The article is accompanied by an editor's note pointing out that it s theses were challenged by the historians, with the links to the appropriate articles (my response below will replicate some of the arguments, but I wanted to collect the most complete response in one place, so I allowed myself such a redundancy). It should also be noted that the article itself originated from The Conversation, what should be a red flag itself, as this site produced atrociously bad historical articles on more than one occasion. The fact that majority of quotations are links to various pop-cultural sites should also be a significant warning about the veracity of the contents.

Nevertheless, the thesis presented in the quoted article can usually be sourced back to the book Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World by Judith M. Bennett. As the topic presented here is complex, I will address it by splitting it into two main issues, namely, whether there was indeed a shift in 'beer industry' with men replacing women and whether the imagery associated with witches have indeed any relation to brewing.

The allegation that women stopped making beer when they started to be accused of witchcraft makes very little sense in the historical context. The anti-witchcraft laws hail back to antiquity. Beside of the passage from Leviticus Roman Law of Twelve Tables included provision of the capital punishment for malicious witchcraft. Although less prevalent, capital punishments and expulsions rendered upon witches in Athens and other Greek poleis were not unheard of. Early Frankish or Gothic laws followed suit, although the most severe punishments were limited to the people who were found guilty of murder via magic. What is also needed to be stressed, although a majority of people punished for witchcraft were women, they were far from the only victims of the witch hunts. According to Gibbons, 20-25% of people executed for witchcraft or sorcery were men, what is corroborated by medieval and modern court ledgers.

Now, let's return to the question presented in the subject. Was there a a time or place when brewing ale was considered a female occupation? Well, yes and no. Since the antiquity until modern era, ale was just another comestible and as such, it was usually produced in small quantities for the entire household with the surplus being sometimes sold, especially in the case of rural communities that were essentially self-reliant, at least when it came to food. Thus, in the villages, ale was something that was prepared by everyone, not unlike porridge or stew and cooking for the family was predominantly the task of the women. Thus, we can say that in the discussed time and place, ale brewing was a task done by women. Please note, that we're speaking of the domestic, small scale production, usually for the immediate consumption, not an industry by any means.

In many articles referring to the topic of brewing one might notice that the cesure for the increasing male involvement in the beer production seems to be late 13th and early 14th century, what largely coincides with widespread urbanization and thus the proliferation of the early trade organizations that began to influence the local economies. And these craft organizations that also included breweries were primarily run by men. And indeed, brewing slowly changed around 13th century when the local landowners and municipal rulers noticed that ale and beer are ubiquitous and control over such popular trade might result in the increased revenues, so they used the fact that the newly established cities required new rulings and promptly forced the prospective brewers to pay for the privilege of brewing or preparing the basic ingredients (e.g. by using the municipal mills to grind malt). This was quickly followed by the limitation on domestic production of beer that often extended to the entire city, suburb and the immediate surrounding area (sometimes defined as e.g. mile beyond the city walls). Over time, such measures resulted in the effective oligopoly of the local breweries that, as the official businesses, were usually officially owned and run by men who were generally more legal power than women, especially unmarried, so they were treated preferentially in any activity requiring legal proceedings, such as the granting of a production privilege. In other words, this displacement of women from the brewing process was a byproduct of the displacement of private domestic production by a centralized and strictly controlled proto-industry. But still, in the smaller breweries, the trade has been conducted by the entire families. In mid-14th century, roughly 15% of the breweries in Strasbourg were run by women and a century later, number of women employed in Oxford breweries exceeded the number of men, despite the facilities being most commonly owned by male members of the family, at least nominally.

It should be noted, that the discussions concerning the production of beer and ale usually only glances the issue of monastic production what is a grave omission. Monasteries, being closed communities members of which usually had a lot of time on their hands and lived in a milieu that stressed the importance of work quickly adopted brewing as one of their common activities, usually for their own needs. Abbeys of St. Denis and St. Remy produced their own beer as early as late 4th century AD and until 10th century AD, when Christianity spread throughout Europe, most monasteries had their own brewery, especially in the areas that did not support vineyards very well. Sometimes they had more than one, as the St. Gallen Monastery in what is now Switzerland had three separate breweries on its ground as early as 820 AD, suggesting that brewing was also used as a commercial enterprise. Some historians posit that this was necessitated by the strict adherence to fasting that did not extend to drinks, so the beer was a natural nourishment for working monks on the fasting days.

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Now, the attributes commonly associated with a witch do not really correspond to any attributes of a brewster and are largely a product of 19th century imagination or, in case of actually medieval inventions, they bear no relation to the brewing craft.

Pointy hat: One of the most common of these, namely the iconic pointy hat is a relatively modern invention and though it is sometimes attributed to the portrayal of the Wicked Witch in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie, photographs of people in Halloween costumes made in the mid-19th century suggest that this association might be somewhat older.

But when we reach back to the depiction of witches contemporary to the beginning of the witch hunts and its heyday, i.e. period between late 15th and late 17th century, we would be rather hard-pressed to find a wide-brimmed, conical hat no modern witch costume would not have been complete without. Similar headgear existed in the discussed period and were even associated with marginalized of persecuted groups, as was the case of the conical cap or hat being one of the identifying part of the outfit worn by Jews in Western Europe or a capirote commonly worn by Spanish penitents (often former heretics) during auto da fe (although it was more a sign of penance and humility itself, as it was also worn by faithful during various religious processions). But in the discussed period, the pointed hat was definitely not an attribute of a witch. For example, Le champion des dames by Martin Le Franc, written around 1440 contains miniatures presenting witches flying on on brooms and sticks and clad in typical clothing of the era. A cover illustration in Ulrich Molitor's De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus published in 1495 shows two witches supposedly bringing rain by boiling snakes in a cauldron. Both wear typical dresses and scarves one could expect from the peasant women of the era.

In a 1579 pamphlet A Rehearsall both Straung and True, of Hainous and Horrible Actes Committed by Elizabeth Stile, the eponymous woman is presented in a normal English garb, complete with a bonnet. The same it true for 1643 pamphlet A Most Certain, Strange and True Discovery of a Witch by John Hammond. The frontispiece of Untersuchung der vermeinten und sogenannten Hexereyen, 1719 German translation of the 1677 book by John Webster presents a dreamer tormented by demons and witches, the latter of which are also presented in a clothing common for the era.

Hans Baldung, German engraver active in early 15th century made witches a relatively common theme of his works, usually presenting them as naked women with their hair loose and often dramatically blown as if by strong wind, with some of the depictions firmly belonging in the domain of pornography. Of note is his preferred means of transportation for the witches, namely the goat. All these elements are also present in the portrayal of witches made by more famous Baldung's contemporary, Albrecht Dürer.