This collective of women brewers is leaving its mark on the beer industry

This year, skip the usual and celebrate International Women's Day with a bold pour of Hazy Passion.

- Aarushi Agrawal

MUMBAI: It's the flavour of 2025 for the Women Brewers Collective (WBC).

Each year, the members create a new concoction, which they launch on March 8, International Women's Day. This year, 16 women put their heads together and came up with Hazy Passion, a brew that uses hazy NEIPA and pineapple passion yeast. "We are dedicating this brew to women who are new to the industry and are hazy about taking up brewing professionally," smiles Lynette Pires, adding that the brew will launch at the Bira91 Taproom in Mumbai.

Pires, a master brewer at 46 Ounces Brewgarden, a micro-brewery in Bengaluru, founded the collective in 2021 to create a space where women in the beer industry could connect with each other. "When I started out ten years ago, there weren't many people to talk to," she recollects, determined to change that. The collective, launched with five women, is now a community of 26, and its numbers are growing.

Pires has a background in pharmaceuticals but made the move to brewing because she grew up seeing wine and feni being made, and the fascination never quite faded. Now, as a brewer, she wants to encourage more women to enter the field.