In 2009, I opened Eagle Rock Brewery with my husband, Jeremy Raub, and my father-in-law, Steven Raub. At the time, there was a dearth of breweries in Los Angeles, despite the popularity of craft beer in neighboring San Diego, the Bay Area, and elsewhere across California.

During our nearly three-year struggle to get through the City of Los Angeles Planning Department’s quagmire of red tape, we had time to think both about building a brewery from the ground up and about how to foster the new beer community that we hoped would grow around the brewery. We knew education, aimed at both city officials and consumers alike, was important. From the beginning, striving for openness and accessibility was a key consideration.

As owners of a new brewery without much financial backing (and coming off the worst economic downturn in contemporary history), we bootstrapped it to get through opening day. My partners and I did everything from brewing to self-distribution, and even bartending in the taproom with the help of a handful of friends. During those evenings behind the bar, I began to notice a pattern that struck me as bizarre: many women would defer to their male counterparts when deciding what to drink. Those who were adventurous enough to ask me—the one female bartender present—about various beer styles were frequently interrupted by their male companions, often in seeming attempts to flex their beer knowledge, whether informed or otherwise. It baffled me. Why would anyone feel that someone else would know their palate and taste preferences better than themselves?

It later occurred to me that, in the very male-dominated craft beer space, many women didn’t possess the extensive vocabulary necessary to describe their drinking preferences, or were overwhelmed with the seemingly endless styles listed on menus and so lacked confidence in their ordering. Had there been opportunities for them to gain such knowledge in a heavily male industry? And if not, how could we at the brewery effectively bridge that gap, and work to be more inclusive of women and other under-represented populations within the beer community? Those questions dogged me, and played a role in our next steps as a business.

In 2011, I started hosting a monthly educational series with the aim of making women feel comfortable learning more about beer. I understood there might be associated difficulties in such a project—there are people who feel that creating spaces specifically for minority groups discriminates against the majority population.

So how do you foster an event that places diversity at the fore, and is aimed beyond primarily white, bearded, cisgendered men? We began with the name: the Women’s Beer Forum. When men want to attend, they may. However, its name clearly states the intended audience, and works towards the goal of creating a beer event where individuals who identify as women are not in the minority. The hope is that that setting will empower women to ask questions, to speak freely about their opinions, and to gain a functional vocabulary so that they can order their own beer with confidence, have knowledgeable discussions about beers and brewing processes, and even school those who’d talk down to them.

“Understand that in creating and promoting spaces for underrepresented populations, you will get targeted by financially motivated opportunists or groups looking to promote their own agendas.”

Unfortunately, despite our best plans and intentions, the Women’s Beer Forum ran into trouble. There are numerous anti-discrimination laws on the books that preclude groups from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, as well as other factors. Those laws were created to protect minority groups, though, owing to lack of specificity in the legal language, excluding men from a beer event could actually be construed as discriminatory. We experienced that situation firsthand when a discrimination claim was filed against the Women’s Beer Forum (ironically naming only my male business partners as defendants). Although men had historically attended these events, the name of the event was enough to earn unwanted attention.

In November of 2017, we received an email from a men’s rights activist attempting to extort us for $8,000 to avoid having a formal discrimination claim filed against the WBF. At the time, I felt it was a preposterous claim—the event had never been discriminatory, and was in fact created to combat that very notion. However, we had failed to explicitly state that men were not prohibited from attending. When we refused to pay, the claimant filed a formal complaint of discrimination through the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), and a process was started. At the time, we could find no description of said process, nor was there any explanation from the DFEH about how cases were determined. In a panic, we lawyered up and prepared to defend ourselves, knowing full well that the accusations were without merit. After our attorney responded with all the evidence in an extensive document to DFEH, we received radio silence for seven months, with the exception of one correspondence falsely accusing us of having missed the deadline to submit our response.

In September 2018, our attorney received a phone call from a staff services analyst at the DFEH who essentially asked if we would like her to mediate the matter to expedite the closure of the case. She proceeded to tell our attorney that the claimant would like $6,000, and that if we didn’t make a counter offer, the case would proceed to legal action. We were essentially given the option to pay out or spend more money than we could afford to defend ourselves against litigation. It felt like the government was brokering a deal for an extortionist, and that we were at the losing end. In order to mitigate any additional legal fees, we ultimately had to settle to avoid losing our business (and potentially our home, which was used as collateral for the loans needed to start the business). Eventually, he settled for $1,500, and while I’m thankful that he accepted our first counter-offer, we had already incurred substantial legal fees during the year-long process.

Despite the necessity of anti-discrimination laws, unintended consequences can include these sorts of frivolous claims and the subsequent waste of time and tax dollars, plus the unnecessary financial burdens placed on businesses. And yet, creating events with a specific target audience in mind is no less important today, and can be a successful catalyst for improving diversity. Our learned advice: be sure to have an inclusivity clause attached to the event page and promotional materials to deter opportunistic plaintiffs from trying to make a few extra bucks.

