Women in the Craft Beer Industry

By Mara Strobel-Lanka / Photography By Sindy Gonzalez | January 30, 2019

kelly pickard at ale wife bottle shop in jacksonville

Kelly Pickard, co-owner of Alewife Bottle Shop in Historic Five Points, is one of the many women who have started businesses and built careers inside the expanding umbrella of craft beer.

Google “Jacksonville Area Breweries” and you’ ll find a long list of businesses that have popped up around Northeast Florida in the past few years. The list, over twenty names long and growing rapidly is a point of pride and excitement for residents who have craved a vibrant local beer scene for years.

More than just a meeting place for happy hour drinks, local breweries have become neighborhood staples and community employers. Many host trivia nights, local panels and fundraisers while also cultivating young careers, new relationships and neighborhood culture. With each corner of the region producing distinctive beers and bars, there’s an encouraging halo of excitement surrounding the industry. What’s also clear is that women are a big part of that growing interest, on both sides of the bar.

“We’re still a young beer scene,” says Kelly Pickard, co-owner of Alewife Bottle Shop in Historic Five Points. Pickard is one of the many women who have started businesses and built careers inside the expanding umbrella of craft beer. “It’s exciting to see the growth, but I think there’s infinite room to grow more, not just in numbers, but in our appreciation, understanding and interpretation of beer as well,” she says. Pickard goes on to talk of the integrity of overlooked beers like Pilsners and German lagers, speaking lovingly and knowledgeably of the craft beer that inspired the business she runs.

While Jessie O'Brien was a key brewer at Intuition Ale Works for five years, we can’t boast of any other female brewers in Northeast Florida just yet. However, we can applaud the many women in myriad positions fostering a love for good beer and a strong sense of community who make our beer scene what it is today.

Natalie Roth, who handles event planning and marketing at Aardwolf Brewing in San Marco, speaks of finding her place in the bar: “I’m one of four women, and the only fulltime woman, on the team – and I’ve never felt like my gender is a disadvantage.” She relates that “[Aardwolf ] plays up each of our individual strengths – I tend to take over the creative side of things.”

“Sure, most of the breweries here are owned or managed by men, but they aren’t opposed to including women,” says Alex McKeown, co-owner of Hyperion Brewing. “Everyone here is very eager to collaborate and work together.”

Each of these women is a prized participant in the region’s up-and-coming beer scene, wearing many hats as entrepreneurs, event planners and bartenders. Separately, they each describe jumping in wherever their strengths were needed, from playing janitor to host. Those behaviors aren’t exclusive to any gender, but because these women are willing to do the work required to succeed, they are leading the way to a more inclusive industry. From ownership to counter service, to marketing and event planning, there are plenty of Northeast Florida women breaking brewery ceilings and offering the representation necessary for industry growth.

“It’s a time and visual thing,” says McKeown. “If I’m a woman today, and I see a confident and capable woman in distributing or brewing, it gives me strength to start my own endeavors, and it creates a ripple effect for other women [in the industry].”

While we can’t boast any female brewers in Northeast Florida just yet, we can applaud the many women in myriad positions fostering a love for good beer and a strong sense of community and making our beer scene what it is today. As women start to account for a larger piece of the industry itself, they’re also accounting for 40% of craft beer consumption.

“There still exists this assumption that women don’t drink craft beer. The landscape is shifting, but it’s clear through conversations with other women in the industry, the assumptions still linger.” Pickard explains that beer is for everyone, and she is well-known in the community for fostering a non-judgmental environment in her shop that welcomes beer-lovers of all kinds. “We want to have a space that feels welcoming to an entire community, regardless of who you are, and that we make beer an approachable beverage to everyone.”

“People think of beer and of brewing as such a male-driven space, but when it comes to high level positions, there are actually more women here than other industries,” says Pickard. Between fermentation and that first sip exists an extensive network of individuals, women included, who package, market, design, distribute, represent and sell the beer. Over 29% of beer industry workers are women nationwide, and the local beer scene employs over 100 women in breweries and bottleshops alone. Those numbers don’t show gender equity in the brewing industry, but they do show an encouraging trend of opportunity and distinction for women entering the beer scene.

“The time that we really appreciate our progress is when we aren’t highlighted for being women in our industry,” says McKeown, “but for being talented individuals who are bringing something new to the table. And that is already happening.”