Following in the footsteps of thousands of women who have brewed through the millennia, Sara Barton founded Brewster’s Brewing Company and the first beers flowed in 1998.
Over eons and through civilisations, women had brewed beer as naturally as they baked and nurtured their families. In recent centuries though, a woman’s role within the brewing craft had changed. Old fashioned societal norms and industrialisation had turned women away from being the natural brewers of beer. In modern times things have been changing and thankfully the world is different now; the new age of the Brewster is dawning.
After equipping herself with a Masters degree in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot Watt in 1989, Sara was to join the tiny band of female pioneers working in the brewing world and then in time she took the step to lead her own brewing company.
Sara took the name Brewsters for the brewery as it was an old English word for a female brewer. In the mid nineteen nineties when Brewster’s brewery was started it was a term seldom used or even understood.
Brewster’s brewery is now a 32 hectolitre (or 20bbl if you are old school) single infusion brewhouse located in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Cask conditioned ales predominate but brewery conditioning is developing to be an important element for the brewery and allows other beer styles such as kegged beers and canned small pack to develop. The small batch size gives scope for great variety in styles.