Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, Martha, wrote to her own daughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, on the occasion of Ellen’s marriage. Postmarking her letter to Boston from Virginia, Martha said she would not be sending Ellen the family’s beer recipes. A fine young woman like Ellen wouldn’t need them, as Martha didn’t “presume” Ellen would ever brew her own beer.
Whether Martha was correct is lost to history. But the presumption itself is all too common. While women have been at the forefront of beer brewing for centuries, they have never received the credit they deserve.
Tara Nurin, a journalist and writer (who reported for Charlottesville’s WVIR years ago), is out to change that. The note about TJ’s granddaughter shows up in her book, A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches and CEOs. In it, Turin tracks the history of beer through the glasses of women going back to the beginnings of the beverage.
“As divisions of labor formed along gender lines, perhaps with the gradual development of tools for hunting large game and weapons for fighting foreign clans…beer making fell to the women,” Nurin writes in the book, which will be featured in a virtual discussion and tasting on March 18.
Libby Roether, innovation brewmaster at Devils Backbone Brewing Co., will host a virtual tasting of four beers brewed with women in mind: All Dolled Up, an aperitivo-style spritz ale, Suffragette Sour, Bomba Ass Queen pale ale, and Equal Pay IPA. Folks who want to sip along can pick up a Bounce Box of brews at the DB brewery off 151 in Roseland.
Roether, who’s read A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse twice, will also participate in the discussion.
“There are so many women that are mentioned in the book that I know, and for a lot of these women, I didn’t even know all of their amazing accomplishments,” she says. “Every chapter, I was surprised by the history and the way everything evolved.”
At its heart, Nurin’s book is about inequality. Women have invariably been replaced in the modern beer consciousness, not to mention the history books, by men. From Suzanne Stern, who co-founded famed craft brew trailblazer New Albion Brewing Company but was shoved from the spotlight by the surly Jack McAuliffe, to women like Roether, who all too often cede recognition to the burly bearded brewers of today, circumstances have conspired to keep women out of craft beer’s halo.
And while that’s not right, Nurin thinks things may be changing.
“With craft brewing, we are finally seeing a reversal and women reentering the industry,” she says. “The more women who do reenter the industry, the more accepted and mainstream women being in beer will be. And I think that will encourage other women to get into beer and break down some of these stereotypes that Libby hears all the time, like ‘do you know anything about beer?’ That is just the beginning of misogyny.”
Tara Nurin will discuss her book, A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches and CEOs, with Devils Backbone Brewing Co. brewmaster Libby Roether at Reading Under the Influence, a virtual discussion held on March 18 at 8pm.