Additionally, beware the occasional fishing expedition that will still occur. We recently received an email from a man stating: “I would like to attend the forum. What special accommodations do I need?” Having been through this before, our response was: “No special accommodations needed if you’re just inquiring about attending. You would just need to purchase a ticket online at EagleRockBrewery.com for admission.” Needless to say, he never purchased a ticket, because he really had no desire to attend a Women’s Beer Forum. Rather, he was likely hoping to receive some incriminating response that could be construed as a “separate but equal” statement about our events.

The moral of the story? Cover your ass. Understand that in creating and promoting spaces for underrepresented populations, you will get targeted by financially motivated opportunists or groups looking to promote their own agendas. And don’t let that dissuade you from continuing to build diverse spaces and forums.

Beyond hosting your own events, another way to engage more diverse crowds is to collaborate with other community groups. If you create an environment that appeals most to the already-established community of craft beer drinkers, you will continue to bring in just that—the standard set of craft beer drinkers, just as lacking in diversity as any other comparable venue. Rather than collaborating with another brewery, consider creating an event or series of events in collaboration with music industry friends, or knitting groups, or baking groups, or running groups, or a wide range of other organizations. Form partnerships with industries featuring more diverse populations, or even niche spaces that aren’t very diverse, but include different demographics than those already dominating the craft beer space. Doing so is valuable for your business, and for the industry at large.

We try to collaborate with community groups like the ones mentioned above as often as we can. One of our most popular events during LA Beer Week is our annual Battle of the Bands. We invite nearby breweries to put together bands (since there’s so much musical talent in Los Angeles, and most breweries have multiple team members who are bona fide musicians), and partner with an area music venue to host a show featuring local breweries both on stage and on the beer list. It’s become an anticipated annual event that merges the music and beer industries, and is a valuable tool of community-building.

“Rather than collaborating with another brewery, consider creating an event or series of events in collaboration with music industry friends, or knitting groups, or baking groups, or running groups, or a wide range of other organizations.”

Another community-building and cross-collaboration event that we organize is the Eagle Walk, Sip & Savor. Each year we invite five nearby restaurants to participate, pair each of them up with a different local brewery, and do a walking tour of the neighborhood, during which guests get a small bite prepared at each restaurant paired with a small pour of beer. It both encourages local restaurants to join forces with breweries that they may not have worked with previously and exposes a diverse, food-centric crowd to craft beer. The result feels like a natural collaboration, and it’s valuable to take the relationship a step beyond a brewery simply selling their beers into an account. And because the food community is more diverse (at least on the consumer side of things), it’s an easy way to expand our target audience.

Diversity-building strategies can even extend to brewing processes. We work to brew beers designed to appeal to crossover audiences, and convert them into craft beer supporters. That means making beers that wine drinkers, cocktail drinkers, tea or coffee lovers, etc. might appreciate. It may seem counterintuitive to aim beyond the relative low-hanging fruits that beer nerds will flock to—think Hazy IPAs—yet this relatively small segment of the population is simply not enough to keep all the ships afloat. Maybe they’re all you need for now, but that only lasts until someone cooler than you comes along.

We try to do a broad range of styles so that we can appeal to all sorts of palates. Having both a restaurant and a taproom allows us to see trends in other beverage sectors, particularly in wine and cider (since the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control does not permit wine or cider to be sold in taprooms at breweries unless there is a kitchen attached). A couple years ago, I had our production team taste through several rosé wines and encouraged them to develop a rosé beer that would appeal to wine drinkers. The focus was not just in making a pink beer, but to appeal to a specific target palate preference. We ended up with Rosé Gosé: a pink Gose with raspberries, blackcurrants, and peaches. Its subtle acidity, fruit character, and dry finish are received very well by the wine crowd at our restaurant and our reseller accounts.

“If you run a beer business, push your boundaries to make engaging events with broader appeal (you’ll have more fun), build deeper connections with other industries and organizations in the community (you’ll make more friends), and aim to bring more people into craft beer collectively (you’ll make more sales).”

We’ve also made a toasted rice Lager called Don’t Maize Me Bro. It drinks similarly to Asian Lagers, and so appeals to people who prefer the lighter body and flavor profile of those beers. Additionally, we’ve used ingredients such as umeboshi (cured Japanese sour plums) in brewing to pique the interest of people who are familiar with those products.

For generations in old-world beer countries, taprooms and beer bars have functioned as commonspaces enjoyed by the community at large. In most of these countries, people head to their local watering holes to debrief confidants on the events of their day, have business meetings, share gossip with friends, etc.—on a near daily basis. Prohibition changed our drinking habits in the United States to a large degree, and we’ve yet to regain that communal drinking culture.

To get there, we need to redefine our target audience—and we need to work to improve the diversification of the craft beer community. If you run a beer business, push your boundaries to make engaging events with broader appeal (you’ll have more fun), build deeper connections with other industries and organizations in the community (you’ll make more friends), and aim to bring more people into craft beer collectively (you’ll make more sales). Creating that space, where anyone from the local community feels welcome to grab a pint and unwind, has been our goal since the inception of our little brewery. Our slogan, “Beer for the People,” suggests that it should be for all the people (well—at least those who are old enough to legally consume alcoholic beverages). Until our local craft beer demographics are more reflective and representative of the diversity of the general population within the region, we’ll continue working toward that goal.