New Zealand's Beer Baroness on the Absurdity of Gendered Beverages

In our VICELAND show BEERLAND, brewer Meg Gill travels across the US to meet home-brewers and find America's best brews. BEERLAND continues tonight on VICELAND, SKY Channel 13 at 8.30 PM. We meet with New Zealand's answer to Gill, brewer Ava Wilson.

The beer industry has become synonymous with beards and testosterone, but a few thousand years ago it had a much more feminine image. In ancient Egypt, it was considered a woman's drink brewed and consumed by the fairer sex. Over the last couple of thousand years, however, beer has lost sight of its feminine routes, rebranded as a masculine drink and made in a male-dominated industry.

Until now that is. The craft-beer movement around the world is challenging that masculine image of beer, with women across the globe starting up their own breweries and leading the charge in countries like Mexico and Korea.

In New Zealand, Ava Wilson, aka the Beer Baroness, is part of this demasculinisation of beer. Running a craft brewery out of Christchurch, Wilson challenges beer's masculine image with her brand's "strong feminine edge," and big, bold beers that anyone can enjoy, regardless of their capability to grow facial hair.

She sat down with us to talk about what it's like being a woman and a mother of two in New Zealand's booming craft-beer industry.

Why did you get involved in craft beer in the first place?
My family's had Pomeroy's, a craft-beer bar in Christchurch, for 17 years. I started working there when I was 25 and it was all Harrington's beers on tap at that time and it was just kind of by chance actually. We would have a beer of the month, and I tried the Tuatara Wheat Hefe and had an epiphany moment. I was like, oh my god I love beer and I love craft beer and I've never really looked back. I've always been in hospitality but it was definitely that moment with craft beer.

What is it about beer that you love?
I can't speak for any other craft scenes around the world, but what I love about New Zealand craft beer is definitely the community. The industry is really exciting: it's new, it's young, so it's been really cool to kind of be a part of that over the last eight or nine years now. And I really like beer. That's all I drink, that's why. Beer.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Beer Baroness and how it started?
It's been a brand that hasn't ever had 100 percent of my focus because I have always been about our pub, and then I became a mum and I've been about that, so I've always had a lot of other focuses which has been quite nice for the brand, because it happened quite organically.

Beer Baroness was a nickname my sister called me. It's always been a brand for me that's a little tongue-in-cheek and it's got that strong female edge on it, but also big bold beers saying you can be a woman and drink this beer, or you can be a man and drink it.

You said you were naive when you started the Beer Baroness. What did you mean by that? Was it a steep learning curve?
Oh, massive. I think we thought we could brew once or twice a week and it would all be fine. It turned out that we needed to brew four or five times a week to be a viable business. We didn't know that to start off with. What we knew was hospitality; we didn't know how to run a brewery. We went into it with a great brewer, but there wasn't a huge amount of forecasting, so it's taken a good few years to actually level out. I think we went in with a hell of a lot of love and passion for it, but probably had we known we would have thought about it a little longer, but it's worked out.

What's it like being a woman in the beer industry?
Absolutely fine. It's a question I get asked a lot, and I think there are definitely other responses to it from other women, so I can't speak for them. I mean a lot of the time consumers at beer festivals will be like oh what, you're the brewer? But that doesn't really happen as much now. From the industry itself, everybody is actually pretty supportive. I haven't had a huge problem with the fact that I'm a women at all, which is cool.

Why do you think beer is seen as such a masculine drink?
I don't know. And it still really is. It was just yesterday that I had a distributor say, "We've got a really really great prosecco which would be really good for all the girls getting dragged in by their partners wanting to drink craft beer." I was like "You what? You're standing in a pub, that I run, and we're a craft beer bar and I'm a woman." It just seemed so archaic, backward. I think advertising is really, really strong and always has been. It's always been directed towards men with beer. How beer drinking has been depicted, it's always been that strong masculine theme that's come through. It's ridiculous. In New Zealand especially, beer's always been that six o'clock swill drink, the men knocking off and having a beer after work, mowing the lawn.

Do you think that image is changing? Are there more women getting involved in the industry?
Yep, absolutely. When I first started out in the industry there were women, but probably nowhere near as many as there are now. There are a lot of amazing female brewers in New Zealand especially, like when you think of Sprig and Fern where there's Tracy Banner—she's iconic. There's a tonne of female brewers you don't know or think about. And lots of women that run bars. There are heaps of women in the industry.

You mentioned that you're also a mum, but you own and run multiple businesses on top of Beer Baroness. Do you find it hard?
Fuck yeah of course! But I would find being a mum hard without multiple businesses. Kids are hard: they are amazing, but it's hard work. I really, truly believe it takes a village and we've got a really good one. People have always been a little shocked at me bringing my son to beer festivals, because my first one was like two months old when we came up for Beervana one year, but I'm a mum and I work, and the two go together.

Working mothers has been in the news a lot over the last couple of weeks because of comments made to Jacinda Ardern.
It's interesting. I get it from both sides as a working mum. Women who are stay-at-home mums sometimes feel they have to justify why they want to do that to me, or say I'm just a stay at home mum and I'm like just? Come on, like Jesus, I work to get away from my children! No, I don't. But it's interesting when our kids get sick, even though I work just as much as my husband there's just this natural, well, I'll stay at home with them. Not from him, but it's different when you're a woman for sure. It shouldn't be, but it is. I'm lucky, it's a family business so my kids come to work and I've got really good support. I'm also really, really proud for my kids to see me working as well, that's really important for me. And also that they're around alcohol and they establish a good relationship with it and it's not something that needs to be hidden away. This is the beer industry, and it's good people.

In our VICELAND show BEERLAND, brewer Meg Gill travels across the US to meet home-brewers and find America's best brews. BEERLAND continues tonight on VICELAND, SKY Channel 13 at 8.30 PM.