Witches, Brewing, and Distilling

European legends keep their memory alive. In the Finnish and Karelian poems gathered in the Kalevala, Osmotar—sometimes called Kalevatar—brews beer for a wedding feast. The tale is richer and more specific than the modern shorthand that a Finnish goddess simply handed alcohol to humankind. Norse women certainly brewed ale, yet there is little solid evidence for the popular claim that Vikings allowed only women to brew.

Abbess Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) remains an important early voice on hops. In her Physica she noted how hops helped preserve beverages, including beer. She did not invent hopped beer, and earlier evidence of hop use means she cannot confidently be called the first person to recommend them.

In medieval England the women who brewed and sold ale were commonly known as brewsters or alewives. The word “alewife” appears in English records by 1393. Ale stakes—poles or signs set outside a home or tavern—really were used to advertise that ale was ready. What history does not support is the idea that these women routinely wore tall black pointed hats as a professional uniform.

From these genuine fragments grew a wonderfully tidy story: alewives wore pointed hats, stirred cauldrons, kept cats, and displayed broom-like ale stakes. Male brewers and religious authorities then supposedly turned those very symbols against them, accused them of witchcraft, and pushed them out of business so monasteries and guilds could take over.

It is a memorable story. It is also largely a modern myth.

Women’s participation in commercial brewing did decline as the trade became more professionalized and demanded greater capital, dedicated premises, guild membership, and licenses. The legal and economic systems of the period generally favored men. Some towns imposed specific restrictions—Chester, for example, barred women of certain ages from selling ale in 1540—but England never enacted a nationwide ban on women brewing beer.

Historians have found no evidence of a coordinated campaign in which male brewers, monasteries, or church authorities systematically accused alewives of witchcraft in order to eliminate competition. Nor is there convincing proof that the pointed witch’s hat and the broom developed from alewives and their ale stakes.

The European witch hunts themselves were real and horrific. Prosecutions took place in both Catholic and Protestant territories and were driven by religious conflict, local accusations, social tensions, judicial systems, and beliefs about magic. The most intense period ran roughly from 1560 to 1630. Historians estimate that between 40,000 and 60,000 people were executed, three-quarters or more of them women, though the proportions varied by region. Anna Göldi, executed in the Protestant Swiss canton of Glarus in 1782, is often called Europe’s last witch; her official conviction was for poisoning, so the familiar label is understandable but not strictly accurate.

The real history of women and beer is still rich, complicated, and worth telling. Women brewed for their households, sold ale to their neighbors, ran businesses, and helped carry brewing traditions across centuries. Their gradual loss of influence came from commercialization, unequal access to money and institutions, restrictive local laws, and changing expectations of women’s roles—not from a grand conspiracy that transformed alewives into witches.

So raise a glass to the actual alewives who kept the kettles full long before anyone decided pointed hats looked sinister. And if you find yourself in the North Georgia mountains, stop by House Of Applejay. We’ll pour you something with zero witch trials attached—just good spirits, mountain air, and the occasional bear-approved toast.