My Love for Brewery Taps

 I was really sad to read this article about Brewdog sexism this morning.

Of course, there have been countles less-than-complimentary articles about them over the years.  That in itself makes me sad because, in the old days, I really liked some of their beers and I also kind of liked their availability (I'm remembering particularly getting some cans of Punk in Poole to take back to our Brownsea Island cottage).

I think I've only visited a Brewdog tap once (in Bristol) and it was quiet but not somewhere I felt the need to go back to.  I don't drink their beer any more.

I think it makes me doubly sad because I really love going to brewery taps and they are frequently staffed (and visited by) young men.  I trust my local breweries handle this kind of thing better.

I've always been served with respect at the places we drink at regularly.  Only two bar staff have ever mansplained beer (in 40 years of drinking beer) and its serving to me - and I'm old enough give them pretty short-shrift but were I younger at the time, I would have found the experience dispiriting and it might well have deterred me from going to other places.  

I see some of the behaviour described in the article as similar to I had as a woman in financial services which was (might be still) a very boys-club industry.  Even worse when the work I moved to was very technology heavy and I had to slap down a few blokes who didn't believe that people from the business, much less a woman from the business could possible understand the tech we were using.  By this time I had a degree in computing and it was doubly annoying. I did have the odd moment of triumph when the odd guy learned his lesson - but they were significantly outweighed by variously being overlooked, patronised and sidelined.

It's not acceptable, it's never been acceptable but it was always quite difficult to speak out.

Frankly, any brewery stupid enough to undermine their female staff and customers deserve to be punished by fewer of us choosing to use them.  Dear god, men, it's difficult enough to be a hospitality business, why on earth would you choose (because you do choose your behaviour) to alienate a chunk of your potential customers and potentially brilliant staff who you so desperately need to keep your organisation running well.

In the last couple of days I've been to two taps - small but perfectly-formed Little Martha brewery tap and the larger, older and further-away New Bristol Brewery tap.  Both had a mix of different people enjoying the space and the beer - groups of women, groups of men and mixed groups and couples.  The atmosphere in both was lively and friendly and I'd never think twice about going in on my own and feeling safe.  If you can't make my beer-drinking experience feel like this, I won't be going in - and that also means I won't be buying your product online or from the supermarket, either.  

Also I guess my message to organisation like this is "just f*cking grow up!"