San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Black brewer steps up with stout
Beers are selling out in project that supports racial equity
Imperial stouts aren’t your typical summer beer. Dark and robust with a high alcohol content, they are more often enjoyed in front of the fireplace than the barbecue. Yet imperial stouts have been selling out at breweries all across the country this summer — and that’s because of a new beer initiative called Black is Beautiful, a missiondriven beer project where breweries donate sales to police reform and racialequity organizations.
At Sacramento breweries Urban Roots and Oak Park, a couple hundred cases of imperial stout sold in a matter of weeks. At Oakland craft beer shop the Good Hop, the first round sold out in two days. More than 40 breweries in the region are making this particular style of imperial stout right now under the Black is Beautiful campaign.
The project comes from brewer Marcus Baskerville of Weathered Souls Brewing Co. in San Antonio, Texas, and it challenges craft breweries around the world to release an imperial stout based on Baskerville’s recipe — and send 100% of the sales proceeds to local nonprofits.
“I wanted to figure out a way to give back and support my community, especially since I’m raising two Black daughters,” said Baskerville, who is originally from Rancho Cordova near Sacramento. “I wanted to show them how important Black culture is and how important supporting your community is.”
Baskerville started the campaign after protests sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, and he expected maybe a couple hundred breweries to participate. The project, though, resonated, and now, over 1,000 breweries across the world are releasing the beer, including 120 in California.
An imperial stout, Baskerville felt, was the most appropriate style. Brewed with chocolate, caramel and darkroasted malts, imperial stouts are blackhued beers, typically rich and dry with coffee and darkchocolate flavors. North Coast Brewing’s Old Rasputin is perhaps the bestknown local example.
Collectively, the beers create a tapestry: Each registers a different shade of black but is created with the same sense of purpose and unity. There’s no timeline that dictates when the breweries can release their beers; Weathered Souls released its stout on July 4, selling out of 425 fourpacks in just 60 seconds, but others are slated for later in August. Nor does Baskerville dictate which organizations should receive the beers’ sales proceeds. Local breweries are donating to causes including the National Black Farmers Association, the Black Futures Lab and the Anti PoliceTerror Project.
All of the Black is Beautiful beers share that common foundation, but each is unique. Baskerville encourages breweries to give his recipe their own twist. Calicraft in Walnut Creek, for example, took its beer in a hoppier, IPAinfluenced direction, brewing its version with coffee. Laughing Monk added maple syrup to its version, while Pond Farm Brewing in San Rafael is releasing a barrelaged version this winter. The response from American breweries to Baskerville’s call to action has been impressive, but the current moment has also further exposed that the beer business has a long way to go when it comes to racial diversity.
Of the 8,000 breweries in the U.S., only 63 are Blackowned, according to PorchDrinking.com. In Northern California, there are just three Blackowned breweries: Speakeasy in San Francisco, and Oak Park and Urban Roots in Sacramento.
Black brewery owners report systematic hurdles — getting loans and raising funds, struggles common to Black businesspeople across many industries — but there are also problems specific to beer, like attracting customers when a Blackowned brewery opens up in a predominantly white neighborhood. Baskerville said he has experienced overt racism from vendors and customers.
“It’s just been the history of the beer business for a long time,” says Speakeasy owner Ces Butner, which will release its Black is Beautiful stout this month. He sees a growing culture of Black drinkers interested in wine, but not as much in beer.
“Most of these little craft, local, small breweries have been started by a brewer that really has a passion for brewing beer,” says Butner, who was in the beer wholesale business for many years before purchasing Speakeasy in 2017. “And that’s what we’re lacking in the Black experience right now for getting involved in ownership of a brewery.”
Oak Park brewer Rodg Little, one of the few Black brewers in the area, agrees that craft beer is not presented to Black drinkers as often as it could be. Growing up in North Carolina, he was only ever exposed to cheap, massproduced brews. It wasn’t until he tried a Belgian beer at Pangaea Bier Cafe in Sacramento that he realized he actually liked beer.
Pangaea is owned by Rob Archie, who also coowns Urban Roots Brewing with brewer Peter Hoey. Archie acquired his own love of beer — and the bars and cafes that celebrate them — while playing basketball professionally in Europe. At Pangaea he created an inclusive and beercentric space that attracted beer amateurs and professionals alike.
“I got to meet a lot of brewers, brewery owners and home brewers, and I just started networking with people,” says Little of his time learning about beer at Pangaea. He home brewed for 10 years with friends he’d met there. When a new group of partners took over Oak Park Brewing last year — including former Sacramento mayor and NBA star Kevin Johnson — brewer Geoff Scott recruited Little to be part of his brewing team.
Now, Little is eager to pay forward the help he received, and his brewery’s participation in Black is Beautiful is part of that. Even when he can’t connect with people directly, Little and Scott host a weekly Instagram live chat around beer styles, like a recent one on gruit, an old style of beer that utilizes botanicals in place of hops. “If I get an opportunity to talk to somebody of color and they want to learn about beer, we’re going to sit down and talk,” says Little.
When Little senses that a customer is showing interest, he starts with a consultation of sorts: Tell me what don’t you like about beer? People may dislike bitterness or certain beer flavors, but there is usually a style that he can help them connect to.
For Butner, that could be the real accomplishment of Black is Beautiful, maybe even more than the financial contributions the project is making to worthy causes. It has the potential to introduce people to craft beer who may never have felt that it was something for them, Butner says.
“It’ll raise awareness overall of the beer industry, which may lead to getting some more African Americans involved,” Butner says.