Belgian beer is hardly a bastion of gender equality, as attested to by the briefest of glances at the industry’s demographics and the stubborn persistence of antediluvian and sexist label tropes. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find a rich tradition of women in positions of authority: trailblazers like Rosa Merckx, Belgium’s first woman brewmaster when appointed by Liefmans in 1972; female-led breweries like Dilewyns and St. Feuillien, more recently; and the country’s most visible beer sommelier, author Sofie Vanrafelghem. And you can add Dinka Sarkozi to that list.
A familiar online face under her pseudonym BeerFreakChick, and a regular volunteer at beer festivals, Sarkozi—originally from Hungary but living in Belgium for close to a decade—opened a beer shop in Ghent in October 2019. Taking over a small graphic design and typesetting workshop, her ambition with BeerFreakChick was to build a community around a thoughtful selection of beers, ciders, and meads from independent breweries—think Belgium’s Hof Ten Dormaal, the Netherlands’ Nevel, and Catalonia’s La Calavera.
She has since become one of the faces for a citywide ad campaign promoting female entrepreneurship, while pivoting multiple times as Belgium dealt with one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe. BeerFreakChick went from in-person sales to bike delivery and online sales, to—on the shop’s first anniversary—shifting wholly online and closing the brick-and-mortar outlet. When making the announcement, Sarkozi wrote on Facebook: “I poured my heart and soul in[to] it and I enjoyed every moment of this crazy ride … I have no idea what new adventure life has for me after this, but I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me again!”
Words,Eoghan Walsh