SheBrew Festival highlighting Female brewers moves to the Portland Art Museum

SheBrew Beer and Cider Festival to Host 11th Annual Event on International Women’s Day in Portland, Celebrating Women in Brewing Industry

Entering their 11th year SheBrew is officially one of Oregon’s premiere beer festivals with a vision: to present female brewers and beverage makers a platform and showcase for this often marginalized but growing community within famously dude heavy craft beer. The family-friendly beer and cider festival has a beer focus with over 40 professional female brewers and 10 homebrewers, but has expanded to include local female makers of cider, spirits, and cocktails.

The New School has spoken to 5 brewers and 1 cidermaker to highlight their individual stories and their original creations for SheBrew. Read on below for the profiles.

SheBrew will run from noon - 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 7th at the Portland Art Museum with an expected crowd of thousands. In addition to the female made beverages, they will also have female-owned food carts and vendors. Tickets are available now, with general admission tickets priced at $45 for the first session that includes the homebrew and $40 for the second session, including a commemorative tasting glass, sample tickets, a vote for the homebrews competition and a Human Rights Campaign membership. VIP tickets are available for $75 per person, including general admission benefits for both sessions as well as early admission and ten raffle tickets. 

The Portland Art Museum is a new venue for SheBrew this year after last year at Leftbank Annex and the year prior to that at The Redd. The PAM location will provide an interesting setting that allows for new features for this year’s fest, and perhaps a new permanent home.

“The Portland Art Museum was weirdly never on our radar but when we found out the Left Bank wasn't taking reservations for events, we had to find a space big enough for us, and Zack from HRC recommended it.” says SheBrew organizer Jenn McPoland. “They have been incredible to work with! They knew about us and were excited to bring us in and while it feels a bit bougie for us, we think people will really love the space and we can certainly grow there.”

Some of the New venues benefits include carpeting to reduce noise and make it easier on your feet, a huge walk-in cooler for colder beer and storage, and a much larger layout over 2 floors. The extra space allows SheBrew to add a family friendly area with games and arts and crafts area adjacent to the face painter and girl scouts, plus a quieter area to step away and relax. SheBrew is also bringing in more vendors like Oak Iris, an incredible local tattoo artist that will be doing flash tattoos.

Jeremie Landers and Jenn McPoland at SheBrew

Organized by the Human Rights Campaign and the Oregon Brew Crew, SheBrew is a 100% nonprofit event, with proceeds supporting the Human Rights Campaign. The leading female professional and amateur beer and cider competition offers female homebrewers opportunities for networking, craft beverage sharing and connection. 

Hannay Bartlett (left) with Stray Cider co-owner Deron Davenport

Hannah Bartlett // Stray Cider

My mom founded Bauman's Cider while I was studying at RISD, so I started working in cider during my summers home, mostly packing off the bottling line and cutting peaches. After graduation I moved to Seattle to work in furniture design & fabrication, then started my jewelry business. I was working for myself when I moved home to Oregon in 2022. It was harvest, so I got roped into picking apples, then bottling, then designing labels, running the cider club, planning events, and suddenly I was working for my mom full time. When I first met Deron, he was just starting to play with co-ferments. I loved the experiments he would bring to The Place, and jumped on board to help make Stray a real thing.

Cider: One Inch Punch is a very special and very Stray project. We work with extremely talented and generous winemakers who let us gather the pomace from their presses throughout harvest, which we use to kick off ferments with apple juice. This vintage of One Inch Punch features Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, and Gamay from our friends at Landmass and Maloof. Fermenting on these skins imparts beautiful aromatics and complexity that you'd expect from a rosé or orange wine, carried on the lower ABV and lighter body of cider. The blend changes a little bit each year, but it is always fruity and floral with a touch of tannin and no residual sugar. 

Rachel McFarland (center) with Jess Hardie (right) at 2025 SheBrew

Rachael McFarland // Oregon City Brewing

Rachael: I am the Taproom Manager, Music Booker, Draft line cleaner and when Dave lets me I get to brew haha. 

I got into this industry after leaving high end retail management. I wanted to follow my passion for craft beverages. I got the opportunity to work for Oregon City Brewing almost 7 years ago, but my beer experience goes way back starting with trying any craft beer my brother Conrad and I could get our hands on.

Beer: Gettin' Lost in the Rain

The beer Dave and I crafted for SheBrew is a foeder sour barrel aged in a rum barrel with pineapple and finished off with 50lbs of toasted coconut. Dave hates coconut! One of my many goals when brewing a beer is to make Dave do something that he wouldn't typically do.Gettin' Caught in the Rain is a fun twist on a Pina Colada,  and no Buffett never sang that song.

