Alewives: the Women Who Crafted Beer and Split Hell Wide Open

August 14, 2018 5:38 AM

Sumerian goddess Ninkasi, Hildegarde von Bingen, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg stir the cauldron in this history of brewing by Heather Hogan at Autostraddle

"Alewives grinning and riding piggyback on the shoulders of demons, sloshing their beer on their descent into the eternal abyss. Alewives pushing wheelbarrows full of innocent men into Satan’s flames with one hand and pounding a pint with the other. Alewives tenderly cradling the horned heads of hoofed hellbeasts to their bosoms while their fellow humans burn alive in chains. The only thing more popular than alewives in religious art depicting hell is the devil himself."

posted by prewar lemonade (7 comments total)

As a woman involved with craft beer, I enjoy reminding beardy beer dudes that we were brewing beer first.

ALEWIFE 4 LYFE
posted by Kitteh at 6:05 AM on August 14, 2018 [16 favorites]

I live in Cambridge MA, home to a subway line with this terminus, and an avid population of beer makers and enthusiasts. Yet to my knowledge, one here has started an all-woman brewing company called "Alewife." Get on it, brewsters!

(Aaaand, on searching, it looks like there's a Long Island beer company called Alewife. Too bad it's not all Cambridge ladies, but still a cool name!)
posted by prewar lemonade at 9:27 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

For those interested in Skelton's poem The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng, here it is in Middle English; here is a version with spelling modernised. Notes are here.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:31 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Brewing seems to have been a very common occupation for women. In occupational surnames, the suffix -ster is female (although it can apply to both sexes in northern England and Scotland) and both versions (Brewer and Brewster) occur. The only other surnames in both versions that I can think of are Webber/Webster (weaver) and Baker/Baxter. There is also spinster, although spinsters tend not to have descendents, so it doesn't occur as a surname.

Also, from the illustrations, I'm cheered to see that there will be beer in hell.
posted by Fuchsoid at 10:05 AM on August 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Every food item I have enjoyed making, my wife has taken up and surpassed me. All of them....but one: booze.

I wished she drank alcohol, so I could enjoy the fruits of her labor! But alas, I brew small batches of beer and mead and cider, and I drink them alone at my workbench.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:51 AM on August 14, 2018

Most historians agree that beer originated in the Sumerian settlement of Godin Tempe, an outpost on the Silk Road trade route, between 3500-3100 BCE, where it became a staple of daily diets because it contained loads of nutrients from the grains used to brew it.

I am surprised to hear that the invention came so late in pre-history. The Clan of the Cave Bear led me astray in so many ways.

Kug-Bau, ("𒆬𒁀𒌑", I think?) the only queen listed in the Sumerian Kings List, was an alewife.
posted by XMLicious at 5:14 PM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

no mythology in which a man receives brewing instructions from a deity. It’s always goddesses and it’s always women brewers.

Not true of wine, at all, and I don't know why. Bacchus was male, so was Dionysus, and also Noah. On the other hand, I understand that kava is traditionally prepared by women, so there's another distaff drink. An ancient shebrew, perhaps.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:09 AM on August 15, 2018