That's What She Said

You sure about that?

“I agree with Jen. We should kick it,” said one of my fellow World Beer Cup judges this year.

I was judging a session with two other judges, and we had just started our group discussion.

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For those unfamiliar with judging pro beer competitions, here is a quick rundown of how judging sessions usually go:

1. The first round is when every beer entered in the competition is evaluated by at least one judging table.

2. At each first-round judging table, there are usually 5-6 judges, who then divide themselves into smaller groups of two or three.

3. Each of those judge subgroups evaluates several beers each flight and selects beers to advance to the next round.

   1. During the evaluation process, the judges independently evaluate all the beers in the flight, take tasting notes, and decide which beers they would like to advance and which to eliminate.

   2. When the judges have completed their individual evaluations, they discuss their thoughts with the other judges in their groups. A lot of times, these discussions start with which beers to eliminate before moving on to which beers should advance. Typically, judges take turns nominating a sample to kick off and giving their reasoning. The other judges then agree or disagree.

4. For subsequent rounds, not including the final round, the process is more or less the same (although, thankfully, with fewer samples most of the time).

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I’ve judged with this specific judge before and enjoyed it. We were both first-year judges at GABF when we met. I was happy to see him at my judging table because I remembered him being warm, funny, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. He still is! Which is why I feel pretty comfortable inferring that, if you asked him, he would loudly and proudly say that he supports women and denounces sexism.

You can imagine how shocked he would be to hear that he’s failing at a very basic level.

Back at my judging table, while the judge was technically correct in agreeing with me, if I asked him why I thought the beer in question should not advance to the next round, he would not be able to answer truthfully.

Why? He never listened to my answer. Actually, I never answered. I was interrupted before I could, and neither of the men with whom I was judging noticed.

To be very clear, he would still likely respond because he never noticed that I never spoke. I’m guessing he would say that my answer was the same as his. Because his answer was the correct answer, naturally, so why would I have other reasons?

Here is a re-enactment of how the judging conversation went:

JUDGE MAN 1: Okay, would someone like to nominate a beer to kick?

JUDGE MAN 2: Sure, I’d like to kick this one for [reasons]

::discussion, discussion, discussion among the judges::

JUDGE MAN 1: Okay, who wants to nominate another beer to kick? Jen?

JEN: Yeah, I’d like to kick this one.

~Before JEN explains why~

JUDGE MAN 2 (interrupting): I agree with Jen. We should kick it. Here’s why I think it should be kicked.

JUDGE MAN 1: I agree with you, JUDGE MAN 2. This beer should be kicked for the reasons you mentioned.

MORGAN FREEMAN (narrating): No one ever knew why Jen wanted to kick the beer. No one even realized they never listened to her reasons. But if asked, they would say they were excellent tablemates who respected the opinions of every judge at the table, even the women.

~Fin~

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Here is the deal: if you are a man reading my newsletter (assuming you’re not hate-reading it, which, if you are, go touch grass or something, my dude. Life is fleeting), you are a man who is reading a woman’s work.

You are an exception: men buy and read fewer than 20% of bestselling women’s fiction and nonfiction. When they do read works by women, it tends to be white, cisgender, nondisabled women (ope) or books written by women who are now dead, i.e., “the classics” that probably won’t challenge men’s current-day thinking.

There is an almost unimaginable cascade effect of men choosing not to listen to women throughout writing, scientific research, education, and, yes, the brewing industry. I have more to say about this in an upcoming newsletter, but no amount of evidence or data can persuade someone who is unwilling to listen to or learn from women’s experiences.

In short, men cannot be counted on to listen to women or thoughtfully engage with women’s lived experiences. Especially when it’s a woman doing the telling.

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What has become increasingly clear to me over the years, especially in the past year or so, is the concept of men’s cultivated ignorance. To quote Soraya Chemaly: “Most men are very comfortable ignoring what women think. They don’t look to women for information about the world or for new and different ways to analyze problems and seek solutions. [...] This is a choice that men make each day.”¹

Reading Soraya’s article was one of those moments where what I had been experiencing finally had a name and an explanation. When I was sitting at the judging table, it occurred to me that this kind of scenario happens to me a lot while judging. From one judge saying, “Jen says she thinks she smelled acetaldehyde in this beer.” (Cue me immediately correcting him that I said I know there’s acetaldehyde in the beer, not that I think it’s there.) to this present judge saying he agreed with me when he didn’t even give me a chance to speak.

I pulled up my notes app to add “Listening to everyone at the table means listening to everyone at the table, not just talking between men” to my World Beer Cup notes.² A few weeks later, when I was submitting judge feedback, I pulled up my notes from the previous year’s World Beer Cup judging. I saw that I had made an almost identical note: “How do you tell men they should also speak to the women at their table and not only speak to the other men?”

