Maybe I spend too much time thinking about the past. Particularly about what it was like to brew beer thousands of years ago when women took on the task with their other household chores. Picture it: women from the community working in unison to complete different parts of the process to provide for everyone in the village.

I was thinking about them again recently when I walked into the brewhouse at New Realm Brewing Company. There, several women were standing near the pilot system primarily used by Christine Stevens, one of the company’s brewers.

On that day, much like the women before us, we came together to brew beer for everyone in our community. But more than focusing on the New England Double IPA that would later be dubbed Sufferin’ ’Til Suffrage, we were there to connect, meet some new folks, hopefully foster some genuine relationships.

Here, New Realm’s restaurant manager Tracey pours a bag of grain into the mill. Later in the week, I’ll run into Tracey again, along with Beth, another woman I brewed with that day. At one of my favorite local watering holes, we’ll talk over a few beers about everything from the stress of moving to our dogs to diacetyl. I like to think that, in our own way, we’re creating a new version of those pioneering women in the village from ages ago.