexual wiles to spread immorality. Countless alewives were accused of cheating their customers.
By the 19th century, many women ran pubs and alehouses, but female brewers were incredibly rare. Huge commercial breweries had sprung up in England and were dominating the global beer market, but they were staffed only by men, until women stepped in to pick up the slack during the world wars.
That didn't stick, and it is only in living memory that women have been making a decisive return to the brewhouse. Sara Barton was one of the early pioneers. She became one of Courage Brewery's first female production managers in 1988, eventually moving on to found Brewsters Brewery in Lincolnshire.
Her talent was quickly recognised and Brewsters stacked up countless industry accolades. In 2012, she was the first woman to be named Brewer of the Year by the British Guild of Beer Writers.
Barton didn't pull up the ladder behind her. She started Project Venus in 2011 with Sophie de Ronde, the head brewer at Burnt Mill in Suffolk. Together, they created a professional network and much-needed source of support for women brewing in the UK.
Using collaborative brew days as a focal point, de Ronde took the endeavour further, founding the International Women's Collaborative Brew Day (IWCBD). Female brewers and members of the public come together to brew beers that raise money in support of women's charities. Collaboration brews have been taking place since 2014, centred around International Women's Day on March 8.
'I think for women in the industry, IWCBD has been huge,' says de Ronde. 'There are certainly people that have started working in brewing after joining a brew day. It has opened up the doors.'
Equality has not yet been achieved, but new female brewers are able to stand on the shoulders of giants such as Barton and de Ronde and benefit from the networks that they established.
'While the industry still has its challenges in terms of representation, I've found that women are actively lifting each other up,' says Lara Lopes, head brewer at Round Corner Brewing in Melton Mowbray. 'That's been invaluable to me. The industry is evolving, and I'm excited to be part of that change.'
Lopes is at the forefront of the new wave, winning Brewers Journal' s coveted Young Brewer of the Year award in 2022. Her background as a mechanical engineer meant that the precision, problem-solving and creativity of brewing quickly drew her in.
'I love that brewing was historically a female-led craft,' says the Brazilian-born Lopes. 'I see it as a reminder that we're not breaking new ground; we're reclaiming our place in an industry that women helped build.'
Alice Batham grew up in breweries; she remembers her dad putting her and her sisters in the empty fermenting vessels of the iconic Bathams Brewery in the Black Country when they were children. But it was not a done deal that she would follow him into the family business.
'There was never any pressure or obligation,' Batham recalls. 'My parents wanted me and my sisters to enter the business of our own accord.'
Batham is now the head brewer at Bathams, the sixth generation to lead production at the family business which has been operating since 1877. After a masters in brewing science, her first job was working under Barton at Brewsters.
'I learnt so much from Sara,' Batham says. 'She has so much insight having worked in the industry most of her career. She gave me the freedom to try new processes and develop recipes which I really valued.'
Having learnt her trade at other breweries, Batham made the decision to return to Bathams during Covid – the family was in shock at having to close the brewery and small chain of pubs for the first time since the 19th century. She feels a connection with female brewers of the past in a way that few others can, since it was her great, great, great-grandmother who initially started home-brewing the foundation of Bathams' much-loved recipes.
'Brewing beer from recipes passed down through generations feels incredibly special,' she says. 'There have been moments of underlying misogyny throughout my career so far, but on the whole, the industry has been incredibly welcoming. Sometimes men can be condescending if they see me doing manual work – I tend to take little notice of those outdated attitudes.'
There is still work to be done, and young brewers are taking up the challenge enthusiastically. Sophie Ashdown is the production director at Buxton Brewery. She feels that brewing has challenged her to grow.
'The barrier for me was not feeling heard when I first started out, and learning how to overcome that. I had to make my voice louder. Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has built me up and given me more confidence to speak up and help make change.'
Chelsea Craigie has spent four years working her way up to becoming a brewer at Double Barrelled Brewing in Reading. She started out behind the bar in brewery taprooms, and wanted to know more about how beer was produced.
'Back then we were only a team of four people,' says Craigie. 'So I was getting involved on canning days. I thought it was super cool. It used to blow my mind that you could make a beer from start to finish.'
Learning from the other brewers and then taking her general certificate of brewing has given her a lot of background knowledge, but it isn't always plain sailing.
'I've been quite lucky because everyone at Double Barrelled is really good at respecting everyone's opinions. It doesn't matter if you're female or not. But there are times when people turn up to pick up a pallet and they say, 'Where's the brewer?' or 'Who can drive a forklift?' I think that's definitely just because I'm a woman.'
It seems like the female brewers are doing everything right, as they have done for centuries. It's just men's attitudes that need to catch up.