A real beer-hall woman

We need not belabor the history of women's role in the marketing of beer: Suffice to say it has leaned heavily on the low-cut dirndl; and in one notable campaign, on a team of Swedish blondes clad in attire unsuited for a Scandinavian winter.

The history of women in the making of beer, on the other hand, is another matter. Put out the call for a roundtable of women brewers hereabouts, and, well, all you'll need is a small booth. If that.

So in the mammoth beer hall of Downingtown's Victory Brewing last week, it was refreshing to encounter - over a Korean short-rib sandwich and a pint of dark Donneybrook Stout (at 3.4 percent alcohol, a good lunch beer) - a bona fide brewer by the name of Whitney Thompson, sensibly clad and straight-talking: "I'm a no-B.S. kind of person."

She is also low-key and pleasant, the lone female on Victory's 11-man (and one woman) team of award-winning brewers; which is 1000 percent more than almost every other local brewhouse.

(Stoudt's in Adamstown, Pa., founded by Carol Stoudt in the 1980s, is a major exception; her daughter-in-law, Jodi Stoudt, still brews there part time. Also, females have a sizable presence in the labs at local breweries.)

Can it be awkward? The first few months, concedes Thompson, who's dressed in work trousers and a dark-blue polo shirt. But you put your head down, and do the job, and sometimes, she says without bravado, you may even do it better.

And, yes, you might occasionally nudge a guy out of his comfort zone. And maybe he's not exactly always P.C. "But, hey, I'm working in a brewery."

It helps, no doubt, that her husband, Larry Horowitz, is a top brewer at Iron Hill in West Chester. And that she earned her chops the old-fashioned way, after her degree in biology (at dry Bridgewater College near Harrisonburg, Va.), apprenticing at Ernst August Brauhaus in Germany, known for its pilsners.

At 28, Thompson has the sturdy build, steady gaze, and soft-spoken demeanor of the farmer's daughter she is - the product of an upbringing on a 100-acre turkey and sheep farm in Virgina's Shenandoah Valley where she learned the demands of farm life: "Turkeys," her father relished telling her, "don't take vacations."

She has five years of brewing under her belt now, her first gig at Tröeg's in Harrisburg earning a moniker - read on - that even now she volunteers proudly.