Recent Articles

Welcome to Emily Engdahl

Mar 20, 2012 Celebration Worthy, Good People, Women and Beer Leave a comment

We’re thrilled and ecstatic (yes, really!!!) to have Emily Engdahl onboard with Women Enjoying Beer. Suffice it to say Emily’s fire, diplomacy and great enthusiasm for beer and education are a beerfect fit all around.

She’s dug into the landscape of WEB Events Development StormTrooper with great energy and zest. We’re extremely grateful and happy. Thanks for joining the business of changing culture, research, and education for WEB, Emily.

photo by Sara Szatmary

Here’s a bit more about her:

    Emily Engdahl joins WEB with 13 years of experience managing a small business dedicated to the elderly and mentally ill.
    In addition to her wide range of event coordination, conflict resolution, mediation, organizational and financial management skills, Emily’s communication and marketing experience couple with her love of beer and community for a dynamic and enthusiastic addition to our team.
    Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Emily is an avid artist, writer, and voracious reader who enjoys homebrewing, plotting her mini-farm, freelance graphic design, and making people laugh.

Beer & Cheese, Beer & Cheese, Beer & Cheese!

Mar 19, 2012 Beer & Food, Education & Training, Events 1 Comment

At the recent 8th Annual Oregon Cheese Festival, we had the pleasure to conduct the inaugural Beer & Cheese pairing session. Our friends at the Rogue Creamery (event hosts) were gracious, had everything together and the events was sold out - SRO even! Proof positive that festivals and events should offer fun educational sessions for the guests and attendees.

A BIG THANK YOU to Tom, Tasha, David, Carey, Anna, Francis, and the whole crew of Rogue Creamery for putting on such a well run and well received festival. Seriously – it’s one of our favorites because it goes sooooo smoothly.  And it’s very well attended because of that – the guests have a great time, which also makes it a good investment for us as well.

Sue & Larry, great helpers, prep the cheese

The audience in the cozy room were engaged, polite and had some terrific questions about beer specifically. A bonus for me as the leader of the session was that friend and colleague Matt Van Wyk, brewer of Oakshire Brewing, was also in attendance.

I’m one of those people who always welcomes anyone in the room – most especially the folks who are directly tied to the going-ons. Matt supplied 2 of the 4 beers I chose to pair for the session. He was gracious, fun and chimed in & answered questions with thoroughness and tact. I know the guests enjoyed having a brewer in the mix as well, particularly one that could speak to the beers in front of us.

The other brewer was in fact at the festival, as their brewery booth, enlightening more folks about beer – Larry Chase, Standing Stone.

Matt Van Wyk and other guests at the tasting

Since we rarely hand out paper programs that people have to then schlep around or toss or recycle, we always post menus on our site following an event. As promised, here’s the tasty line up we used to edutain and converse about.

The line up was a great cross-section of beers and foods to pair. The best ingredient of the tasting: The People. We’re already excited to get back to it next year.

As requested, we’ll cover why beer and cheese do in fact pair so nicely later this week. Thanks to Australian guest Mashka for asking. Stay tuned!

“Green Beers” Menu

Mar 16, 2012 Beer & Food, Education & Training, Women and Beer Leave a comment

As a matter of course for WEB, below is the menu we served at the monthly meet-up we host. Women only, education based, highly social and fun, taken care of by hospitable host location partners.

We choose “Green Beers” ala sustainability. It’s the perfect time to not tint any beer food coloring green and to highlight the members of the brewing community that exercise Earth friendly practices. Our host, Standing Stone Brewing, has been recognized as a very green brewpub so it was an easy choice for us to return.

The beers are clean, solid and they brew house beers as well as seasonals. In fact, we even had the last of their barleywine, which had been covertly stashed for the occasion!

Enjoy other green beers, wherever you may be – by supporting your local brewer who is also supporting Mother Earth. Cheers ~

  • SSBC Amber with extra crispy garlic fries.
  • SSBC Barleywine with bleu cheese and candied walnuts
  • SSBC Double IPA with corn chips topped with humus and chili oil drizzle
  • SSBC Noble Stout with classic chocolate cake

 

Responses From Yesterday: Fun & Games

Mar 15, 2012 Beer, Brain Stew, Education & Training, Events, Women and Beer Leave a comment

As promised, here are the responses to yesterdays post:

What are three ingredients in beer?

Malt, hops, yeast; hops, yeast, water; hops, water, barley, yeast

What are three styles of beer?

