- Title: Harlem brewer taps her African-American roots for flavor
- Date: 24th January 2020
- Summary: BEATTY SINGING 'WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD'
- Embargoed: 7th February 2020 18:21
- Keywords: Celeste Beatty Harlem Brewing Company Harlem Renaissance WIT craft beer first African American woman to own a brewery in the U.S. first black female brewery owner in the U.S
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, + ROCKY MOUNT, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, + ROCKY MOUNT, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Living / Lifestyle,Society/Social Issues,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA006BXJAP1J
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Celeste Beatty, one of the first African-American woman brewers in the United States, sees craft beer making as a way to reconnect with her roots.
The flavors of the beers made by Beatty's Harlem Brewing Co. conjure up a proud tradition that was unwillingly left behind long ago when Africans were forced into slave ships bound for America in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
Beatty found her passion when traveling to Zimbabwe and other African countries, where she discovered that women were often the keepers of the art of beer-making.
"Being able to go there (Africa) and learn about traditional brewing, which is still going on today, and seeing people that look like me - women mostly - that are doing this, I was like, 'wow, they're women all over this place that are doing this'," Beatty said.
She returned to the United States inspired to enter an industry dominated by white men, and create beers, such as her Harlem Renaissance Wit, spiced with cumin, grains of paradise, orange peel and coriander, seasonings found in African brews.
The United States is home to about 8,000 U.S. craft breweries, but the owners of only 1% of them are African American and only about 23% of all craft brewers are women, said Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association, which advocates for small and independent U.S. craft brewers.
"It's a white-bearded-guy kind of business. That is to a large extent true in terms of the imagery you see. But I think that you don't see a lot of people that look like me," Beatty said.
"Trying to pitch a beer to a bar, I could write a book about some of the reactions I've gotten," she said.
Craft brewing, now an all-time high, is expected to pull in 25% of market share by dollars in 2019.
Still, there are small signs that craft beer culture is becoming more inclusive and diverse. One of its fresh voices is Chalonda White, who writes about her love of craft beer on her "Afro Beer Chick" blog.
In September, a racist message from a reader suggesting she did not belong in the industry triggered an outpouring of online support for her. White, 40, an office worker at a Chicago-area county water agency who blogs as a hobby, said she considers Beatty a pioneering African-American woman brewery owner.
"As far as I know, she's the first," White said.
After opening her first brewery in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem in 2000, Beatty returned to North Carolina, where she was born, to open "Harlem Brew South" in Rocky Mount.
Beers created by Beatty, who was previously employed by nonprofit organizations that ran homeless shelters and worked with artists, are sold in bars and restaurants and various groceries from Whole Foods to corner stores.
Perhaps it is fitting that Beatty's second brewery is housed in a former cotton mill built by slaves, in a community known as the birthplace of American jazz great Thelonious Monk and as the place where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech.
One of Beatty's challenges, especially in the South, is gaining the support of churches that have long been the backbone of many African-American communities.
"Alcohol and religion haven't exactly aligned," Beatty said. "It's been difficult to break through the mindset that alcohol is a negative thing."
Equally daunting are the Confederate flags she sometimes encounters on business trips, including one on a late afternoon in 2009 when she and her son were visiting a distributor in Georgia and they became concerned seeing Confederate flags.
But Beatty sees the brew as a uniter, not a divider.
"The beautiful thing about craft beer is that it is so community oriented. So, as more and more people from our community learn about craft beer, home brew, experiment with it, we're beginning to see a lot of beautiful things happen in terms of collaborations and bringing these experiences to our community."
(Production: Aleksandra Michalska & Hussein Waaile) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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