“More women in beer, more beer in women." This is what Bitter Women Brewery is all about.

Bitter Women Brewery (BWB) was born from frustration with the world of advertising that markets beer for the blokes and spritzers for the ladies. BWB calls out these stale delusions, challenging the idea that the size, colour or flavour of your drink somehow reflects your merry masculinity or dainty femininity. BWB smashes boring stereotypes and declares that anything can be for anyone - and beer is most definitely for women.

Founded by Fê Sasson, BWB has evolved from a conceptual brewery, to a social platform spreading information about gender bias in beer, to a collective enterprise hosting events in craft beer venues. 

What began as a one-off meet-up for International Women’s Day 2022 at UnBarred Brewery has blossomed into a thriving, welcoming and inclusive community group hosting a variety of monthly creative events. Take your pick from pottery painting, clothes mending workshops, flower arranging sessions, beer cocktail making and excursions to London and Lewes breweries. BWB combines craft beer with craft art to welcome those underrepresented in the beer world into the heart of the fun.

At its core, BWB is about dismantling barriers - including those that stifle creativity within our increasingly hectic “I-haven’t-got-time-for-that lives". BWB’s drink-and-draw events are particularly good at getting folks to connect with their inner imaginative selves. 

The most recent drink-and-draw event was hosted where it all started at UnBarred Brewery. Three tables full of people doodled away, instructed by prompts drawn from a tankard such as “draw your favourite pub” but “only using one continuous line”. After 60 seconds, Fê would invite everyone to share their masterpieces with the group. There were many appreciative oohs, lots of sentimental ahhs, and a fair share of giggling hahas.

This particular drink-and-draw was part of a larger UnBarred event celebrating women in beer. BWB joined visual drinks educator Em Sauter (@pintsandpanels), tankard throwing potter Lucy Young (@lucyyoungceramics), and beer writer Melissa Cole (@melissacolebeer) to celebrate the launch of UnBarred’s Convivial IPA - a zesty orange and earl grey tea infused craft beer. 

Melissa delivered a talk that explored how our sense of smell ties food and drink to memory and emotion. She encouraged the group to explore their personal taste palettes and preferences, reinforcing the importance of not being told what we should like, but instead discovering it for ourselves. With Melissa’s sentiment as inspiration, we went on to give UnBarred’s Limoncello Berliner-Weisse a go!

Bitter Women Brewery isn’t about being the best artist in the room or knowing every hop variety by heart; it’s about crafting a community where people can try out new things without any pressure or expectation. Founder Fê has curated a diverse lineup of events that offer something for everyone. In the colourful, kitsch world of BWB, everyone is welcome to raise a pint, schooner or half to making life a little more fun.

We had the pleasure of catching up with Fê after the event.

Tell us about what Bitter Women Brewery is and how it all started.

I guess the first thing was my love for beer. And the fact that going out, I used to get really annoyed when I ordered a beer but they gave him my pint and gave me his drink that wasn’t a beer. I realised there was a real gender bias around beer and that it was so ingrained. So, I created this concept of Bitter Women Brewery, and I didn't really know what it was, but the idea was that every beer, every comms, every coaster would help inspire the conversation of: Why aren’t more women drinking beer? Why isn’t beer a girly drink? 

Anyway, I made a beer and I did not enjoy the process. All the results tasted like vinegar and it was horrible. I was really lost for most of it, but I had an Instagram account where for the longest it was just me posting beers or sharing memes. Eventually, I had the idea to plan an event for women to get together and drink beer. So, on International Women’s Day 2022 the time felt right! At first I was just thinking of a pub crawl with friends but then I was at UnBarred Brewery and noticed they didn’t have any event posters up. I spoke to the staff and they booked some tables for us.

Suddenly it was like, “Ok, it’s happening. Plan some stuff. Print some stuff. Stick it up." The General Manager emailed afterwards saying the event was great and we could have the space whenever we needed it. So, I decided I’d do another event which was a beer tasting session that only five people showed up to. I remember thinking, “oh well, I’m gonna keep going." Next, we did a collage workshop and people that I didn't know came along, and it kind of started moulding itself from there.

What it’s ended up becoming is a way for people to make friends, and women to connect and meet other women. We've been getting girls who maybe moved to Brighton recently and don't know anyone. We're getting girls who live with their partners and they don't really have that much of a friendship group. They're coming to Bitter Women, chatting to other women, and then going for coffee soon after or getting a pint soon after. I guess the surprise element is that they’re now taking friendships outside of Bitter Women! It was something I never expected.

I can vouch for the lovely new friendships! I know you have a few catch phrases, but I wondered if you have a motto that sums up BWB? 

I really love “more women in beer, more beer in women." It's very much what we try to do. Getting women who aren’t particularly interested in beer yet to become a part of beer culture, claim their space, be at the pub, buy pints, talk to their friends about the beers, explore and enjoy! 

Your merch and branding is so cute and kitsch! It really complements the craft events that you host. Can you talk us through the aesthetic choice?

