Black Is Beautiful Beer

Specs

Style: Imperial Stout

ABV: 10%

Hops: Cascade $12+ per 4-pack

While driving to brew a collaboration beer with a brewery in the Dallas-fort Worth area, Marcus Baskerville, founder of Weathered Souls Brewing Co. in San Antonio, TX, was listening to Breonna Taylor’s mother recount discovering her daughter had been murdered.

“It was a hard conversation to listen to,” Baskerville said. “I have two young daughters, and you think, ‘What would I do in that situation?’ And the abundance of things that continue to go on in the country, it’s coming to a point where you’re going to do something or you’re going to watch things get worse. I’m not one of those people.”

He went to work. Baskerville planned to release a dark stout and donate proceeds to the Know Your Rights Campaign, an initiative that promotes education and empowerment in Black and Brown communities. It was a Weathered Souls project, until Baskerville spoke with fellow Texas brewer Jeffrey Stuffings of Jester King Brewery, who suggested it could be something more.

Recently, open-sourced beers have become a method for breweries to raise awareness and funds for social issues. Earlier in 2020, Brooklyn’s Other Half launched All Together to raise money for impacted hospitality workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sierra Nevada’s Resilience IPA raised millions for Camp Fire relief in California in 2018, too. Baskerville took Black Is Beautiful worldwide, urging breweries to spin his recipe — which is available for download in excruciating detail on the Black Is Beautiful website — in whatever way they wish (versions range from Black Lagers to Dark Sour Wild Ales to Pastry Stouts with gold glitter).

As of publication, nearly 1,200 breweries across every state and in 21 different countries have brewed their own versions of Black Is Beautiful, each committing to Baskerville’s asks: that participating brewers donate 100 percent of proceeds to foundations that support police- brutality reform and legal defenses for those who have been wronged, and that they commit to the fight for equality over the long haul. The Weathered Souls base recipe is a 10 percent ABV Imperial Stout that exemplifies the many different shades of Black.

“To see this many breweries involve themselves in the initiative and push the message,” Marcus said. “I think it shows we’re in a stage of craft beer where we definitely have the ability to be inclusive and it’s just going to take some work from everyone to get there.”