Beer and Sex

Watch out for the hits! Here they come!

But sorry to disappoint any one who's looking for a beer related wank as I'm moved to write about the nagging subject of beer and Women. Or rather the disgraceful attempts by various brewers to 'appeal' to the female market and the laughable response from some of the beer community in attempting to handle this issue.

Put simply the overwhelming majority of beer drinkers and beer industry types in the UK are male. As such the overwhelming majority of coverage and marketing is dominated by men. Like any clique, beer fanaticism is naturally exclusive and tends towards insularism, despite the efforts by enlightened individuals to widen the appeal of this particular beverage. The sticking point comes when some bright spark in the marketing department of a global brewer of 'shite' decides to come up with a 'womens' beer... Cue pink beer, lychee flavour and flowers on the label. Utter rubbish in other words.

I hold a very simple view - beer is a drink. Anyone can enjoy beer and these poorly executed and utterly sexist beverages and marketing campaigns serve to defeat the purpose they were conceived for.

If you come in to North and turn your nose up at a curvy half pint glass you will be told straight that it's a glass and as such is sexless, if you order 'something a girl would like' you will be questioned as to your motives. If you're a brewer and think that putting 'buxom wenches' on pump clips or 'cheekily' named brews will impress people you'll get no dice with me. Mass marketeers beware - you will fail in these outings because there's no bloody need to add silly ingredients to try and entice the other 50%. You cannot polish a turd so why don't you drop the patronising rubbish, make something decent and advertise it responsibly.

Taste is pretty much universal, now instead of ghettoising any section of society we should all just try and use your passion to sell beer to people who don't know enough about it? The reason why we have such a low percentage of women drinking beer in this country is because like so many human endeavours the beer industry is so utterly and disgracefully sexist - we need to change this now.

Read around the subject a bit folks, everyone likes a drink!

Pete Brown

Melissa Cole