Sara Barton

Sara Barton (born 1965) owns Brewster's Brewery in Grantham, Lincolnshire. In 2012, Barton was the first woman awarded the British Guild of Beer Writers’ Brewer of the Year Award and was the 2019 Institute of Brewing and Distilling Brewer of the Year. Her beers have won multiple international awards. She started Project Venus, a collaborative brewing group for women brewers, in 2011.

Personal life Barton was born in Grantham Hospital in 1965 and raised in Redmile, where her parents ran a guesthouse; her father also worked for her grandfather's business, Barton Transport in Nottingham. She attended Belvoir High and King Edward VII school in Melton. Barton went on to earn her master's degree in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in 1987. The first brew was called “Maiden Brew" and the original brewing facility was in a barn behind her parents’ house. Barton also co-owns a pub, the Marquis of Granby in the Vale of Belvoir, which is run by her husband Sean McCardle. Project Venus was inspired by the Pink Boots Society. The British Guild of Beer Writers chairman Tim Hampson commented specifically on Barton's work when he said “By sharing her experience and skills generously with these emerging brewsters, she is encouraging more of them to start brewing and returning an industry that has been dominated by men back to its roots, when beers were made, like bread, by the woman of the house.”

Her brewery has also made ales for International Women's Day in March. The award had already been given 20 times before it was awarded to Barton.

Her American Pale Ale won a Gold Medal at the International Beer Challenge in 2011, Helles won a Silver Prize at the 2012 National competition run by the Society of Independent Brewers, and Hophead won an International Brewing Awards Gold medal in 2015. Decadence is listed one of Roger Protz's "300 Beers to try before you die.”