Avling Brewer Taylor MacKenzie
In mid-May, a Massachusets brewery production manager named Brienne Allan shared her own experiences of sexual harassment, discrimination, and toxic masculinity within brewing on her personal IG Stories, and invited women from around the industry to share their stories as well. In only a few days, thousands of stories were shared and they’ve been met with an overwhelming response in the media - both craft beer-centric, and mainstream.
Outlets like Good Beer Hunting, eater.com, Bon Appetit, and the Boston Globe have all picked up the story giving it an unprecedented level of visibility and new-found awareness. And what we’re most excited to see is the change already being enacted within our industry.
One of the governing bodies within the Craft Beer Industry is the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, with chapters around the world. The President of the Ontario, Canada chapter is Richard Preiss, upon first learning of Allen’s posts, promptly acknowledged that this issue indeed exists and has been ignored. He made a call for a Code of Conduct to not only be implemented but enforced for all participants of the MBAA and pledged to resign from his position unless changes were made. Only a few days later the MBAA answered his call by issuing a statement vowing to, while working alongside Ren Navarro of Beer Diversity, not only update and enforce their Conduct Code, but to create systems which foster and encourage better diversity and representation in a safe environment.
Cicerone, an international education organization focusing on beer knowledge, has taken up the call too. They’ve issued a public statement outlining the steps they will take to build a stronger community, and upon receiving complaints against one employee in particular, have suspended them while an investigation is carried out.
Around the craft beer industry, CEO’s and staff in leadership roles at many breweries are resigning, and all of us are being forced to reckon with the systemic discrimantion the exists not just within our industry, but is rooted in our wider society. There’s a lot of work for all of us to do to create a safer, more diverse, inclusive industry. This is only the beginning, but we’re watching and we’re encouraged by what is happening so far.
Brienne Allan is @ratmagnet on Instagram. If you’d like to see the outpouring of response she’s received and read the stories that women have been sharing with her, they’re saved in Instagram Highlights under the heading Sexism, pt. 1-10. Seperate to Allan herself, someone has created a GoFundMe to collect donations for costs associated with any legal defense Allan may have to mount as a result of her posts.
