As I love to travel to discover beer, I also love the people you meet along the way. I am thankful for social media and new technology that it seems like good friends from New Zealand are sitting in my living room as we can chat whenever we want at the click of a button.
Let's have a look at a few facts about beer and women across the globe.. todays facts are borrowed from Wikipedia as i continue to learn about the history of women and beer this month.
-Perhaps the most noted German brewster is also Bavaria's last mastebrewer nun, Sister Doris Engelhard, who has been plying her craft at Mallersdorf Abbey for over forty years
-An de Ryck, one of the few women brewers in Belgium, has run the De Ryck Brewery (Dutch: Brouwerij De Ryck) since the 1970s and has won several awards for beers she has produced.
-In many traditional African cultures, beer is still made only by women. In commercial breweries, though women are often partners with their spouses, only about 6 are operated by women brewers. One of these, Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, is a brewer, brewery owner and the first black South African accredited as a trainer for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling and as a certified beer judge for the South Africa Beer Judging Certification Program.
-In Nepal, as has been done for centuries, women brew raksi, a pungent alcoholic beverage made from rice. It was originally used for ceremonial purposes in Hindu and Buddhist rites, but is such a key part of customary life in the Kathmandu valley, that authorities routinely ignore legal prohibitions against production and consumption. Women traditionally engage in the month-long brewing process and sell their excess raksi to restaurants for their patrons.
-In Japan, after the commercialization of brewing, sake brewers, known as tōji (Japanese: 杜氏) were for generations, migrants who traveled from brewery to brewery and worked during the winter brewing season. As sake sales began to plummet and the number of trained tōji declined, owners began to take on the tasks of brewing themselves. Though still a male-dominated field, as of 2015, there are approximately 20 female tōji brewing in Japan.
-In Latin America, chicha is still widely produced by women and consumed daily by adults and children, as it typically has a low alcohol content. In Ecuador women harvest yucca, boil the roots, pound it into a paste and then chew the paste, in much the same way as their ancestors did, to break down the starches and begin the fermentation process.
-Bolivian women make beer from roasted barley, which is then chewed to begin the fermentation process and is served daily as a dietary supplement.
-In Australia evidence points to indigneous labor divisions with men responsible for hunting and women tending to gathering and food preparation. Aboriginal women prepared alcoholic beverages from flowers. Flowers were steeped in water, or pounded to extract the nectar and mixed with honey ants to ferment
Pretty cool stuff eh? I hope you have learned along with me today and think about all of this when you sip a delicious craft beer today!
