Happy Women’s History Month! We’re proud to celebrate all the amazing female brewers who make up our taproom and brewery teams and in their honor, we are excited to release our 2021 Pink Boots Collaboration Brew: The Future is FemAle.

This beer is a 6.3% ABV Belgian-style Saison made with the Pink Boots Society hop blend, that has a pronounced haze and hint of spice character. The grapefruit zest and clementine-infused orange peel add a bright citrus aroma, while the hops bring a nuanced tropical, herbal and citrus character. $2.50 from every 4-pack will be donated back to Pink Boots Society.* 

Now available on our Online Store

To celebrate the release, we’ve asked some questions of our taproom brewer team and with Kelley Romines from the Brewery team who had a large hand in creating the recipe and brewing the beer itself. Get to know a little more about them below:

Megan Parisi - Head Brewer, Sam Adams Boston Taproom

-    When did you become interested in the art of brewing and what made you stay?

I became interested in brewing back in graduate school, which were the days before the abundance of craft beer. As a musician, I love the alchemy, the combination of art and science, and creating my own interpretation of flavors to share with others.  And, well, BEER!

-     How did you find community amongst female brewers when you were first starting out and how has that changed since?  

There were other women brewing in Boston when I got my first job, and they were each supportive. It was always a positive, encouraging, and inspirational group. As I got a few years into my career, I got to know more women across the country and always found them to be very interested in building relationships and sharing information. It is now a much larger community of women in all roles within the beer industry, which is a wonderful thing to see. There is still a lot of room to grow, and that true equity in representation is something I hope will continue to grow as I continue my career.

-    Thinking towards the future – how do you see the landscape of the brewing community evolving?

We’ve seen significant advances of women in all roles within the beer industry, and that’s been a terrific development. But, this past year has put a strain not only on breweries as businesses but also at home for families. With the increased demand of home-based child-care while schools have been closed, we’ve seen the burden of managing the household fall disproportionately on working women. Many of the industry roles that women hold from brewing to sales positions to QA/QC/Lab, simply cannot be done from home or on as flexible of schedules as some other roles might allow. With these current realities, I’m afraid we are going to lose more women from these roles in industry. We need more recognition of how the burdens are falling upon women more than their male counterparts and make more efforts to ensure that we don’t see qualified and capable women leave the brewing industry at greater rates. 

-     What’s the brew that you’ve been the most proud of to make and why?

When I think of the brew of which I’m most proud of at Sam Adams, without a doubt I’d have to say it’s the New England IPA, now Wicked Hazy.  When I first began to work on this beer in our Nano brewery, the style was very new and there was no research published on it. So all I could do was go by the few commercial examples of this new and evolving style to get a sense of what it was (and also what it could be), and then try to figure out the challenge of how to make it!  It took more brews than I can remember and dozens of people to figure out how to scale it up from our nano brewery to national production, and achieve our goal of brewing the best New England style IPA in the market, all with very little precedent. There is now so much more information about and research into the style readily available to all brewers (much of which, we’ve contributed to!) who all continue to brew this unique and ever-popular style of beer.

Shelley Smith - Brewing Innovation Manager

When did you become interested in the art of brewing and what made you stay?

I became interested in brewing right out of college (or more fairly – during college).  At an engineering career fair, I learned I could make beer for a living and thought – that sounds great, let’s do that!  It was the best decision I’ve ever made.  I stay because I can’t imagine a better business to work in.  Our team is passionate about beer, and that makes for a fun workplace.  I love what I do and the ability to meld both art and science is a perfect fit.  It’s fun to see the outcome of your hard work on a store shelf – and to be able to share a beer you created with friends.  I love that beer brings people together. 


How did you find community amongst female brewers when you were first starting out and how has that changed since?  

When first starting out there were very few females in the industry, especially on the production side of the business, and we quickly bonded, but it was at a local level.  Now the community is more far reaching and has grown substantially to the point that there are now formal groups such as the Pink Boots Society!


Thinking towards the future – how do you see the landscape of the brewing community evolving?

I believe the brewing community will only continue to get stronger.  A great example of this is how breweries came together to support Black is Beautiful (an initiative started by Weathered Souls).  I also hope we continue to see more diversity across the brewing community, supported by programs like The Michael Jackson Foundation started by Garrett Oliver.


What’s the brew that you’ve been the most proud of to make and why?

That’s a tough question!  A lot of thought, care, and time goes into the development process, and I am proud of many beers our team has developed over the years.  For me, 26.2 Brew is that beer.  It was a passion project from the start and was an incredible opportunity to bring together two worlds I love – beer and running!  It was fun to collaborate with two of my running idols and to share that beer with friends across the country.  It’s still the beer I reach for after finishing a challenging run!

Kelley Romines - R&D Brewer, Sam Adams Boston Brewery

When did you become interested in the art of brewing and what made you stay?