Posted By: Stevie Caldarola
Ingrid Calderoni
Ingrid Calderoni is journalist, photography lover, homebrewer and beer blogger. Born on May 25th in São Paulo, is lauching the first beer travel guide in Brazil, listing more than 40 Brazilian microbreweries, by Panda Books. Is also founder of the first female beer group in São Paulo, Maltemoiselles.
Ingrid sat down with craft beer heavyweight (and author of Radical Brewing) Randy Mosher to discuss the topic of women and beer.
INGRID C.: Today, despite women having spending power far beyond men (in career, for instance), beer remains very much a man’s world. What do you think about it?
RANDY M.: I think this is just a relic from the era when drinking was a social activity in the man’s world, and a little less acceptable for “proper” women. Wine has led the way for women to become drinkers and then connoisseurs and enthusiasts, at least in the US, followed by spirits and finally craft beer.
From a mass-marketer’s point-of-view, the easiest way to reach the biggest beer drinkers has been to advertise with sports, and since these are more popular with men, these ads are made for men, to be persuasive to men only. This means women are ignored, intentionally or just as a result of trying to spend the advertising money to get the largest group of those who drink the most beer, which happens to be men. So you get TV commercials with tough men, and women in swimsuits and crude humor (maybe it is different in Brazil), so you actually drive a lot of women away who don’t want to be associated with or support a product like that.
Of course, with craft beer, things are different. There are many more choices, some of them very sophisticated. And there is no money for advertising, so there are no sexist ads. Selling craft beer is all about the personal touch and building relationships between producers and consumers, and I think that women generally feel more comfortable with this approach, and also young people are much more excited by this than my generation was.
IC: As a designer, what do you think could shatter the “macho” image of beer? Do you think the beer industry could try to create more attractive package for women instead of trying to sell light lagers, floral or chocolate beers – popularly known as “chick beers”?
RM: No, not really. I think the product should reflect the quality and character of what’s inside the package. There are beers for everybody, and if the package designer does his or her job right, people will have a sense of what the emotional experience of drinking the beer will be like. Is it fun, exciting, challenging, outrageous, sublime, silly, or super-serious? People, whether they are women or men will respond to what moves them at the moment, and I think that’s the way it should be.
Marketing “special” products to women has a dismal record in the business. No one wants to live in a ghetto where they have to have to have special products based on gender, as if they were handicapped or something. Also, from a producer’s point-of-view, with womens’ products, you are throwing away half or more of your potential audience. I used to work in the toy business years ago, and it was well known that girls would play with boys’ toys, but not the other way around. A man would never touch a beer if he thought the product was supposed to be just for women. He would be worried it might make him grow breasts or something.
Randy Mosher
IC: And what do you think about this denomination that the market uses to sell beer – “suitable for female palate”? I´ve found this expression even in German – frauenbier!
RM: I think it’s stupid. Women have a similar palate to men, except perhaps they have a bit more sensitivity and generally pay a little more attention to what they put in their mouths. The one difference is that in general, women seem to be a little less tolerant of hop bitterness, but this is by no means always true. I know many women who like beers that are extremely bitter, like 70 IBU+!
IC: It is scientifically proven that women have a better sensory perception for tasting beer, for some kind of flavors. Many people say that this is why women would rather drink “chick beer” than other hoppy ones. There are also researches based on preference, which suggests that women drink more light and sweet beers. What is your point of view? Could we rely on a preference research to base all the marketing targeting the female public like this, or, for you, taste is individual?
RM: Market research is an abomination and results in the huge number of bland, boring products that fill the supermarket aisles. People should make beer that they and their friends like, then hopefully others will like them as well. This is what craft beer is about.
IC: What do you think abour beers designed to appeal to female taste buds, like the low-carb beers?
RM: Lo-carb has nothing to do with palate. It is a form of medicine for people who think they are being poisoned by carbohydrates. We had a frenzy of lo-carb products about 8 years ago in the US. Thankfully, this silly trend is no longer with us.
IC: What is your opinion about women getting together in groups like Pink Boots Society, Ladies of Craft Beer, and Maltemoiselles in Brazil? Do you think these girly clubs appeared on behalf of machism in the world of beer?
