What's up with Stouts and the ladies?

[Yooper]

I can verify that there are three things that most women love in beer:

1. Fruit
2. Chocolate
3. Vanilla

Some of them also enjoy a little coffee in there and my SWMBO is somewhat of a rarity and loves really hoppy beers unlike about 95% of our friends (her favorite style is Black IPA). However, what got her into darker beers and stouts particularly (which she loves) was the Sam Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout. I still get it for her regularly and she's hooked a lot of her friends on it too. A close second would probably be Breckenridge's Vanilla Porter. She gets it all the time when we're out. Either that or any kind of fruit beer. She really loves trying different kinds of fruit or any beer that has honey in it. Most of her friends tend to prefer beers in a similar fashion as well IME.

What's funny is that I don't know one- not ONE- woman would likes fruit or chocolate or vanilla flavors in beer.

I do have to laugh at about all these males talking to women and telling us what beers we like.

(Several of the people who responded in this thread are female, if it isn't obvious- and I don't think ANY of them agreed with the OP. )

 

[hedbutter]

Well to keep semi on topic lets just say we once had a choice to build a brewing system and have somebody else build the race car or vice versa. We chose to buy a brewing system, (sabco), and build the race car. My friend built a two story, three bay brew house! We build a full modified 1975 BMW 2002. He's taken three national championships with it. So while brewing our chocolate stout for his wife we work on the car. Sometimes the beers come out with an essence of 20/50 racing oil but so far she hasn't complained!

Thats awesome! I just picked up a Subaru BRZ, and i want to start autocrossing it in the summer.

And to keep it on slightly ontopic, I really need to buy a house with a garage, so I can play with cars, and brew beer. And nothing wrong with dark stout almost oil like beer.

 

[broadbill]

What's funny is that I don't know one- not ONE- woman would likes fruit or chocolate or vanilla flavors in beer.

I do have to laugh at about all these males talking to women and telling us what beers we like.

(Several of the people who responded in this thread are female, if it isn't obvious- and I don't think ANY of them agreed with the OP. )

another data point: I have a keg of pale ale (late hopped), and a keg of oatmeal stout....I've been drinking the stout and my wife is drinking mostly from the pale ale.

I guess we are gender confused.

 

[Yooper]

another data point: I have a keg of pale ale (late hopped), and a keg of oatmeal stout....I've been drinking the stout and my wife is drinking mostly from the pale ale.

I guess we are gender confused.

Yes, I guess my friends and I are too, as well as our spouses.

I'm a hophead, and my husband is getting there. I prefer more highly hopped and bitter beers than he does, though.

My husband has two good friends, fellow retirees that worked together. One drinks stouts- the roastier and "chewier" the better. He does drink my Fat Squirrel clone (brown ale) and he will drink other things when I have them if I'm out of stout, but he goes for the stout first.

The other friend drinks cream ale, and that's about it.

Their wives are opposite. One drinks IIPA and IPA if she can, but she'll drink just about any beer with stout being a last choice. The other one really enjoys citrusy IPAs, but especially loves dopplebocks and maibocks and other malty lagers. She hates stout, and hates chocolate.

I think it might be true that a chocolate stout is a good beer for people who don't really care for beer, but I don't think it has to do with gender.

Since I hate chocolate, and I don't have a sweet tooth at all, a sweet chocolate beer would make me feel gaggy.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I brewed a Founders Breakfast Stout clone a few months back for my wife (who loves coffee and chocolate) and she couldn't stand it, but does like IPAs.
Can't say I noticed any trend one way or the other

 

[lucasxp]

I can verify that there are three things that most women love in beer:

1. Fruit
2. Chocolate
3. Vanilla

Some of them also enjoy a little coffee in there and my SWMBO is somewhat of a rarity and loves really hoppy beers unlike about 95% of our friends (her favorite style is Black IPA). However, what got her into darker beers and stouts particularly (which she loves) was the Sam Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout. I still get it for her regularly and she's hooked a lot of her friends on it too. A close second would probably be Breckenridge's Vanilla Porter. She gets it all the time when we're out. Either that or any kind of fruit beer. She really loves trying different kinds of fruit or any beer that has honey in it. Most of her friends tend to prefer beers in a similar fashion as well IME.

The sam smiths chocolate stout is the #1 at home too. Followed by a few Rogue ones and the Vanilla Porter.