I am not talking about the small talk everyone exchanges at the table during downtime. Everyone is usually perfectly friendly, although I do take note of how, eventually, the men usually start exclusively talking to each other and make no effort to include women at the table. When you are the only woman at the table, this means you are also the only one not being included in the conversation. If you insert yourself into the conversation, you usually get acknowledged, but you are not invited to continue being involved. There is rarely much effort expended to find out where your expertise does lie.³ This is especially true when it comes to technical or mechanical topics.

Like, sure, it’s assumed that the sales guy at the table who works for an industrial hose company probably understands mixed fermentation, but the woman who has repeatedly won awards for her mixed fermentation beers probably doesn’t. Okay.

I am talking about what happens when the pleasantries are over, and it’s time to start sharing our opinions as beer judges. Based on not only our expertise, but also our collective lived experiences. Yet, an invisibility cloak seems to be placed upon women’s shoulders when it’s time for discussion. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that an invisibility cloak is placed on our expertise, and our roles change from being highly qualified beer judges to being little ladies whose roles are to acquiesce to what the men at the table think.⁴

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The lived experiences of historically excluded communities are not opinions. They represent a lifetime of becoming an expert at navigating a white supremacist society.

I have more than once been accused of being a man-hater. My response is to ask which option seems most likely:

1. I hate every man alive. Every. Single. One. Roughly 50% of the world’s population. Including my husband and my male friends. Every man I see turns my insides black with hatred.

OR

2. I draw on my lived experiences of sexist things that have happened to me to know a dog whistle when I hear it, a microaggression when I see it, and a gut reaction when I feel it.

Here are a couple of suggestions for the men out there. I’m not including suggestions for women because “advice” such as “Be the boss bitch you are” or “Call them out” is not only ineffective, but also the onus isn’t on women to make men listen to them. It has been shown time and time again that men not only do not seek out expertise from women, but that they don’t even consider that women with that expertise exist. Talking louder won’t change that. Believe me, we’ve tried.

The problem isn’t that women aren’t being assertive enough or aren’t sharing their experiences, and that reality is becoming harder and harder to deny. The problem is that men, through lifetimes of socialization and reinforcement, choose to ignore women through cultivated ignorance.

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So let’s say you find yourself at a judging table. Here is a ground rule to set with everyone at your table: When the time comes to discuss the entries, the person who suggests a beer for elimination or advancement has the opportunity to say why before other judges continue the conversation. Another rule: each judge in the judge group has the opportunity to agree or disagree, along with their explanation. If a judge doesn’t have anything to add, cool, then you can all move on. But don’t assume that because you haven’t heard the woman at your table talk, that she has nothing to say. Or consider that she has spoken and you chose not to hear her.

As a man at that table, it is your responsibility to pay attention to the dynamics and notice when a woman is being talked over or not allowed to explain her reasoning. It’s your responsibility to say something along the lines of “Jen, what did you think about this beer?” or “Hey, you interrupted her before she had a chance to explain why she wants to kick this beer.”

Why is it your responsibility? Say it with me in unison, everybody:

There is a greater impact on the perpetrator when those with power and privilege respond to microaggressions.

MORGAN FREEMAN (narrating): From that day forward, none of the men who read Jen’s newsletter and were also beer judges were let off the hook for ignoring women or for allowing them to be ignored at judging tables.⁵

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Hefeweizen Death Trap

As evidenced by my last newsletter about Cheez-its sensory, I am a big fan of doing silly sensory experiments. Here’s another fun little sensory experiment to get rid of fruit flies. (Trigger warning: discussion of fruit fly death by drowning.)

‘Tis the season of the fruit fly. The bane of even the cleanest taprooms, and a fixture of minimally cleaned taprooms. Seriously, during the summer, I often use the number of fruit flies I see in a brewery or taproom as indicative of how well the space gets cleaned and maintained daily.

Fruit flies are mainly attracted to extra ripe, fermenting fruits and vegetables, but they also like drains, trash, and cleaning rags and mops. In the American Southeast at least, it’s not uncommon for fruit flies to find their way into your house.

A quick Google search will tell you that you can get rid of fruit flies by putting some apple cider vinegar in a dish along with a couple drops of liquid dish detergent. The apple cider vinegar draws the fruit flies in. The dish detergent breaks the surface tension, so fruit flies that land on the vinegar-soap mixture will get stuck and drown. This method is highly effective.

But what may be even more effective? Hefeweizen.

The greatest trick yeast ever pulled was convincing the world to keep it alive. Yeast creates esters as a by-product of fermentation, and fruit flies and other organisms likely evolved to become sensitive to ester compounds.

Why?

In the case of fruit flies, they evolved to prefer overripe or fruit beginning to ferment over fresh fruit. While fruit flies are drawn to several different types of compounds, they especially like the ester isoamyl acetate. Isoamyl acetate is very common in fermenting fruit, and it is pretty volatile, meaning that it can travel through the air and into the fruit flies’ olfactory receptors. Also, fruit flies have evolved to detect isoamyl acetate at very low concentrations. To fruit flies, isoamyl acetate signals that there is fruit ripe enough to eat, yeast is actively growing, the location may be suitable for laying eggs, and that food for the resulting larvae will be present.

