Scholarship taps Black students for craft brewing

FAIRFIELD — Sacred Heart University is partnering with the New England Brewing Company and Connecticut Brewers Guild to launch a scholarship for Black students pursuing brewing science.

The one-year brewing science program allows students to learn the craft, get certified and intern at local breweries. The Connecticut

Brewers Guild African American Brewing Scholarship grants one student a full-ride with all tuition costs covered for the program.

NEBCO is using profits from sales of its Black is Beautiful beer to pay for one student’s tuition while building an endowment with the Brewers Guild to involve other breweries and provide continuous funding for the scholarship.

The scholarship aims to give

Black students an equitable entry into the craft beer industry, which has been dominated by white men, according to a Brewers Association survey.

Survey results show that 88 percent of brewery owners are white men and Black people account for only 1 percent of owners and 3.5 percent of brewery employees.

Jamal Robinson, director of sales at NEBCO, wants to let Black people know they can be part of the brewing industry. Robinson looks at the craft beer industry as being “about camaraderie rooted in community.”

“I’ve seen the way craft beer brings all kinds of people from different circumstances together to … converse and vibe over beer,” Robinson said.

“Beer is something that I think that, once you’re interested in, is universal. Having a good palette and wanting to taste good things is universal, not racial. I don’t think craft beer is trying to be racial. It’s just a reality that it’s been one demographic that has been the main people of it,” he added.

He wants to afford the Black community an opportunity to gain important credentials to facilitate its growth and success, an idea Sacred Heart was interested in from the beginning, according to Robinson.