Pic(k) of the Week: Brewster Fashion

A brewery is a high moisture work zone. Boots are de rigeur as protective wear for brewsters and brewers. Likewise at beer festivals, such as here, at the World Beer Festival, in Raleigh, North Carolina, on 28 April 2007.

The terms brewster and brewer may have been, for a time, at least in northern England and Scotland, interchangeable terms, feminine or masculine, for one who makes beer.

From the Oxford English Dictionary (as quoted by Martyn Cornell at his beer history blog, Zythophile):

In northern M(iddle) E(nglish), perh. owing to the frequent adoption by men of trades like weaving, baking, tailoring, etc., the suffix [-ster] came very early to be used, indiscriminately with -ER, as an agential ending irrespective of gender.

It is probable that “-ster” was often preferred to “-er” as more unambiguously referring to the holder of a professional function, as distinguished from the doer of an occasional act [emphasis mine]. In Scotland, baxter and webster survived as masculines down to the 19th c.

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• All About Beer Magazine organizes three World Beer Festivals: in Raleigh and Durham, in North Carolina, and in Columbia, South Carolina. The Columbia festival occurs today, 28 January 2012. The Raleigh festival is scheduled for 4 April 2012; the Durham event has no 2012 date listed as of today's post. A fourth festival, in Richmond, Virginia, is no longer held.
• The Pink Boots Society is an association of and for women brewers and beer professionals: pinkbootssociety.org.
• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as subject. Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.