FOOD & DRINK FEATURE FEMME-ENTATION

The women behind the beer of Birdsong Brewing Co.

BY KARIE SIMMONS

For more than a century, beer has been overwhelmingly thought of as a masculine product — made by men and for men — due in large part to early marketing campaigns that portrayed beer as the elixir of masculinity.

After Prohibition was repealed in the United States, beer was thought of as the “manly” alternative to the feminized cocktail. During World War II, advertisers framed beer as a domestic comfort for which soldiers risked their lives.

Beer marketing in postwar America played into the strict gender roles of the 1950s by creating an image of beer as a man’s drink. Women were valued as promotional vehicles and over time have become increasingly sexualized in beer advertisements as the commercial beer industry uses heteronormative sex to sell beer to men.

Today, the masculinity of beer is so ingrained in our culture that it’s perceived as a social norm; men and beer just go hand-in-hand. But that wasn’t always the case. The vast majority of ancient brewers were actually women.

From the Sumerians to the Vikings to the Egyptians, women brewed ale —and later, beer — both for religious ceremonies and as a calorierich, staple beverage. Fermenting was a routine household task and some women sold their brews in the marketplace.

Men only replaced women as brewers once production breweries spread across the world and industrialization picked up — in other words, once money got involved. Since then, female brewers have been trying to get back into the industry they were pushed out of, often working harder than their male counterparts to prove themselves and be faced with less opportunities.

Birdsong Brewing Company, located along North Davidson Street in Charlotte’s Optimist Park neighborhood, is proof of what history has already told us: Women can make beer — good beer, including year-round favorites like Jalapeño Pale Ale, Paradise City IPA and Rewind Lager along with seasonal, small batch and limited release brews.

Co-owned by husband and wife, Chris and Tara Goulet, Birdsong employs women in all stages of its production and distribution, including Mikala Pratt and Andrea Frohlich, two brewers who make up half of the brewery’s four-person production team.

In a mainly male-dominated industry, Birdsong is flowing from a different tap.

A place where females thrive

Prior to opening Birdsong Brewing, Tara Goulet was managing a local bakery while her husband was working in the corporate world. Both were ready for a change and turned to their friend, Goulet’s coworker at the bakery, Conor Robinson, who was learning how to homebrew.

The couple thought Charlotte was missing a small neighborhood brewery — Olde Mecklenburg Brewery was the only craft brewery in the city at the time — so they invited friends over to pitch a business plan and serve Robinson’s beer. That’s how Birdsong Brewing began.

With Robinson’s help, Birdsong Brewing opened in 2011 next door to NoDa Brewing’s original location on East 26th Street, where Seoul Food Meat Company is today.

Goulet said the initial idea for Birdsong was “a little taproom and to distribute some kegs to a handful of restaurants around the city.” That’s as far as they ever thought the business would go.

However, the brewery quickly outgrew its first space and moved up the street to its current location at 1016 N. Davidson St. in 2016.

Goulet said they didn’t set out to hire women specifically, just whoever was the best fit for the job; in several instances those hires happened to be women. She said Birdsong’s first hire was a woman for the taproom and another as the brewery’s first salesperson, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

“I don’t know if we were attractive to women that were in the beer industry or interested in getting into the beer industry, but we definitely have just naturally, organically, been a brewery where females have just thrived,” Goulet said.

Prior to joining Birdsong three years ago, Frohlich got her start in the beer industry in Miami. She said the scene there was dominated by men and she didn’t know any women working in production, which made it difficult to break in.

While bartending at a brewery, she created her own opportunities by voicing her interest in production and showing an eagerness to learn. She