Introducing Rational Creatures IPA

March 01, 2021

Introducing Rational Creatures IPA

We’re proud to announce that our second ever International Women’s Day beer is launched on March 8th. 

With current restrictions in place and limited ways to sell beer in keg and cask, we’ve packaged the beer into 330ml cans, so wherever you are in the UK, you’ll be able to join us in a toast to women everywhere.

Crafted and brewed by the women of Bellfield, Rational Creatures is a tropical, juicy IPA at 4.3% ABV that has been double dry hopped with American hops - Azacca, Nelson Sauvin, Cashmere and El Dorado. 

A light, but racy bitterness is complemented by creamy oats with low malt intervention to showcase the punchy hop profile. 

So why Rational Creatures? The name was the result of a mind mapping exercise over Zoom, a few days ahead of the brew day itself. Dozens of names were in contention but we settled on this one because we felt it reflected the theme of IWD 2021: #ChooseToChallenge.

The name comes from Jane Austen’s famous and much-loved final novel, Persuasion.

“But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.”

Now regarded by some academics as a proto-feminist writer, Jane Austen is credited with “gently injecting progressive thinking into her female characters”. Persuasion was published in 1817, six months after Austen’s death.

Persuasion has been adapted for stage and screen dozens of times and the quote itself has gone on to inspire a successful short story anthology published more than two centuries later, in which 16 women authors have created original stories inspired by Austen’s ‘ladies’. 

To us, the quote continues to have contemporary relevance, not only in terms of daily sexism that we all encounter but also in terms of the continuing struggle to achieve gender equality in workplaces, politics and so many spheres of public life.

(More humorously perhaps, we also feel it reflects ‘love in the time of Lockdown’ which some describe as being like an Austen novel - full of long walks, no touching and lots of earnest enquiries about the health of one’s relatives!)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy it! Do tell us what you think. Sometime, when things return to normal, we plan to brew Mimosa again, our 2020 IWD day beer which was a sell-out and even attracted the attention of Edinburgh’s renowned crime writer, Ian Rankin (who enjoys a pint of good craft beer now and again).

You can find it in our online shop to order for UK wide delivery and good bottle shops.






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