As of: March 9, 2024, 7:05 a.m
By: Melanie Fischer
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On average, women drink seven times less beer than men.
The fact that working with hops and malt is therefore out of the question for them is wrong - as a visit to the Schönram brewery proves.
Schönram
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People have been drinking beer for thousands of years.
What many people don't know is that beer was in women's hands for a long time.
The Sumerians already paid homage to the beer goddess Ninkasi.
Until the late Middle Ages, brewing beer was a woman's job.
It was just as much a part of the household as baking bread - until at some point it was rumored that witchcraft could be taking place in the female brewing kettle.
The craft of brewing became commercialized and fell into men's hands.
Steffi Werner (left) and Angelina Gump work in the Schönram brewery.
© Collage Brewery Schönram, mf
But even later you can find women who brewed and sold beer, such as Katharina von Bora, former nun and wife of Martin Luther.
Women are now on the rise again in the beer industry.
In keeping with International Women's Day, chiemgau24.de visited two employees of the Schönram Brewery.
Brewer Steffi Werner likes craftsmanship
The Schönram brewery has existed since 1780 and is family-owned in the eighth generation.
Brewing beer is a long process and begins here in the listed brewhouse.
There are three vats there.
First the mash is created.
The crushed malt is mixed with water.
The starch dissolves, sugar, protein and tannins are released.
The wort is separated from the solids and cooked with the hops in the brewing pan.
This picture can be found in the Reichenhall Museum: A worker in the saltworks has a snack and drinks beer.
© Melanie Fischer
Most of it runs automatically here, but the brewers can always intervene in the process manually.
One floor below, solid protein trub is separated out in the so-called whirlpool and the wort is then cooled to the pitching temperature.
Yeast is then added and the beer begins to ferment in the traditional open vats.
The beer is then stored, filtered and finally bottled.
The beer ferments in the open vats.
Brewer Steffi Werner has to skim off the foam.
© mf
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Steffi Werner works in the fermentation and storage cellar.
She only completed her training as a brewer and maltster at Paulaner in Munich in January.
“I always liked getting hands-on and wanted to do something manual and never go to the office,” she explains of her decision to pursue the male-dominated profession.
Her father gave her the idea and advised her to look over the shoulder of her uncle, who is a beer driver.
She didn't find the apprenticeship too difficult.
“You just have to be interested in it.
And you should be good at chemistry.” There were only two women among the 24 students in her vocational school class.
What brought her to Schönram?
“My training was great, but just controlling things on the computer is too boring for me.
I wanted to get away from industry and go more into craftsmanship.”
Today Steffi is standing alone – for the first time – filtering for bottling.
This usually happens once a week
– in summer, during the high season, twice.
Making a brew takes about six hours.
The various storage tanks converge in the basement.
Steffi monitors the whole thing on the monitor.
But she also has to do a lot of hands-on work: cleaning, closing valves, replacing hoses.
“After filtering, you also have to get into the large storage tanks and push out the remaining yeast,” she explains.
Whatever goes with it: gloves.
Without this, she would need tons of hand cream, as the cleaning and disinfecting agents are very damaging to the skin.
Brewer Steffi Werner in the middle of the hoses through which the beer is filtered.
© mf
A woman also works in the laboratory
Steffi shows us the filter machine.
Here the beer is pressed through different layers of kieselguhr.
The individual layers must then be cleaned again.
In this room we can now also try the finished beer (note: next time we visit it's better to take a taxi, as our delicious drink unfortunately ends up down the drain after a few sips).
Basically, samples are taken at every step in the brewery, on the one hand for tasting, and on the other hand the samples end up in the in-house laboratory for microbiological examination, in which a woman also works alone.
Samples are taken at each step.
© mf
(By the way: Our Bayern newsletter informs you daily about all the important stories from Bavaria.)
Angelina Gump oversees the bottling
After filtering, the beer is bottled.
Angelina Gump is already standing in the large hall.
The trained milk technologist has been monitoring the entire bottling process for four years.
“I come from a farm and have always been interested in what can be made from different food raw materials,” she explains.
Angelina wears earplugs because the system is very loud.
We look at the fascinating process from the empties to the filled bottle in the beer crate.
Angelina is the only woman in the hall, but that doesn't bother her.
“In my last job there were only men.
“I don’t know any other way,” she laughs.
With the fully automated process, something can sometimes go wrong.
“There are days when nothing happens at all.
But if you have a good team, it's not so bad.
We have a workshop, but we have to be able to fix normal problems ourselves.” 24,000 bottles are filled here every hour from Monday to Thursday.
Friday is a big cleaning day.
Angelina Gump supervises the filling of the bottles.
© mf
Guided tour for International Women's Day
After filling, the boxes are put on the pallet and are delivered within a 50 kilometer radius within two days.
There are 13 women working in the entire brewery.
The proportion of women in production is 20 percent -
Ascending trend.
And one ingredient is also feminine: hops.
Only the female plant forms umbels.
These contain hop resins and essential oils that are needed for brewing beer.
There is another highlight for all female beer fans, especially on International Women's Day: At 4 p.m. there will be an
exclusive brewery tour
in the Schönram brewery - by women for women, because the two guides on that day are of course female.
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