Brewery tour gives young women in B.C.'s South Okanagan a glimpse into a career in beer

For Grace Connolly and her friends, a local brewery tour in B.C.'s South Okanagan wasn't only an awesome science learning experience — they also learned that people of all genders could succeed in a male-dominated industry.

"It's really empowering," said Conolly, a Grade 12 student at Penticton Secondary School, at the end of her trip to the Tin Whistle Brewery company last Wednesday.

The company, founded in 1995, invited Conolly and two other female students studying biology in the same grade and school to participate in making beer.

The program is a part of a movement to get more women into the brewing industry, a new twist to an annual project initiated by the non-profit Pink Boots Society Canada to mark International Women's Day.

The Pink Boots Society, which is based in St. Paul, Minn., and has 78 chapters globally including one in Canada, supports women and non-binary people in the beer industry in the form of scholarships and public education campaigns.

Every March, the Canadian chapter provides a special hop blend to breweries that are interested in producing a collaboration brew to celebrate gender equality on March 8.

WATCH | Grade 12 students get a tour of a local brewery

Tin Whistle's co-owner Alexis Esseltine says she decided to invite high school students to take part in this year's brew to expose them to a career path they might not otherwise think of. 

"There's a ton of science in beer," she said. "So much of what we decide to do later on comes from what we're exposed to in our youth, and so just by bringing people into the brewhouse to see this process will hopefully inspire them."

Esseltine says by inviting young women studying science to see the beer-making process, she hopes to inspire the next generation of women to join the gender-imbalanced beer industry.

"We're the beer capital of Canada — here we have breweries that are co-owned by women, three or four of them. Unfortunately, there are no women brewers currently in Penticton," she said.

The three students got a hands-on experience, including dumping grains and hop blends into the mash tun, and testing the pH value and alcohol level of the wort.

Grade 12 student Charlotte Hannah says she was able to apply what she had learned in class in the process.

"Learning a lot of the terminology in the class was useful to be able to understand the processes of what was happening here, understanding the reasons behind why they're testing the alcohol levels and understanding how the alcohol is made from the fermentation of the yeast," Hannah said.