On Sunday, August 30, leadership from the San Diego chapter of the Pink Boots Society (PBS), a non-profit organization advancing the causes of equality and education for women in the brewing industry, will take one of its biggest annual events live, when it hosts its annual “hop rub” via Zoom. What is a hop rub? It’s just what it sounds like. Each year, members of PBS chapters from across the country converge in Denver, Colorado, the site of the Great American Beer Festival, to select hops for use in an annual blend of varietals used to produce beers to raise funds to support the organization. Those hops are provided by Washington-based Yakima Chief Hops, who lays prospective varietals on a long table so PBS members can analyze their aromas. That is done by rubbing the hops in one’s palms to release the hop cones’ aromatic compounds, thus, the “hop rub.”
PBS San Diego member Romina Rossel of local small business The Bountiful Bag, will host the event along with chapter co-leaders Lexi Russel Martin and Amy Spackman at Barrio Logan’s not-yet-open Mujeres Brew House Together, they’ll take viewers through the hop-rub process along with other chapter members, beginning at 1 p.m. The live broadcast can be accessed here, using the passcode: hops. The Zoom session is open to PBS members as well as the general public, a first for this much-anticipated yearly event. For more information on PBS, check out the organization’s official website.