It’s rare to have a beer in my hand and simultaneously want to take someone’s head off. Usually a beer in hand has the opposite effect. Love! Hugs! But there were two problems.
1. The beer wasn’t open. I was standing in a liquor store, still choosing from a lovely selection of craft brews.
2. The young man whose head was in question, who worked at this store, had just informed me that IPAs are “prehhhh-ty hoppy, so you might not want to try that one.”
To another person, this might have just looked like a sales clerk helping a customer. But to me, it looked like a man making an assumption about a woman based on an antiquated idea: that men like beer and women like wine, and therefore a woman wouldn’t know malt from hops, IPAs from ESBs.
I gripped the neck of the bomber I was holding (not the brew in question; I was on a beer shopping spree). “I know IPAs are hoppy,” I said icily. “I know beer. I just don’t know this brewery well,” I said as I flung out my index finger to point at the beer I’d been considering.
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Women drink beer. We drank 32 percent of the craft beer produced in this country last year, according to Nielsen research. Dig deeper and you can find decreasing gender gaps locally: For example, a July report from Nielsen showed that in Denver, 55 percent of millennial craft beer drinkers are men.
One third of a $19.6 billion market (also in 2014, per the Brewers Association) is significant. But mind the gap. It’s clear craft brewers are missing some market share from women.
Women — some working in the industry who see that it’s foolish to ignore an untapped market, others who are simply enthusiasts, combinations of the two — have been banding together with this common bond of beer for years. Left Hand Brewing’s Ales4Females, which draws 50 or more women to the tap room for thrice-monthly events, started in 2008. Barley’s Angels, which started in Portland, Ore., in 2011, has three chapters in Colorado. (There are plenty of others.)
Unfortunately, my own impression of classes for women, or groups focused on education and respect for the art of brewing (which is what both of the aforementioned groups are), was clouded by an article I read about two years ago, about a women-only beer group here in Colorado. The group’s principles were sound, but the story itself rubbed me the wrong way: quotes from the founder about women thinking beer is “for their boyfriends or husbands”; quotes from an instructor, who was a man, that mentioned providing a “comfortable environment” for women to experience the beer; and there it was, that women-like-wine stereotype, front and center, staring me in the face like Mr. IPAs-are-hoppy.
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What, we need a safe space to appreciate beer over wine? Is beer dangerous? Someone get me a helmet! And a chardonnay!
The messaging was so off that I fell into my own stereotype and presumed a beer class for women would combine the worst of two worlds: the patronizing tone of that man at the liquor store, and the coddling tone that felt women needed a “comfortable” space (we are so delicate!).
I should have known better.
Information, not condescension
The women-only craft beer classes at Factotum Brewhouse looked promising. Informative, not condescending. The first in the three-part series was the week after I found the classes (which was right after I decided I needed an attitude adjustment), so I signed up. (You can still sign up for the October and November sessions at factotumbrewhouse.com/mercantile/.)
I ducked into the brewing room, off the tap room, a few minutes late, and the other women squeezed me in at the table set up there. Laura Bruns, who owns the brewery with her brother, Chris, and was teaching the class, had us introduce ourselves, and I quickly saw that these weren’t a bunch of wine drinkers in need of a “safe space.” I was sitting with a woman opening a brewery, a woman learning more to get a job in the industry, and women who, like me, just want to know more about the beverage we love. Only one of us said she’d come here with friends and wasn’t sure she liked beer.
It was a good night to find a beer to like. Bruns launched into the brewing process, a dab of history and then got us started on the main event, sampling 15 styles of beer, from an opening pilsner (Left Hand’s Polestar) to Factotum’s own 5280 IPA to porters (both vanilla) to sours (two from Crooked Stave) and finally, a dubbel (Ommegang Abbey Ale) to close out the night.
We asked questions, discussed ingredients and process, passed pretzels and cheese. We joked about guys who talk loudly about beer but don’t know what they’re talking about. Bruns told us that one of her inspirations for offering the class was that sometimes, when she asks questions about a beer before ordering, she’s treated a bit differently than the men she’s with … until the bartender figures out that she really knows beer, or learns that she owns a brewery.
Opening the door
As the room cleared out, I asked a few of the participants whether it mattered to them that the class was just for women.
One said it didn’t matter to her. Another said it mattered — she was tired of men hitting on her at beer meet-ups when she was just trying to learn more. The one who said it didn’t matter smirked and said, “I’ve never had that problem.” I realized their mutual honesty wouldn’t have happened if any men had been around for that conversation.
I looked around at the tanks and tubes, the concrete floor, felt the warmth of the brewing process radiating off the equipment. I was sweating. This wasn’t a “comfortable” space. But the table was full of empty glasses, and we’d all been laughing and talking, easily.
No, not a comfortable space — more like a speakeasy you want to return to soon.
Bruns, an instructor at Ecotech institute in Aurora, said as a teacher, she can’t help but want to teach people — all people, not just women — about beer.
“It’s more about just opening the door to more people and saying, there’s room for you,” she said.
Factotum Brewhouse, which is on the north end of Highland, has been open for only seven months, but Bruns has already taught a three-part series. The class I attended was the first of her second round of classes for women.
She and her brother grew up in a small community, and community is important to them, she said. Then she told me a story about another untapped market in craft beer:
“Yesterday before the class, a gentleman who lives in the neighborhood came in and asked for a Cuervo. And so we explained to him, we don’t have that, we only have our own beers, but would you like to try something? … My Spanish is very limited, but we were able to get by.
“He was drinking the pale ale and the saison. And here you have a guy who probably drinks Corona drinking a 7 percent saison at a craft brewery.”
And I could see that Bruns, for one, was eager to open that door much, much wider.
Jenn Fields: 303-954-1599, jfields@denverpost.com or @jennfields
