The Women Who Brewed the World (or Why Drinking Beer Was Never Unladylike)

Long before it was leisure, beer was nourishment. In many parts of the world, fermented drinks were safer than water and rich in calories and nutrients. They sustained communities. They supported labour. They were part of daily survival.

And brewing was part of feeding a household.

Across ancient Mesopotamia, women brewed beer for both domestic use and religious ceremony. The Sumerian Hymn to Ninkasi — over 3,800 years old — is both a prayer and a brewing guide, honouring a goddess of beer and documenting the process itself.

In medieval Europe, brewing sat alongside baking bread, preserving vegetables, and making cheese. Women worked with grain, yeast, and time in the same way they worked with milk, salt, and curd. It was practical knowledge — inherited, refined, and shared across generations.

When families produced surplus beer, they sold it.

And when the beer was especially good, selling it brought profit - these women were in business!