An alewife , also brewess [ 3 ] or brewster , [ 4 ] was a woman who brewed ale for commercial sale. Women have been active in brewing since before the process's industrialisation.
The word "alewife" is first recorded in England in to mean "a woman that keeps an ale-house", synonymous with the word "brewster". Although the profession was later taken over by men, the original brewing profession back in ancient Mesopotamia was principally performed by women.
The precise amount of ale that was ingested daily is not known, but it appears to have been up to a gallon a day per person. Public records in the medieval period before the Black Death include regulatory legislation that treats brewing as a solely female profession, indicating that brewing ale was dominated by women. Drinking alcohol daily was a common practice between and Estimates find the average annual consumption of wine in France to be over liters for the majority of the period s.
While they drank alcohol, medieval Europeans did not drink so heavily for inebriation but rather as sustenance for daily life in place of other common drinks such as water. Because winemaking was a very involved process, and hopped beer had not yet spread from the Netherlands and Belgium , ale and hard cider became popular among the lower classes in medieval England. Medieval ale spoiled quickly, making mass production difficult and resulting in localized industries made up of many small ale producers throughout medieval towns.
For example, in there was 1 alehouse for every inhabitants per town. By the late 15th century, hopped beer began supplanting ale as a popular drink in medieval England. As the beer industry grew, the female-centric ale market was supplanted in part by the male-centric beer market. As a trade in medieval Europe, ale brewing offered women a relatively lucrative and stable career. Even as the industry underwent multiple economic changes in the Late Middle Ages , female brewers and alewives generally found stable work in the trade, particularly when compared to other contemporary female trades.
