‘It’s not just great beer. It’s an image of Palestine’: Meet the Middle East’s first female brewmaster

Madees Khoury was nine years old when her father, uncle and grandfather started the first microbrewery in the Middle East in 1994. She watched them work hard and grew to love the industry of beer, officially joining the family business along with her brother when she was in her early 20s.

And with that, Khoury became the first female brewmaster in the Middle East. She remains the only one, as far as she is aware, almost two decades later.

“I don’t feel special or different. I’m just doing what I like and working in the business, but I’m very proud of that, and I hope that maybe someone would want to follow in my footsteps or get into the industry, especially women in Palestine,” Khoury says.

“People get shocked when I tell them I make the beer and I run the business, because it’s untraditional. It has its challenges, being a woman in the beer industry, being in an Arab country, being in a male-dominated country, and then being under occupation.”

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Taybeh Brewery is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of Palestine. It has been under military occupation since 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory. For decades, Palestinians have faced raids, arrests, demolitions and check points.

“Doing business in Palestine is unlike anywhere else in the world, because we’re under occupation. Anything that goes in and out of the country has to go through Israel. And just because you’re Palestinian, it’s like they give you double trouble, or more challenges and more security checks and paperwork. It’s not easy,” Khory explains.

“They control the amount of water we get. They control the roads. We don’t have our own borders. We don’t have any authority or anybody to help us, to help Palestinian businesses, if we’re stuck at a checkpoint, or if we’re stuck at the port, or if there are problems. You’re on your own, and you just have to be quick at problem solving and finding different ways to keep going and keep your business running and to succeed.”

Jerusalem is just a 20-minute drive away, but delivering the beer can take all day because drivers have to go through commercial checkpoints. These checkpoints are only open certain hours of the day, and Khory says hundreds of trucks move in and out daily.

Tensions have heightened over the last two years after the massacre of October 7, 2023 by Palestinian group Hamas, which governs Gaza, in which more than a thousand Israelis were killed. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since.

In the West Bank, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last two years, representing 43% of all Palestinians killed in the area in two decades, according to the UN Human Rights Office. One in five of the victims were children.

“These past two years, the situation has been devastating all over – but also for Palestinian businesses,” Khoury says. “Our business has gone down. It set us back 30 years.”

But even within this challenging context, Taybeh Brewery prides itself on making delicious beer and is pushing ahead with plans to expand, a decision which was solidified by international support. The brewery recently partnered with Glasgow-based ethical brewer Brewgooder, which was named a Big Issue Changemaker in 2019.

Together, they created a new beer, Sun & Stone, which is available in more than 1,600 Co-op stores in the UK, as well as on Brewgooder’s website. It was brewed at zero profit, with proceeds supporting Taybeh Brewery’s community and the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)’s Middle East humanitarian appeal.

“It’s a Mediterranean style lager, so it’s very crisp. It’s golden and refreshing,” Khoury says.

Explaining the decision to expand, Khoury says: “My family is a bit crazy. They’re risk takers. These past few years, business has gone down, and we took advantage of the slow days and expanded the brewery. We built a bigger brewery right next door to the current one. We got new machines, new automated equipment. It’s double the size of our old brewery.

“So we’re in the phase now of connecting everything, and in the hopes that once things settle down and they’re peaceful and the situation gets better, we’ll be ready to make more beer and enter new markets and expand and add more products to our portfolio.”

Taybeh’s beer is brewed according to the German purity law of 1516, limiting ingredients to water, barley and hops to ensure quality. They use local spring water and yeast, and buy moulds from France and Belgium. They now sell 12 different brews, with seven classics available in 330ml bottles. Golden beer is their flagship product, and they do a winter lager, white IPA and non-alcoholic beer among others.

They have recently launched a new line of speciality limited edition beers only available at the brewery, using unusual ingredients – sumac, Arabic coffee, hot chilli peppers, prickly pear, dead sea salt and lemon from their grandmother’s lemon tree. People can come to the brewery for tours and to try these beers.

“I love that I’m not sitting on my desk every single day for eight hours doing the same thing. Because it’s a family business, I get involved in everything. I get to see my customers. I get to give tours at the brewery. I get to be in my zone and brew at four o’clock in the morning without any interruptions, and half the world is asleep. I get to do my thing. It’s fun. It’s not boring. And I love beer,” Khoury says.

Khoury felt deep solidarity from the UK when she recently visited Glasgow for the launch of Sun & Stone with Brewgooder. She says it was “heartwarming” to walk the streets and see Palestinian flags on buildings or people demonstrating on behalf of Palestine. She was moved by the love and support, although it felt strange to be able to move around so easily.

People can support Taybeh Brewery by buying Sun & Stone and promoting the beer, talking about it with their friends or online. 

“My family and I believe that in order to build our own economy, our own independent state, we have to invest our own money, our own knowledge, our own experience, our future into the country, and this is what we’re working on. We’re making a high quality product. We’re expanding. We’re entering new markets. We’re creating awareness,” Khoury says.

“People don’t know that Palestinians have the first microbrewery in the Middle East, or that we make beer, or that we drink alcohol or that we have a female brewer, so when they see our product abroad, it’s not just great beer, but it’s also an image of Palestine.”

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