Tag Archives: beer fest

SheBrew! I Judge!

Is it required that one drink a homebrew the night before they get to go judge a homebrew competition for the first time? I hope not, because I don’t think I have one in the house as I type this up.

That’s right, I got invited recently to be a judge (under the helm/wing of at least one BJCP judge) tomorrow at SheBrew! This appears to be a relatively new competition in Portland, Oregon, and I know the organizers have worked hard to make it big and awesome. When I last logged into my judge page, there were 92 entries processed for tomorrow.

Thank goodness there’s no world in which I’ll be expected to try all of them!

Two snapped in half hop cones positioned in front of a small notebook with a red pen inside it.

I will be there tomorrow judging beers within a few categories, but I don’t yet know where they’ll put me.… Continue reading →

She wears short skirts. I wear t-shirts.

And I seem to be more welcome because of it.

Welcome to my late entry to The Session. And thanks to that damn catchy Taylor Swift song for the title.

A year or more ago, long before Beer 3Up, I was at some beer event with Karl of Guys Drinking Beer, and he asked me what I thought the ratio was of men to women at the event. The answer, based on looking around was, “pretty even.” But I couldn’t help following up with a comment that though there appeared to be even numbers of (apparent) men and women in the group, almost no one was presenting as particularly feminine.

I think this is common. And I suspect it’s femphobia in the beer community.… Continue reading →

I Do; Maybe I Should Not

CW: Rape, victim-blaming

A tweet saying, "i never stay at any event where men outnumber women because it isn't safe and if anything happens first question will be: what were you doing there #inourshoes."

I have made a substantial portion of my life in traditionally male-dominated spaces. Currently, it’s the beer industry.

Beer, the beverage, is alcoholic. The beer drinker is predominately male (64% of US men vs 29% of US women consume beer2). The beer blogger is exceptionally male (82%3). The beer festival attendee is usually male (>50%4).

In other words, to do that which I love these means going to a lot of these spaces where I will be outnumbered by men, while most of us have been consuming some or a lot of alcohol. And I think about it every time I attend a beer event.

Alcohol is assumed to be a huge factor in sexual assaults. Sure, the National Institutes of Health subgroup, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that alcohol was consumed “by the perpetrator, the victim, or both” in roughly half of all sexual assault cases.… Continue reading →

85 Degrees. High ABVs. $2 Water.

If you check out the #goose25 hashtag on twitter, you’ll get a sense of how I spent my Sunday. It was a vaguely miserable experience, and not one I’d expected out of one of my favorite beer companies.

Even so, just a vaguely miserable experience wouldn’t have motivated me to write anything for the blog. What’s prompted me to put up a post on the matter was Goose Island Beer Company’s decision that water should only be available for $2/bottle at the event. I noticed this almost immediately after entering the fest and was a little shocked.

This event was outdoors, in a largely unshaded space, on a day with an expected high of 85F. They were serving beers up to 14% ABV. The only water to be had was for sale.… Continue reading →