It’s not a witches brew, but it’s coming to your TV and to Kent this International Women’s Month.
“Witchy Boots” spotlights female experts in fermentation from Ohio and beyond. The filmmakers preview their documentary on Sunday at the Kent Stage. It premieres on Ideastream Public Media’s WVIZ March 19 at 10 p.m.
“I think it is kind of ironic that two white guys are telling the story of females struggling in an industry,” said co-producer Phil Leiter of Hudson. “Usually, you have to step outside of your own reality to kind of see things the way they are.”
Leiter and his co-producer Phillip Sieb of Cleveland, who creates books and films as J.S. Philips, met while working at Hudson Community Television. I once worked with Leiter there, too.
The producing duo previously collaborated on Emmy-winning doc “The Master Craftsman,” about woodcarving artist Richard Grell, also of Hudson. As a follow up, they intended to look at how beer is made, which led them to Leiter’s longtime friend, Jennifer Hermann, co-founder of Kent’s Bell Tower Brewing Co.
“It really gives credence to what we're trying to do, raising awareness to minorities - and not just in the beer industry,” she said.
The documentary visits breweries in Cleveland, Chagrin Falls, Cuyahoga Falls, Michigan and North Carolina, focusing on many queer and racially diverse beer makers. In Pittsburgh, Leiter found 50 breweries, though just four have female brewers. Data published by the Brewers Association in 2021 showed that 38.5% of breweries have at least a partial female ownership stake. Yet breweries fully owned by women accounted for just 2.9% of respondents. Roughly the same number considered themselves BIPOC.
What started as a short “behind-the-hops” video eventually garnered a narrative based on Tara Nurin's book, "A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse.” Hermann also sent “the Phils” an article on the supposed link between witchcraft iconography and alewives.
“They stood in the marketplace and had a tall, pointy hat so they could be seen,” Leiter said. “They had a broom to sweep the grains. They employed cats to keep out the vermin. They obviously had a big cauldron to boil the grains in.”
Hermann said the history of women in brewing is a story that should have been told by now.
"Brewing was really shaped by women and ... kind of stolen from women by the church and by patriarchy," she said. "I'm not even sure that my male colleagues understand where their craft was born and how it came to be. There are a lot of things that don't get told in history books: We can talk about slavery [or] the actual development of civilization. There are certain narratives that were a little bit too close to something that humanity didn't really want to talk about."
Leiter said many of the film’s subjects are part of the Pink Boots Society, which sponsors and supports women in the male-dominated brewing industry.
“The president of the society sent us an official pair of pink boots that appear in the movie,” Leiter said.
Leiter and Phillips are next planning a documentary about abolitionist John Brown.
"People ... think they know a lot about him, but there's a lot of nuances to it," he said.
The preview at the Kent Stage, on International Women's Day, starts at 6:30 p.m. and includes music from Pittsburgh's Lez Paul. Female brewers from Kent will be tending bar.
