Newbie in SF & Teaching Women to Brew!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

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mamajack

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Hi All,

I'm a former pro baker living in San Francisco and have been doing country (fruit) wines & meads since 2007 and just started brewing beer last year. I quickly came to love it - the community is so friendly & helpful and everyone so down to earth. I love the science too, and how it balances with art, just like serious baking!

I started immediately doing all-grain BIAB tabletop (because i already had some equipment & experience from wines), and now i am on my 5th batch or so. I've read Palmer's 'How To Brew' and i am now doing all my own calcs (pen & paper - i like to understand things before i have a computer do them & will probably write my own spreadsheet software to do calcs). Now I am reading Daniels' 'Designing Great Beers.' I work up my own recipes and am having a blast! These forums are hands down the best resource ever. I have found them so useful that i finally joined after lurking for a while.

Recently, because of my own experience being one of the few females in the room, I decided to start helping other female amateur brewer wannabes to brew their own all-grain beers. A lot of women are intimidated by all the jargon & equipment they don't understand, plus they are often the minority by far in the room at brew events and are afraid to brew on their own. Plus, we're usually smaller and not as strong, and we might live in small apartments, so we have to do smaller batches scaled to our size if we brew alone. So i am starting a group and doing small, friendly demos/classes to help folks lose the intimatidation and get started. Then we/they can go into brewing forums and events without fear of looking ignorant and really get something out of it!

I follow brewing news in a general way around the country - nice to make your acquaintance! :mug:
 
Welcome to the forum (officially)!

It saddens me that women would feel intimidated or made to feel intimidated. I would have thought that all of us male homebrewers would be able to drop our "egos" and just treat all homebrewers as equals. I have seen at many events where women get "pushed aside".

Kudos to you and I wish you great success in expanding the knowledge, confidence, and hopefully the numbers of women brewers!
 
Welcome and Outstanding! I wish you much continued success! there are some mighty good and knowledgeable woman brewers here. Brew on Sister!
 
Thanks guys! I think we're going to get a little core of good female beginning brewers going here - and we'll be able to participate more effectively in our own homebrew circles. I am a member of the SF Homebrewer's Guild, which got off the ground at the beginning of the year, and am just getting started with them. I also notice there are a lot of women who love to bake (men too, obviously) but they have never thought about brewing.
 
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