For much of history, if you drank ale in an English village, a woman had probably made it. The words “alewife” and “brewster” (a feminine form of “brewer”) remind us of a time when brewing was one of the most common ways for women to earn money.
Brewing as household work
Unhopped medieval ale spoiled within days, so it had to be brewed often and in small batches. That made it a natural part of household work alongside baking and dairying, tasks often managed by women. A wife or widow might brew for her family and sell the extra to neighbours. A pole or bush hung outside the house, the ale-stake, told passers-by that fresh ale was available.
The historian Judith Bennett’s study Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England (1996) used court records to show how widespread this was. In many communities, large numbers of women appear in the records as brewers, sometimes brewing now and then when the household needed cash, and sometimes running steady businesses.
Ale was a staple, so authorities regulated it closely. The Assize of Bread and Ale, dating from the mid-thirteenth century, linked the price of ale to the price of grain. Local officials called ale-tasters or ale-conners checked quality and measures. Many records of women brewers survive precisely because they were fined for breaking these rules, which in some places worked almost like a licensing fee.
Alewives also had a mixed reputation in literature and art. The poet John Skelton’s early sixteenth-century The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng mocks a grotesque alewife and her customers, and church carvings sometimes show dishonest alewives being dragged off to hell. Such portrayals reflected anxieties about women, money and drink more than realistic portraits of the trade.
How women were pushed out
Between about 1350 and 1600, brewing in England became more commercial and more male. Bennett and others point to several reasons. Hopped beer kept longer and could be brewed in large batches, which rewarded bigger investments in equipment and storage. Brewers’ guilds and larger urban businesses were typically headed by men. Laws and customs limited women’s access to credit and property. Brewing did not suddenly become men’s work. As it became more profitable and capital-intensive, women found themselves increasingly limited to small-scale or supporting roles.
Myth check: were alewives the first witches?
You may have seen the claim that the classic image of the witch comes from alewives: the pointed hat to be seen at market, the cauldron for brewing, the broom as an ale-stake, the cat to guard the grain. It is a fun story and it circulates widely online. However, historians have found little solid evidence that witch iconography developed this way, and many of those elements have other plausible origins. Treat it as modern folklore rather than established history.
Why it matters
The story of alewives is a reminder that brewing history is not just about monks and big breweries. For centuries, ordinary women kept communities supplied with their daily drink and earned an income doing it. Their gradual exclusion shows how changes in technology and economics can reshape who gets to work in a trade. It also makes the growing number of women brewers today look less like a novelty and more like a return.