Women Dominated Beer Brewing Until They Were Accused of Being Witches

[demmiblue]

What do witches have to do with your favorite beer?

When I pose this question to students in my American literature and culture classes, I receive stunned silence or nervous laughs. The Sanderson sisters didn’t chug down bottles of Sam Adams in “Hocus Pocus.” But the history of beer points to a not-so-magical legacy of transatlantic slander and gender roles.

Up until the 1500s, brewing was primarily women’s work—that is, until a smear campaign accused women brewers of being witches. Much of the iconography we associate with witches today, from the pointy hat to the broom, may have emerged from their connection to female brewers.

Humans have been drinking beer for almost 7,000 years, and the original brewers were women. From the Vikings to the Egyptians, women brewed beer both for religious ceremonies and to make a practical, calorie-rich beverage for the home.

In fact, the nun Hildegard von Bingen, who lived in modern-day Germany, famously wrote about hops in the 12th century and added the ingredient to her beer recipe.

From the Stone Age to the 1700s, ale – and, later, beer – was a household staple for most families in England and other parts of Europe. The drink was an inexpensive way to consume and preserve grains. For the working class, beer provided an important source of nutrients, full of carbohydrates and proteins. Because the beverage was such a common part of the average person’s diet, fermenting was, for many women, one of their normal household tasks.

Some enterprising women took this household skill to the marketplace and began selling beer. Widows or unmarried women used their fermentation prowess to earn some extra money, while married women partnered with their husbands to run their beer business.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-used-dominate-beer-industry-until-witch-accusations-started-pouring-180977171/#.YEjLeAK6P5J.facebook

[nycbos]

1. Did they use the duck test?

Sorry couldn't resist.

[samnsara]

2. women were also the doctors until the men declared them witches...

[niyad]

3. Thank you or this most interesting article. Would you consider cross-posting in Women's Rights

And Issues? Thanks in advance.

[demmiblue]

9. Done!

[markie]

4. interesting...

when I was working near Shiner, TX, I visited the Shiner Brewery there (about 10 years ago)... I distinctly remember reading a plaque there that touted a woman that had run the brewery... now I look and there are nothing but men involved ...don't think I was imagining things

history is continually being rewritten or skewed

[niyad]

10. Patriarchal history disappears women.

[tanyev]

5. Interesting.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. And in Cuba, cigars were sold with the advert that the tobacco leaves were

rolled on the thighs of maidens.

Beer, however, was probably something that was in direct competition with an enterprise owned by men.

[Delmette2.0]

7. Maybe the men back then just wanted in on the profits.

Just asking.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. They would have been exploiting widowed or single women.

So typical.

[wnylib]

11. This was one of the things I learned about

British and colonial American history when I did some genealogy research. One of my 17th century Puritan ancestors had an ale recipe from her mother that was well liked, so her husband opened a tavern in their colonial Massachusetts village. After she died, her husband remarried, moved to Connecticut, and deeded the family home to his son, who continued to run a tavern from the house with the help of his sister, who followed her mother's and grandmother's ale recipe.