Pilsner, lager, IPA, stout, porter; pilsner, stout, sour; IPA, pilsner, ale

What are three steps in the brewing process?

Fermentation, heating, filtering, aging; mash, age, pouring; mixing, fermenting, casking, bottling, labeling

What 3 creative ingredients could you add to beer?

Chocolate, raspberries, coffee, bourbon, tangerine; ginger, chocolate, spicy-cayenne; ginger, cloves, chocolate, coffee, nutmeg

Name three breweries

Olympia, Standing Stone, Widmer Brothers, Ninkasi, Coors, Pabst, Guinness; Ninkasi, Rogue Dead Guy, Standing Stone; Full Sail, New Belgium, Walkabout, Standing Stone, Deschutes, Blue Moon

List three places you like to drink beer?

Beside the pool, on my deck, ‘outside’ camping, a bar, with pizza; beach, house/yard, anywhere; at home, camping, WEB functions, in the tub

List three beers you enjoy.

Fat Tire Ale, Noble Stout, Great White; Lost Coast White Shark, Rodenbach/sour beer, I Love Oregon [Standing Stone]; Guinness, Mud shark, Pin Up Porter, Sessions Blue, Mississippi, Shock Top, Apricot Pyramid, Black Butte Porter, Widmer Heffe

Name three different beer packages.

Keg, 6 pack, quart bottle, tap, 4 pack, cans; bottle, tap, glass; growler, case, kegs, 6 pack, individual bottles, tap, beer bong, pony keg

List three places in your area where you buy beer.

[Ashland] Co-op, Albertson’s, Shop N Kart, Market Of Choice; Jackson [Creek] Pizza, Shop N Kart, Albertson’s, Standing Stone [Brewing Company], ball games; Beerworks, Albertson’s, Standing Stone, Southern Oregon Brewing, Safeway, Winco, Country Village

Name three celebrities you’d like to have a beer with.

Ellen DeGeneres, Diane Sawyer, Steve Martin, Jack Nicholson; Amy Goodman, Patrick Stewart, Stephen Fry, Angelina Jolie, Snoop Dogg, Robert Ballard; Michelle Obama, Colin Ferrell, Clint Eastwood, Drew Barrymore, Craig Ferguson, Sam Elliott, Samuel Jackson, Kate Winslet, Sean Connery

 

It’s All Fun & Games

Mar 14, 2012 Beer, Education & Training, Events, Something To Think About Leave a comment

Making a game of something educational is one of the most effective ways to induce and increase learning.

Case in pint:

At the WEB monthly meet-up in Febrewary, I decided to add a game element to the already lively and fun format we exercise. I made up a simple series of questions that the guests would respond to.

The guests were asked to simply from small teams of 2 – 4, which they easily did since they’re already kind of grouped together. The questions were mostly open-ended and responses were all over the map! Notice I used the word ‘responses’ instead of answers. To really encourage fearless learning, ask for responses – not answers (the sky isn’t always blue).

Add some fun and games

The input you’ll get from responses (vs. answers) will be much more creative, conversation laden and fun! Consider it your own spontaneous research. If you do, then you can learn things like: what do my customers know about my beer? What can we be sharing with them to increase their knowledge, which will make them a ‘better’ customer? What kinds of ideas can I get from them for our beers, like creative ingredients?

Here are the questions I asked:

  1. What are three ingredients in beer?
  2. What are three styles of beer?
  3. What are three steps in the brewing process?
  4. What 3 creative ingredients could you add to beer?
  5. Name three breweries
  6. List three places you like to drink beer.
  7. List three beers you enjoy.
  8. Name three different beer packages.
  9. List three places in your area where you buy beer.
  10. Name three celebrities you’d like to have a beer with.

WOW! Talk about totally fun and fascinating input. Because I knew allowing each group to give all their responses would be time prohibitive in our setting, I simply went around the room at the end of our meet-up and asked each group for their responses to one question, then moved on to the next question for the next group until we covered them all.

It’s also a great way to encourage the people in the groups to talk about beer in new ways. The relationships that happen at the tables gets deeper, more fun and more lasting – because they’ve all just talked about facets of beer that they haven’t before.

Like Fun & Games, one of my favorite albums extols, engage in a robust and playful way with beer enthusiasts. I’ll share responses tomorrow.

Survey Update

Mar 9, 2012 Beer, Something To Think About, Women and Beer Leave a comment

Women all over are speaking up

Many of the respondents of the first ever State of Women and Beer survey indicated they’d love to hear the ‘results’. We’ll be sharing some info once we compile and can get our minds around the huge volume of input given.

