The Brewster of the Middle East

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2016 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Madees Khoury

Few people are likely to associate Palestine with a craft brewery, a female brewer, or an Oktoberfest that draws 16,000 guests. But that’s exactly what you’ll find in Taybeh, a town of 1,500 located 13 miles northeast of Jerusalem.

My family opened Taybeh Brewing Company, Palestine’s first microbrewery, in 1993 after the Oslo Agreement. Brewing in Palestine comes with difficulties not frequently encountered elsewhere in the world, but as I grew to love the family business as a child, I knew I wanted to become the first female brewer in Palestine.

I was born in Boston and spent most of my childhood in the United States. Although annual summer trips to Palestine offered chances to reconnect with family, my grandfather encouraged my uncle and father to return to Palestine and raise his grandchildren in our hometown of Taybeh, Ramallah, according to our roots and traditions. So when I was 10, we moved to Palestine, and my family started a brewery in the West Bank…