Female Brewers Weren’t Accused of Witchcraft, but the Real Story Is Just as Infuriating

A spooky story resurfaces every October, told by journalists and brewers alike. It goes like this: Women dominated the beer industry until around the 15th century. These female brewers wore tall, pointy hats at the marketplace to stand out from the crowds, and they designated their wares with broom-like signs called alestakes. They used cats to keep mice away from their grains. They brewed their beer in — what else — cauldrons. And, then, they were persecuted for witchcraft.

“It’s a great story. It makes sense. It works … until it doesn’t,” says Tara Nurin, a journalist and author of A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs.

As Dublin-based beer historian Dr. Christina Wade has written, there’s no evidence that directly suggests female “brewsters,” as they may have been known at the time, were targeted for witchcraft during the witch trials of Europe or New England that occurred from the 1400s to the 1700s. 

It’s also unlikely that the stereotypical witch costumes of today were inspired by “alewives.” Wade debunked these myths in a 2017 blog post and wrote more about the topic in The Devil in the Draught Lines: 1,000 Years of Women in Britain’s Beer History, released in March. 

Still, these myths highlight an unsung truth. Women were making beer, and lots of it. 

Debunking the ‘witch’ myth 

Most of the theories laid out to bolster the brewsters-as-witches story, which primarily centers on European alewives, can be explained by other factors. 

• The pointy hat: In her book, Wade says that the theory that brewsters wore tall hats to attract customers is “patently false.” While the origins of the conical hat are debated, Wade points to a theory from scholar Peter Burke that it was rooted in an antisemitic 1421 Hungarian law that dictated that people accused of witchcraft wear a tall, pointed “Jew’s hat.” Other arguments tie it to the capotain hat, commonly associated with the Puritans, or the dunce’s cap. Depictions of “witches” who wore such hats were likely first seen in 18th-century children’s books, long after the peak of the European witch trials. 
• The broomstick: Representations of witches flying were more common in the U.S. than Europe, Wade says. These so-called witches were also often seen riding on tridents, pitchforks, animals, or simply the wind. The most likely explanation for the broomstick? Women, the main target of witchcraft accusations, owned brooms.  
• The cauldron: Alewives used myriad vessels to brew beer. These included cauldrons, but also brewing pans and wooden buckets, according to Wade. Cauldrons could also be used for many types of cooking, and weren’t mentioned in witchcraft trial records.
• The cat: Cats were associated with heretics long before witchcraft entered the conversation, and women who kept pets were generally distrusted.

Most damning, though, is that there is little evidence of brewsters being mentioned in witch trials during this period. Since women often brewed beer at home, it’s likely that many accused of witchcraft were brewers, though not targeted because of it. In fact, links between witchcraft and brewing documented in England and Scotland often referred to female brewers as victims of “cursed” (read: spoiled) beer, writes Wade.  

‘Witches’ or no, women were the original brewers

“Historians believe strongly that women have been the original brewers in pretty much every civilization since humanity accidentally discovered beer,” says Nurin. “What has happened with remarkable consistency across time and space is that in each one of those civilizations, either the forces of economics, religion, and/or politics would eventually intervene and replace the women with men.” 

In medieval and early modern Europe, beer-making was an essential household task. 

“It was like baking or cooking,” says Wade. “It’s something that was normal and that would've been an expected part of being a housewife.” Gervase Markham’s 1615 book The English Housewife included instructions on brewing beer. 

Nurin and Wade stress that women weren’t forced out of brewing overnight. Rather, as beer became commercialized with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, women didn’t have the purchasing power or rights to participate in the new economy.

For example, the German Purity law, which limited beer brewers to just four ingredients, inadvertently pushed out brewsters who foraged for wild ingredients and were unable to buy hops, says Nurin. 

There are also more direct examples of misogyny. In colonial New England, married women could not own taverns. In England, top-tier beer guilds allowed men only.  

‘Women were never completely pushed out of brewing’ 

So, how did witches enter the conversation? 

The rumors took hold in the 2010s, says Nurin. She was even assigned a piece on witches and brewing for now-defunct New Jersey Brew magazine in 2014.  “I actually wrote that article which I’m now on a mission to debunk,” she says with a laugh. 

“With a lot of women having entered the beer space over the past 20 years, we’re more visible,” says Nurin. “We’re talking about women’s issues more, so they percolate up to the surface.” 

Wade offers a similar sentiment. “Women are reclaiming this space that is theirs, that has been theirs, that was theirs for centuries. And we’re asking questions — OK, well, it was ours. Why isn’t it ours anymore?” she says. 

“Women were never completely pushed out of brewing, ever,” says Wade. She points to women in the U.K. who took over brewing duties during World War I, and those who continued to brew domestically but whose labor wasn’t given equal weight. 

“The true story of women in brewing is that they’ve always been there.”