 

[Homercidal]

What's funny is that I don't know one- not ONE- woman would likes fruit or chocolate or vanilla flavors in beer.

I do have to laugh at about all these males talking to women and telling us what beers we like.

(Several of the people who responded in this thread are female, if it isn't obvious- and I don't think ANY of them agreed with the OP. )

Uh, Kris likes chocolate flavors in beer...

So there's ONE woman you know.

And a few ladies who told me they didn't like beer actually liked the chocolate stout I made last year. Light on the stout, heavy on the chocolate.

But it's really a mixed bag, because I know plenty of women who enjoy IPAs and hops as much as anything else. And some people aren't going to like ANY beer unless it has the word LIGHT in the name, and single digit calories.

 

[dangerbrew]

I do have to laugh at about all these males talking to women and telling us what beers we like.

(Several of the people who responded in this thread are female, if it isn't obvious- and I don't think ANY of them agreed with the OP. )

By my post in this thread, it was never my intent to tell any women what beers they like - far from it. I was only stating what I've observed from my own experience and what tastes my significant other and her female friends tend to prefer in general. More often than not we'll go out to a craft beer bar together as a group and many of them, knowing I'm a brewer, will ask me what beer I'd recommend for them. In order to do that, I ask them what kind of things they like in a beer. Typically those are some of the more prevalent ingredients/flavors that they tell me they prefer in a beer.

Not saying a girl can't be a hop-head. My fiancee's favorite style is black IPA for example. However, given the choice at a bar, those are the flavors in beer that she and most of her friends gravitate towards. I have to agree most of the time - they are very tasty ingredients.

Maybe this is just a more relevant topic to me because, being a professional brewer myself, my partners and I have to look carefully at our market when deciding which beers we're going to push at bars. It's not meant to be a gender generalization - it's just cold hard business facts. We do "research" at bars fairly often and check out what our local customers are drinking and have found that, out of all our beers, our Porter sells far better to the female demographic than it does to males. However, it is a slightly costlier beer to produce, but with the particular market that is constantly demanding it we continue to produce it and sell out of it frequently. Otherwise we'd just do Pale Ales, Ambers, and Blond Ales all the time. They're cheaper to make, but with the Porter we're guaranteed to move the product quickly. I'm not saying that only females drink our porter, either, but they are definitely the biggest fans of it.

 

[adiochiro3]

True of my wife; hand her a porter or stout, and she's likely to tell you that she is drinking her dinner and that the rest of us are on our own. Turns her nose up at anything hoppy or bitter.

However, I also LOVE stouts, porters, etc. The heavier and maltier and chewier the better. I also like a good bitter, and am coming around to the hoppy side -- thanks to my LHBS owner.

Does that mean I swing both ways?

 

[dangerbrew]

True of my wife; hand her a porter or stout, and she's likely to tell you that she is drinking her dinner and that the rest of us are on our own. Turns her nose up at anything hoppy or bitter.

However, I also LOVE stouts, porters, etc. The heavier and maltier and chewier the better. I also like a good bitter, and am coming around to the hoppy side -- thanks to my LHBS owner.

Does that mean I swing both ways?

It's a free country, baby. You can swing whatever way you like.

 

[roastquake]

Does that mean I swing both ways?

yes, doesn't everyone? no need to be confused

 

[NewJersey]

my girl loves stouts and porters. smoked stouts. my bourbon oaked stout... and pretty much all styles of beer. neither of us are huge on sours though.

 

[Jayhem]

Because it reminds them of Starbucks.

 

[davefleck]

At the risk of upsetting the site's grand matriarch...

The "expert" male opinions are often (at least in my case) earned through years of trying to expand our better half's enjoyment of the world of beer we love so much.

That and personal experience. A PA sure wasn't what broke me into craft ale.

 

[Melana]

At the risk of upsetting the site's grand matriarch...

The "expert" male opinions are often (at least in my case) earned through years of trying to expand our better half's enjoyment of the world of beer we love so much.

That and personal experience. A PA sure wasn't what broke me into craft ale.

Pfft. Expert male opinions are just that.... Male opinions. I will admit that many many women don't even like beer. The women I work with think I'm crazy spending money on beer and not shoes.

 

[Ridire]

My wife is not much of a beer drinker...and when she does, it's usually Miller Lite. But she has just recently realized that other stouts (other than Guinness) and porters are pretty good. She picked up a 12 of Leini's Snowdrift this past weekend. I think I've created a monster.