Good Beer Week : Girl Power
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Good Beer Week : Girl Power

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The Fox has been involved with Good Beer Week since it started, running the Girl Power event each year to great success. “It’s getting bigger and bigger each year,” says The Fox co-owner Clodagh Harris. “It’s probably our biggest day of the year to be honest.” The theory behind the event is to get all the local female brewers together and brew a one-off beer in aid of the Pink Boots Society, a worldwide organisation that was created to assist, inspire and encourage female beer industry professionals. “It’s a thing that’s all over the world,” Harris explains. “There’s a chapter in Melbourne so we decided to help them out. Then we were thinking, ‘We have music on Sundays anyway so let’s get a bunch of female musicians involved from the area.’ It just grew from there.”

When originally approached by Good Beer Week, Harris and her co-owners Tracy Walsh and Bridie Harrop thought they’d try to create an event that emphasised everything local. “We’re all about community; doing things for local people,” says Harris. We’re three women and there’s not a big push behind women in the industry, especially in beer, so we decided we’d focus on that.” Running around to local Victorian breweries, they spoke to all the ladies that were working there and got them on board for the event. “They were really excited about it so it turned out,” she says.  

This year, women from breweries including Red Hill, Hargreaves, Two Birds, Kettle Green and Mountain Goat (to name a few) will be taking over the taps at The Fox with their own beers as well as the collaborative beer they have all brewed together. “They brew it around the Pink Boots Society,” says Harris.  It’s the same beer all over the world, but each different collective brews their own style. They’ve been told what style it has to be but then they all make their own recipes.” Ultimately, it makes the brew on tap during Girl Power unique to the local ladies that brewed it.

“Women love beer,” says Harris.  “I find that women are the more adventurous when it comes to beer. A lot of men will just stick to their brand and they won’t try anything else, whereas a lot of women will come in and say, ‘I had this one the other day and I’m looking to try something else.'” The variety will hopefully show with the many local brewers taking over the taps with varying styles of brews for punters to enjoy. “It’s an exciting event. It’s fun, especially with the girls brewing all their own beers, it should make for an interesting event.”

In addition to the many female generated beers taking over The Fox, multiple talented local women musicians will take to the stage to provide the day’s entertainment. Monique Brumby, Emma Wall & the Urban Folk, Little Wise, and DJ Blaberunner are among the acts providing a variety of tunes throughout the event tantalising spectators’ ears while the brews stimulate their tastebuds.

“It’s a free event, so basically we’re just trying to get people in to have some fun, buy some beer and make some money for the charity,” says Harris. All in all­­, Girl Power will be a celebration of women in the beer industry filled with local music and tasty beers. Cheers to that.

By Chris Swan

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