Isoamyl acetate is also one of the most abundant esters in beer, specifically in hefeweizen. Hefeweizen (or Weissbier, same diff) is a beer style defined by its yeast strain. If a brewer didn’t use weizen yeast, then it’s not a hefeweizen. Specifically, hefeweizen’s two most distinguishing flavors are artificial banana and clove, also known as isoamyl acetate and 4-vinylguaiacol, respectively. If you’d like to learn more about why we consider isoamyl acetate to be “artificial banana,” please check out my blog post, “Isoamyl Acetate is Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” It’s actually a pretty fun story.

Harvesting early summer vegetables and fruits from my garden means a lot of ripening things on my kitchen counters (please, for the love of god, don’t refrigerate your tomatoes). Which means fruit flies. Which means…

Time for Silly Sensory™!

For this Silly Sensory™ experiment, I prepared two dishes of fruit fly death feast. The first dish contained the traditional apple cider vinegar with a couple of pumps of dish soap. The second dish contained Tucher Helles Hefe Weizen and a couple of pumps of dish soap.

I placed the dishes in proximity to each other, but not side-by-side. I thought of it as being like when you’re on a road trip and pull off the interstate to get something to eat - you’ve got a few options close by and choose which sounds best.

Within a couple of hours, the hefeweizen death trap had lured more fruit flies than all of the apple cider vinegar death traps I had set out so far this summer combined.

Wow, is it an effective way to get rid of fruit flies.

There are a couple of takeaways from this. One, fruit flies are going to be attracted to all of your beer taps, but they will be especially attracted to your hefeweizen or any other beer you have with a strong isoamyl acetate aroma. Maybe you put a Hefeweizen death trap near those taps to draw the fruit flies away.

Two, as I mentioned above, even the cleanest places are going to attract fruit flies during the summer, so a few well-placed hefeweizen death traps around your bar area can drastically reduce the number of fruit flies buzzing around.

Don’t want to use hefeweizen? You can also purchase isoamyl acetate concentrate and use that. A lot of culinary websites will have it for sale as artificial banana flavoring. If you go this route, make sure to purchase products specifically labeled as artificial banana flavor. Products labeled as “natural banana flavor” or just “banana flavor” are not the same thing and won’t have the same effect.

And finally…

Before we leave each other, here are a few more things I am up to these days:

1. Looking for project work. I will no longer be using my talent, expertise, and experience to try to save men in unmerited positions of authority from ruining businesses. That means that I am trying my damnedest to build my business through writing, coaching, education, and consulting. Anyone you can send my way is greatly appreciated, and you can see more of what I’m offering here, here, here, and here.

   I find value in service exchanges and collaborative partnerships with my work, not just money. I have several projects for which I would love help. Maybe you want to manage Under the Jenfluence’s social media, help me with SEO or marketing, assist in research, or anything else in exchange for beer or sensory education. Please hit me up.

2. Reluctantly returning to social media because I am fortunate enough to have friends who are far more knowledgeable and talented at marketing than I. They have told me that I need to be back on social media to grow my business. Please see the above note about please, please won’t someone do social media for me so I don’t have to? I will make you so smart at beer in return.

3. Developing a new podcast with my friend and fellow beer judge, Michelle Turner (@excitedtofeast), about the world of beer judging, including what it is (and isn’t), how to get involved, what to expect, and a lot more! The beer judging world needs more representation of all types, and we’re going to help make it happen. Stay tuned for updates later this summer.

4. Teaching beer classes at the Oenophile Institute in Atlanta, beginning next month. We’re starting with some beer 101, but I have all kinds of fun classes planned, so please check out the calendar if you’re nearby or if you’ll be visiting Atlanta. I will also be teaching the WSET beer courses there beginning this fall.

1. Soraya’s article is a must-read for everyone, but especially men. Also read this and this.

2. This feedback has also been given to Chris Williams, the Brewers Association competition director. I truly cannot say enough about how supported and heard I feel by Chris and his efforts to make the judging pool more equitable. I see improvements at the judging tables every year that reflect the work he and his team are putting in. I walk into every Brewers Association competition knowing that I am supported, respected, and safe by the organization.

3. By the by, if you are a male judge, you can ask a woman judge about more than who she works for and how many kids she has.

Also, she’s not there because she’s a token. She’s there because she earned her invitation. Funny how often women are assumed to be beneficiaries of diversity efforts while men are assumed to be beneficiaries of merit.

Yet many men in beer are treated as experts simply because they arrived early. Is he a great brewer, or was he brewing when the craft beer industry was smaller? Is he an insightful writer, or was he writing when there were fewer voices competing for attention? Is he an exceptional judge, or has his authority gone largely unquestioned because of his tenure?

Being early is not the same thing as being excellent.

4. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, I have several many stories to tell you.

5. Not to be too big of a creep about it, but I do occasionally look at who opens my newsletters, so I do mean this quite literally. If you’d read this far, know that you will not be let off the hook if you have the opportunity to step up and choose not to.