A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse

A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs

By: Tara Nurin, Teri Fahrendorf - foreword

Narrated by: Nancy Peterson

Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

It's women, not men, who've brewed beer throughout most of human history. Their role as family and village brewer lasted for hundreds of thousands of years - through the earliest days of Mesopotamian civilization, the reign of Cleopatra, the witch trials of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the settling of colonial America. A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse celebrates the contributions of female brewers and explores the forces that have erased them from the brewing world.

It's a history that's simultaneously inspiring and demeaning. Wherever and whenever the cottage brewing industry has grown profitable, politics, religion, and capitalism have grown greedy. Men have repeatedly seized control and forced women out of the business. Other times, women have simply lost the minimal independence, respect, and economic power brewing brought them.

But there are more breweries now than at any time in American history, and today women serve as founder, CEO, or head brewer at more than 1,000 of them.

As women continue to work hard for equal treatment and recognition in the industry, author Tara Nurin shows that women have been - and are once again becoming - relevant in the brewing world.

©2021 Tara Nurin; Foreword copyright 2021 by Teri Fahrendorf (P)2021 Tantor

A beautifully open and unbiased portrait of women in beer through the ages.

This was beautifully written and a relatively unbiased look at brewing women through the ages. I love her writing style. It’s like sitting down and having a conversation with one of the grades of the beer writing field. It made me feel seen, heard, and joyfully connected to every woman in the beer industry from modern day, all the way back to our ancient ancestors. You are a woman in the beer, industry, or even just a drinker of beer this is a must read.

Women have always been here

I’m a big fan of the work Tara Nurin has done in the industry. I think this is a great read to deeper understand the history of beer and its female makers along with the modern state of the beer world as a still male dominated field.

Partly interesting

I definitely learned some things from this book that I didn't know before. I enjoyed hearing about the beginnings of and the women behind some of my favorite breweries, but some of the book was boring. Parts of it were heavy with 'name-dropping'. The historical parts were the most interesting to me.

A modern day feminists reference manual

This book is a New Age feminists’ best friend. It has occasional facts on historical events where women participated in the beer industry and loaded down with commentary on why men and the patriarchy are the root of why women are having a tough time there. It also seems like a marketing ploy for The Pink Boots Society, which no surprise the Author founded. I bought it because I love beer and history hoping to learn about the amazing things that women have contributed to beer throughout human civilization, and if you can read it with facts in the forefront of your mind and set aside the Author’s bias comments they you may get something out of it. However, forcing myself to finish reading it, in order to give it a fair shake, was a very painful process. 2/5 stars for the facts.

Interesting Idea, Bad Execution

The topic could be fascinating, and it is a story that should be told, but this book is not the one to do it.
First off the title is a bit deceiving, it is much more about the CEO's marketing, Craft Beers and recent history than Forgotten or Ancient history. This is made more obvious by chapters with short blurbs on ancient beer that reads like wikipedia article, then jumping to modern history or craft beers, which makes things scattered and difficult to follow.
Names of this woman or that are mentioned, or quips and anecdotes stated, but nothing on what those womens contributions were, or the struggles they overcame.
Each chapter is all over the place, disjointed timeframes and topics are brought up in an unconnected manner, with personal commentary or experiences with mentions of patriarchy mixed in with without pulling things together or connecting the dots.
This would have been much better eliminating all the barely covered history and focused on women of the craft beer movement and the history of the Pink Boots Society, with references to historical connections.

There is also very little on the history of beer outside of a eurocentric viewpoint.