When I started Bitter Women, I just wanted it to look like every craft beer brewery you've ever seen. It was my good friend Laura, who was our original designer, who came up with this concept of using a mix of bold colours and irreverent vintage pictures. The use of old images is very much a play on tradition, it’s kind of surrealist and uses humour. I hope it shows the vibe of who we are, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

What I love about Bitter Women, and it comes through in her visual identity, is that we can be Halloween, or we can be making beer, or we can be doing yoga, and all of that is so easy to show as us. You can be more than one thing and still be you! Maybe this is for later but… making peace with the fact that you're never going to be the top thing at that one thing. We are never going to be the number one beer learning experience in The South. We're never gonna be the best yoga workshop. We're never gonna be the most knowledgeable painting experience you have. But I feel like that's the magic of it.

I love that sentiment. Your events pop up in so many lovely pubs and taprooms. What are your thoughts on the Brighton craft beer world, and how has the scene received you?

God, I’m so glad you asked that. No one asks any questions! In London we get asked “so are you a brewery or a crafts group?”, but in Brighton everyone’s absolutely open and welcoming. Everyone’s always willing to give the group a free drink or a discount, and it's just beyond great. It's a hard time to be a business in the UK right now, and I feel like it's such a mutually beneficial thing. I think the best thing is that the events we do during the week means you see a pub brimming with energy and people drinking and having fun on Monday or Tuesday, when usually it’ll be slow on business. It kind of shows that the venues understand the value we bring, and we love going there! It's always great.

I have to ask, what’s your favourite watering hole? And, if that’s too hard, your favourite spot in each part of town?

So, up in Hanover, it has to be The Independent. If you go down the hill into North Laine, Vine Street Tap is the best. I also love the Heart in Hand. Up towards Seven Dials, there’s The Rook and The Hampton which are both really good. The Well is new and I’ve been going there ever since it opened! I also love Bison in Hove and UnBarred along London Road. My favourite is so hard to choose but I would probably say Vine Street or The Independent. The support they give us is unreal and I’m so grateful. 

Great choices. So, even though you get quizzed on whether you’re actually a brewery or not, you have in fact brewed your own beers in collaboration with some well established breweries!

Yes! So, the first brew we did with Moon was a strawberry and rosemary session - Mary Queen of Strawbs. We wanted to make something that was fruity but also had a more complex element to it that you don't usually see in beer. It was sensational! And then the other beer we made came more from the name we wanted, Wicked Witch of the Yeast. It was all about Halloween and how women got kicked out of the beer industry back around 1500-1600 because they were accused of being witches. Women with big cauldrons were making men be a bit silly and people were like “what a minute, that's witchcraft!” I really wanted a beer to pay homage to that so we landed on a blackberry and blackcurrant gose.

What would be your dream beer to make?

So when Bitter Women was first born as a concept of a brewery, I really wanted the flavours to be disruptive of what a ‘girl's drink’ is. So, one of the beers I was interested in brewing was a gin and tonic sour. The beer would be called Gin & Tits and would poke fun at how back in the day, women in beer adverts would be half naked serving men their beers. The other was called Port Belly, and it was going to be grape and port inspired. That’s the one that I tried to brew through natural fermentation with grape skin, which was a terrible idea. Anyway, that one was all about the pressure to look a certain way. Since growing up a bit and being in Brighton and understanding that we don't want to fear drinking beers, it can just be about the right occasion or flavour pallet.

My dream beer to make now is difficult because I love a shit larger but I also love a fruity beer! I would really love something like a mango and basil lager. A sweet and herby moment.

Let me know when I can buy it. Finally, what’s the end goal of Bitter Women Brewery? Take over the beer world?

This is a big question because for the longest time it plagued me! I didn’t know what Bitter Women was or what I wanted out of it - I didn’t really understand it. We started as a hypothetical brewery, then we moved on to being a social platform that wants to spread information about gender bias in beer, then we moved on to hosting events. It was very complex for me because I felt serious imposter syndrome. Like, I don’t know everything there is to know about beer so what authority do I have hosting a tasting?! It took a long time but I realised that we’re not a group of brewers or connoisseurs, we’re a group of women that like to drink beer. Maybe it can be as simple as that: women get together to drink beer and do an activity. It was a mega turning point! It allowed me to have more fun and do anything we wanted to do. It’s been like this for the last year and half now.

So I think for the future, I want to continue seeing how it goes and understanding what people want to do as well. And yeah, if it never has an end goal and it just keeps going, well that’ll be fine as well. I feel like it's okay not to know. 

You create a space for building friendships and trying new things - that in itself is enough! Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to create a platform like Bitter Women?

Sometimes people ask me about Bitter Women, and they say “I’d love to do something like that, but it could never be me." My advice is: just start! Bitter Women events started as an accident after hosting that first event at UnBarred. You just gotta let it happen. 

Bitter Women Brewery's next event is on Thursday 14 November at Bison Beach Bar. Snap up your tickets for the banner embroidery workshop here.