RM: I think it is natural for women to want to get together on their own terms, especially since groups with a lot of men in them are sometimes difficult for women to make themselves heard and influence the group. I think the womens’ groups are fantastic, but I also hope that all the beer organizations will be open enough to women that they don’t feels such a need to separate themselves–and that day is coming. I know many women in the beer business who are more than capable of holding their own, even in a room full of men, so I have no doubt that this will happen. At least two large craft breweries in the US are run by women: Stoudt’s (Carol Stoudt) and New Belgium (Kim Jordan). And there are women in very important roles in most small breweries.
IC: What do you think that keep lots of women away from beer, beyond the mistaken perception that beer is unhealthy, fattening and unsophisticated?
RM: Maybe it is because most of it (mass-market beer) is boring, cheap and lacking in variety, elegance and flavor? Stick a pink label on a reduced calorie mass-market beer and is still just as uninteresting.
~~~~~
What do you think of what Randy had to say? Leave your thoughts in the comments below to keep this dialogue going. Cheers!
Related Posts:
Originally posted 2011-08-10 12:05:33.
Instead of sticking to your mantra of “We are ladies who love craft beer – women educating women (and men!) on the wonders of craft brews.”, you are simply perpetuating the perceived divide between men and women in this industry. You give it more staying power by asking these vapid questions of Mosher, a well respected knowledge source in the craft beer community, when you could actually be educating people. Maybe about the recent explosion of craft beer, the emergence of hybrid styles, interesting collaborations, use of ingredients, etc. The list goes on and on. The more attention you give to supposed “chick beers” and marketing to women from large, NON-CRAFT beer producers, the worse off the rest of craft beer is. I’m thoroughly disappointed in LOCB for the constant harping on this topic, it only goes to show just how sensitive you believe women to be in this market. If we ignored it and didn’t buy into gimmicky promotions, eventually the point would be made that it’s not about how you market your product, it’s about whether the contents of the bottle are quality.
I respect organizations like yours and up until this point, found your website to be informative about certain aspects of the craft beer scene, however, lately it seems to be a site dedicated to defending women in the “man’s world” of craft beer. As a woman myself, I don’t need defending, I need good beer.
@Leslie S: Hi Leslie,
Thanks for your input about the content here at LadiesOCB! I, myself, am a bit sick of this topic, but part of our motto here at Ladies of Craft Beer is that if a woman wants to be heard, we will post it. This topic is something that has been coming up more and more in recent news. While we don’t want to become a site just dedicated to the topic, it is relevant to who we are and what we’re about, which is encouraging women to talk more about their love of beer.
Also, please note that we have recently posted about many other topics- BCTC at Ommegang, Oregon Brewer’s Festival, Anaheim Brewery, many Women in Beer interviews, and more.
We’re always looking for more women who wish to write about their craft beer experiences. I would love to have you write about anything that you find interesting in the community, whether it be hybrid styles, collaborations, ingredients, etc. If you are interested, please email me at infoATladiesocbDOTcom.
Thanks again!
Stevie Caldarola
Editor/President
I love this post. Randy makes so many incredible points about the misconceptions of the female palate. You would be surprised at what types of things companies DON’T do market research on. Working in advertising, I was shocked to find out how many brands make big marketing decisions based on assumption. I wouldn’t be surprised if big beer brands’ decisions to market in a sexist manner to be based on outdated assumptions about what women like, rather than an actual perception study.
Thanks for posting. I am a huge fan of Randy Mosher and his book, “Tasting Beer” has transformed the way I drink.
Leslie S, I’m a craft brewer, and I can tell that 90% of brewer’s associations in Brazil are composed by men – and the feeling I have hanging around beer events is: beer is still treated as a man issue. People get so surprised when I say I make my own beer, I don’t get it – and people always ask me which beer women like most, as I could define taste by gender.
And many craft beer bars still use this “female palate” marketing to sell chocolate, floral beers as “good for women”. I think an interview like this can be educative, showing the market that women and men drink like equals, and we don’t want to be treated differently.
Cheers!