Our Nominations for the Women In Beer Awards

The community and industry organisation Women in Beer have launched their inaugural Women in Beer Awards to celebrate women who are contributing to the UK beer industry.

We here at Five Points are rallying around our two senior brewers, Alana Lim and Laura Hardman, for the awards category of Brewer of the Year for their outstanding ongoing contribution to our brewery and company!

Alana Lim started with The Five Points Brewing Company back in January 2019 as a Brewery Assistant before moving on to Shift Lead Brewer. She came to Five Points after a year at Camden Town Brewery, where she had moved from being their brewery bar supervisor and tour guide to their brew team. Camden was her first job in the UK after moving here from New Zealand, where she was managing a taproom and running brewery tours for Emersons in Dunedin.

In addition to her incredible contributions as a senior member of our brew team, Alana also excels in building a positive team culture here at Five Points. She instigates and runs our Employee of the Month scheme to recognise and reward the contributions of our colleagues. It's been a great way to hear about and appreciate how individuals at The Five Points are making things better in meaningful ways, big or small. 

Laura Hardman has been part of The Five Points Team since the start of 2023, joining us as a Production Brewer after working the same role at Beavertown Brewery. Before her time at Beavertown's Enfield site, she was managing the Gipsy Hill Taproom, and had been part of the opening team at BrewDog's Tower Hill Outpost location doing brewery tours, mashing out and making weekend checks, which gave Laura her first experience in a brewery back in 2018. Towards the end of 2023, Laura was promoted to Shift Lead Brewer here at Five Points.

It’s been a huge asset having Laura as a part of our production team and as part of Five Points. Laura is passionate about quality and sustainability, and she leads the department in both areas. She is also the first Five Points employee to complete all three modules of the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers Diploma in Brewing while with the company. Over the years, Laura’s been a great help across the wider team, assisting at festival events such as Brockwell Live, London Craft Beer Festival, and These Hills.

According to the SIBA Independent Beer Report 2025, cited by Women in Beer here, only 8% of people working as brewers in the UK are women, which is a surprisingly low number considering how many awesome women we have had in production roles here at Five Points over the years. Since we started in 2013, we've had 7 women in our production team, which includes 5 brewers and 2 packaging operatives. 

Another surprising statistic from the SIBA Independent Beer Report is that only 23% of management roles in the UK craft beer industry are held by women. Outside of production, we've been incredibly fortunate to have had women working in management roles throughout our company. From general and assistant managers at our venues to heads of our sales department, as well as logistics, marketing and events managers, they have all been part of our success and our story. 

The Women in Beer Awards have 10 categories recognising women in the industry, and if you know an incredible woman in the beer industry like Alana and Laura, why not nominate them? Fill out the Women in Beer Awards Nomination Form before the 7th of September, and keep an eye out on their website and social accounts to find out who the winners are in their categories.

The awards will be taking place on the 28th of October, so good luck to all the nominees!