Siren’s International Women’s Day beer goes on sale next week
The beer created for International Women’s Day 2026, collaboratively brewed by 30 women from Reading’s Siren Craft Brew and the beer group Crafty Beer Girls, will be released on 4 March.
The 6.5% ABV beer, named Coven, is a dark fruited gruit and was led by Siren brewer Hayley Pearce, lab technician Emily Motto and Crafty Beer Girls founder Tasha Wolf.
Speaking to the drinks business about the beer, Pearce admitted that “Siren, at every step encourages us to come up with recipes” and, in fact, “encourages us to all share knowledge together”.
Sharing knowledge
Pearce highlighted how the team can all speak to Siren’s head brewer Sean Knight and always ask him questions. She explained: “If he’s making a brew and we think ‘oh, I wonder how he’s come up with that’. He’s totally open. He’ll tell us everything. And that’s the same within the industry. It’s such a friendly industry. Nobody’s in competition with each other.”
Pearce told db that the beauty of this openness means that “you can go to somebody else’s brewery ask them about their brew [and] how do you make it” and find out “what’s in it” too and highlighted how “everybody shares with each other” and insisted this is “something I really like about the industry”.
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Pearce admitted that “obviously, it is quite a male heavy environment. So to be able to get time where you’re sharing all of that knowledge with other beer enthusiast females, sometimes you feel like you’re just the only one”. But, she assured that “then, when you see that there’s actually loads of you, it’s amazing”.
Every year there are ‘more of us’
Pearce said that she feels like, when it comes to female brewers and women in the beer industry, “every year we’re growing as well. There’s more of us”. She observed how “it’s the same at Siren” because “every year there seems to be more of us”.
Pearce told db: “This year, there’s Emily Motto in our lab – and co-producer of the Pride beer Low Key Loud” and revealed that “Emily wasn’t here when we did International Women’s Day last time” and yet insisted that “working with her was amazing” because they get to now start “bouncing ideas off each other as well”.
Pearce also admitted that Siren has “always been supportive of innovation” and added that at the brewery it has become possible to “think of something that you love then share it”. She explained: “We’re always told nothing’s a bad idea, share it and see where it goes” and added: “It’s a great place to work” and noted how “everyone’s open to ideas and sharing” which is certainly “one of the great things about working in this place”.
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