Part of the information will be shared for sure at the 2012 Craft Brewers Conference.

Today I simply wanted to provide an update on what’s what:

  • Over 120 women have responded so far…we’ll continue to take completed surveys indefinitely. Send them in and along at any time to me at Ginger (at) WomenEnjoyingBeer (dot) com
  • Pennsylvania, Texas and Oregon are leading the pack of number of respondents per state
  • We’ve not heard from women in these states yet and would really appreciate their input: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
  • Women from the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have all contributed (ALL women are welcome).
  • 5 surveys came from great women, yet did not indicate their locations.

Keep them coming – for those who shared it forward, thank you very much! Clearly women enjoy beer and want to talk about it.

31+ Women To Celebrate on International Women’s Day

Mar 8, 2012 Celebration Worthy, Good People 1 Comment

Do you know 31 females that you can celebrate?

I can think of dozens, all for different reasons, in many different facets of familiarity.Some I know well, some less so, some not yet (and would like to share a beer with for sure).

Here are some I celebrate today, International Women’s Day, in no particular order, with plenty more where these came from….

Is that more than 31?? So what…I could go on.

Now you – go on. Make your own list.

Explore First, Judge Later

Mar 7, 2012 Assumptions & Myth Busting, Beer & Food, Education & Training, Events 1 Comment

Unlike Martha*, who superficially dumped “dark” beers together (“They’re smokey”) in this clip, Sandi, Leisl and all the guests were into the actually learning about beer at our monthly Swig & Stitch event.

Learn with an open mind, then form an opinion

In between really cool and useful sewing technique lessons, we explored and tasted 3 styles of beers matched with 3 foods. Our fabulous and always generous hosts, 4 Daughters Irish Pub, outdid themselves again.

Here’s the menu we savored:

  • Sierra Nevada Torpedo with house made clam chowder
  • Coors Light with crispy green beans
  • Caldera Toasted Coconut Chocolate Porter with vanilla ice cream.

Coors light? YES!! I lead these edutaining sessions with the intention to teach first and then form opinions. Hence I do not introduce what the specific beers are. We bring them out, examine them (visual, aroma, flavor, mouthfeel) and THEN disclose.

No matter the size of the brewery, they are all crafted beers. We’re suggesting you remain open – since all biggies were once smallies too.

Being a snob and eliminating what you think to be ‘fizzy yellow beer’ is not only bad for the beer community, it cuts you off from potentially enjoyable experiences. And that, my friends, is what beer should be all about: Enjoyment.

p.s. *It’s not progress if the info is wrong or incomplete and I’ve long respected Martha…she needs some beer education

Oregon Chocolate Festival: 1st Ever Beer & Chocolate Pairing

Mar 5, 2012 Beer & Food, Celebration Worthy, Education & Training, Events Leave a comment

Women Enjoying Beer presented the first ever Beer & Chocolate pairing session at the 8th Annual Oregon Chocolate Festival held last weekend in Ashland, OR. Our gracious and enthusiastic hosts, lead by the famazing Karolina, made being a presenter and vendor easy and fun.

Thanks to the guests who enjoyed an hour’s worth of lively tasting, conversating and questions. We featured 3 flavorful West coast beers matched with 3 delicious local chocolate makers.

Judging by the enthusiasm of the attendees I’d say we had a big success on our taste buds.

Many thanks to the generous supply of beer from the brewers and Lark’s Restaurant in the Hotel as well as the chocolate companies. The Hotel staff and volunteers from SOU were a big help as well.

8th Annual Oregon Chocolate Festival 1st Ever Chocolate & Beer Session

Mar 3, 2012 Beer & Food, Education & Training, Events, Good People 1 Comment

now...where's my beer?

Come visit us this weekend at the Oregon Chocolate Festival in Ashland OR. It’s the tasty brainchild of Karolina at the gracious and hospitable Ashland Springs Hotel.

We get the express pleasure of giving the first ever Beer & Chocolate tasting session. Karolina was super excited about the idea so we’re thrilled to get to enlighten on the wonderful flavor experience of beer and chocolate together. YUM!!

The Festival starts with a special dinner Friday 3/2, runs 11 – 3 both Saturday and Sunday 3/3 & 3/4. We’ll be there the entire time, with the Beer & Chocolate session at 1 pm Sunday.  You need to register in advance and the sessions are open to women and men – and tickets are selling nicely.

Cheers to Beer & Chocolate!

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