Close your eyes and picture your friendly local brewer. Odds are he’s a young male sporting a beard to rival Jason Motte’s. In fact, that same guy can be found populating craft beer bars, breweries and festivals around town, sipping pints with his like-minded fellows. Beers and bros go hand in hand, but a handful of beer-slinging and -brewing St. Louis ladies are pouring themselves a pint and declaring their love for their favorite beverage, too. The misconception that women don’t like beer, or aren’t involved in its production, is what prompted Katie Herrera, Libby Brown, Kristen Chalfant and Colleen Kirby to launch Femme Ferment, an organization dedicated to promoting the role of women in the local craft brewing scene. Since launching in May, Femme Ferment has popped up at the St. Louis Brewers Guild Heritage Festival, participated in St. Louis Craft Beer Week and created its first collaboration beer with Charleville Brewing Co. It all started with a monthly get-together filled with shop talk, beer nerdiness and laughter. Here are 10 reasons why anyone – lady or gent – should drink with Femme Ferment:
1. It’s the third Tuesday of the month, and there’s not a glass of wine or vodka cranberry in sight.
2. When you can’t decide what to drink next, ask the woman to your left. Or right. Or behind the bar. Really, anyone within earshot can guide you to the perfect pick.
3. When one person orders a sour beer, everyone clamors for one. Especially if that sour is New Belgium’s La Folie.
4. Most of the women you meet are named Katie, Kate, Catelyn or a variation of that trendiest of ’80s baby girl names.
5. The petite Katie behind the bar is also the only person her friends trust to properly tap kegs at parties.
6. Members are as dedicated as mail carriers. Despite that many in the Femme crew caught the same cold last month at Great Taste of the Midwest beer festival in Madison, Wisconsin, their August happy hour took place as scheduled.
7. Wedding diets may exclude dessert, but never beer.
8. Nearly every woman present is a bar manager, bartender, brewer or other industry pro, and someone can spout off the ABV, IBU and brewing technique of just about everything on tap.
9. Those bearded guys often swing by during happy hour for a pint, too, and everyone gives each other some good old-fashioned ribbing – in the most loving way, of course.
10. You left the bar with invites to four upcoming beer festivals you’ve never heard of and are already tagging your photos of the night with #3TFF (translation: Third Tuesday Femme Ferment).
-illustration by Vidhya Nagarajan
This article appears in September 2014.