Jess Hardie // TPK Brewing

Jess: I'm Jess Hardie, the brewer and Co-Founder of TPK Brewing Co. I actually got into brewing by way of tabletop role playing games. What started out as a bottle share while playing D&D quickly turned into "What If I learned how to homebrew” and began creating beer based on my friends' characters to share during the session. Over-time it evolved into "What would it take to have a place to share this sort of experience?" Next thing I know I'm graduating from Siebel and getting opportunities to learn from my mentors at Von Ebert and Oregon City Brewing. Flash forward to today and TPK is 2 and a half years old. I still have "pinch-me" moments thinking about the whole journey.

Beer: FiliPrima

 I'm really excited for folks to try our SheBrew! My Co-Founder Dana, the wildly creative Filipina queen dreaming up our in-house campaign lore, collaborated with me for this one. We call it FiliPrima. She's a 4.5% ABV kettle sour, blended with over 200 lbs of mangos and a kiss of calamansi limes for a bright tropical crusher. It's the kind of beer you enjoy at your kamayan-style feasts, or maybe add a lil' chamoy/ tajin rim for your backyard asadas. It’s a nod to our cultures and how basically, we’ve always been cousins. Shared family memories of loud music, dancing in the kitchen, tías and titas asking about your love life, tables full of food and fiestas that last entirely too long. One more song, one more plate. Grab a pint and join the party. Mabuhay!

Gracie Nelson (left) and Anna Buxton (second left) at the 2025 SheBrew Festival with the SteepleJack brewteam

Gracie Nelson & Anna Buxton // SteepleJack Brewing

Gracie: I prefer to be in the woods but when I can’t make that happen you can find me cooking, petting my dog, or knitting. I am a shift brewer at Steeplejack’s production facility in Hillsboro. I got into brewing because I really wanted a manual labor job and I really lucked out that there ended up being so much science and creativity behind making beer, 
8 years later and I still learn something new nearly every day! 

Anna: Specializing in low-abv, UK Brewing/Real Ale, Belgian Brewing, and historical brewing techniques, I am dedicated to making imaginative and delicious beers for my community that are both trend-inspiring and timeless. I am currently Head Brewer of Steeplejack Brewing. 

Beer: Hedge Witch

For SheBrew, we usually try to create something new and interesting to us that has historical and/or foraged elements, and as we were talking about different beers that we had tried recently or read about that we thought were inspiring, I brought up a beer I read about called Swankey (not to be confused with swanky, a Cornish ale brewed with ginger, raisins, and salt around the holidays). As we discussed different recipes we were both drawn to the Wheat Bran/Molasses situation of the Pennsylvania Swankey. 

So our beer, Hedge Witch, is a Pennsylvania Swankey; an American Dark Mild brewed with Wheat Bran, Molasses, and Star Anise. Swankey comes from this really lovely part of early Americana homebrewing that was so deeply integrated and tied to home baking and farming practices. Neither of us have had the opportunity to work with wheat bran before, and I think we were both surprised by its flavor contribution and how it transformed in fermentation. It is an ingredient I am super excited to experiment with some more. 

Jenna Ducharme (left) and Whitney Burnside of Grand Fir Brewing

Jenna DuCharme // Breakside Brewery

Jenna: My name is Jenna DuCharme and I'm a brewer at Breakside. I double majored in Biology and Anthropology, and went to graduate school with dreams to be a Forensic Toxicologist - which I quickly realized wasn't the path for me. What could I do with all that education? Turns out that it translates extremely well to beer. I started my first brewing job at True North in Ipswich, MA under Seth Barnum, the former lead brewer at Breakside. I was awarded the Greg Noonan scholarship in 2018, made my way over to Jack's Abby to manage R&D, then found myself looking to move to Portland. The rest is history!

Beer: Dime Bag

My Shebrew beer is an old favorite, Dime Bag (version 3.0). It's a West Coast Terpene IPA dry hopped with Kohatu and dosed with the BrewGas series of Marijuana terpenes from Abstrax. Big shout out to Babs. I originally developed this beer for the Skunkworks competition at CBC, and have continued to adjust the recipe to showcase more nuance and complexity. 

About SheBrew:

SheBrew, a beer festival spotlighting female-identified beer and cider makers in Portland, Oregon, is scheduled for Saturday, March 7th, 2025, at The Portland Art Museum from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., with two sessions: 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. VIP admission begins an hour early. The SheBrew National Competition for amateur female-identified homebrewers will precede the event, with the "Best in Show" winner announced at the festival. The winner will have the opportunity to collaborate with Natalie Baldwin of Wayfinder Beer. Attendees can sample and vote on homebrews for the People’s Choice, and the winner gets to brew with Whitney Burnside of Grand Fir Brewing. For additional information, visit www.shebrew.beer.