Inclusiveness is in with Girls Pint Out

My name is Candice Canuso. I am a mom and a craft-beer enthusiast living in San Diego and moonlighting on Instagram as @beerlovingmother. It’s there that I highlight some of my favorite craft beers from near and far, with a focus on the local San Diego beer landscape.

I started this journey during COVID. I was a brand-new mother really feeling the effects of lockdown as I worked to navigate a new life in an unprecedented era. If anyone needed a drink, it was me. It may seem surprising now, but before lockdown I wasn’t much of a beer-drinker. But when there’s nowhere to go, you have to drink at home, so I started buying cans at the liquor store. Buying cans at the liquor store turned into exploring new bottle shops. Hitting up bottle shops led to full-blown hunts for the newest, hottest craft beers. From there, my Instagram account was born.

Since starting my account two years ago I’ve made countless friends in the industry, ranging from craft-beer fans like myself to employees at local breweries. But it’s that keyword industry that was keeping me from moving forward the way I wanted to.

There are professional women’s organizations in San Diego such as the Pink Boots Society. I think this is an absolutely fantastic organization, and I give huge kudos to the women who make it their life’s work to better the beer industry, but since I’m not a beer professional, I’m not eligible to join that group.

One of my Instagram friends introduced me to Girls Pint Out (GPO), a nine-year-old nonprofit organization for women interested in craft beer. It doesn’t have any membership fees or industry requirements, just the goal of creating a space for women, from those just dipping their toes in the wort to hopelessly enamored beer fans like me.

After doing some research I discovered there are over 100 GPO chapters across the United States, but for some reason, San Diego, the self-proclaimed “Capital of Craft” doesn’t have one. I decided that needed to change and, much like my Instagram account, boom, the San Diego chapter of GPO was born.

We held our first event, a Galentine’s Day party at WestBrew Downtown, on February 8 (pictured above), and plan to hold monthly events until I get a better feel for this new role and then the goal is to have events bi-monthly. In addition to communal get-togethers, I would like to hold fundraisers, beach cleanups and education-geared meetings focused on subjects like hop profiles, off-flavors and the brewing process. Also, International Women’s Month is just around the corner, and I’d like to see our chapter work with a local brewery to brew a collaboration beer.

It was important for me to bring GPO to my beloved city because there should be no gatekeeping in beer. Beer is for everyone, and when I was new in the community it could be very intimidating being surrounded by women who had been doing this for many years. The goal of GPO is eliminating exclusivity so that women from all walks of life can support each other. It harkens back to that new mother a few years ago who didn’t have an outlet to make friends with other women.

If you’d like to be part of GPO, all you have to do is follow @sandiegogpo on Instagram, keep an eye out for our event posts and show up! Women (and especially women in a male-dominated industry) need to show up for each other. Not to mention my kid is three now, so I am definitely still in need of a drink!