So what makes a beer Lesbian?

If you follow me on Untappd, or Twitter, you will find I will occasionally describe a beer using fractions of a Lesbian as a unit. The scale is quite simple. Something rating zero on the scale is the sort of beer that marketing folk think will appeal to women. A rating of 1 Lesbian means it's Titanic Chocolate and Vanilla Stout. But beer does not generally have a sexuality, so there is, as you might imagine, a story behind this. Well, two actually.

The first tale goes back to 1986, and the ILGA World Conference in Copenhagen. A friend, John, was there, and it was held in some kind of Trade Union Centre, known for having the biggest statue of Lenin outside the Soviet Union, or something like that. And there was a bar filled mostly with lagers. So John tentatively asked "Do you have any Wiibroe Stout?"

"You drink that stuff?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I will get you some if you promise to drink it all".

And so a case was procured, and John started on it. And a woman approached him and asked what he was drinking. So he told her. And she went and bought some for herself, and told her friends about it. And soon, a large number of women, and John, had demolished the case, and the bar manager had to go get another. And another.

And so fast forward a couple of decades and a bit, and John and I were drinking in the Regent. And they had Titanic Chocolate and Vanilla Stout on cask. It was extremely nice. Several women, attracted by the word "chocolate" on the pump clip no doubt (this is about the only stereotype of lesbians with any basis in the real world!) tried it, and soon the cask was empty. And so a term was born.

Thinking about it, there has been a terrible history of marketing beer to women, often with good intentions, and CAMRA has been particularly bad at it. I'll gloss over the Ninkasi Goddess of Beer campaign - the model actually liked beer and had to keep having her glass refilled at the press briefing. But not long after, there was the terrible FemALE promotion which happened at a time when Paula Waters was Chair. She had strong opinions on the way beer is marketed:

Paula Waters said most adverts for beer were biased towards male drinkers: "When is the last time you saw any press or TV advert for beer which is meant to attract women?

"At best they are inoffensively aimed at men and at worst they are downright patronising to women."

Pity then, the campaigns they came up with were downright patronising to women even though Paula Waters herself said it was about encouraging women to try real ale, and find one they like. The whole thing was about light, fluffy beers; fruity beers; all those ridiculous stereotypes about women being delicate little flowers. Yet CAMRA was full of women, each with their individual tastes and often drinking a range of beers depending on their mood, the weather and what was on that day. Our own brewery (two male, one female brewer) had brewed a beer that was strictly to our tastes and it was a rich, dark, luscious porter (later revived as part of Head Brewer Iain Turnbull's "Brewer's Swansong" series).

But obviously, all these women drinking beers that defied the stereotype, there must be something about them then. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

And so, to me at least (and I did help coin the term), a "Lesbian Stout" is a beer that sticks two fingers up at these irritating campaigns that think women, by definition, must like only the sort of beer that's great for drinking on a hot summer's day while lounging by a river.

Note: the author of this piece is an active member of LAGRAD.