It's funny how this blog doesn't reflect my pretty deep stint in trying to start a brewery. I guess that is a reflection of life. So I guess this is an in memoriam post of the attempted brewery sprint. I've been a bit scared to write this blog post. I've been thinking about it for a while and it's really time to admit something. A small feeling that has continued to grow over time ever since I've stepped in a brewery. And that feeling: I fucking hate how white breweries are.
Wait, let me finish. There are levels to this shit.
Brewing solo was fun. It's still fun! I'm a librarian and I like knowing things. I loved the process of finding better ways to brew. From DME based kits to an all-grain brewing setup I went. Trying to figure out ways to brew various styles of beer was welcomed challenge. Setting up temperature controlled chambers for kolsh's and barleywines. Going to Savory Spice shop to get a new ingredient that I've only read about to add to another beer. Even the process of homebrewing is festive, like cooking outside. You got timers going, hydrometers, carboys and wort chillers cleaned and sanitized. Kezia would brew with me and we bonded even more over homebrewing. It's an event to say the least. Especially when you add some already made beer to drink while you brew (or the ultimate flex, drinking your own beer while you make more beer, which we did many times). It wasn't until I started seeking community to learn more about beer that I discovered that this may be a bit more of a whitewash than I intended.
Which, looking back, seems crazy. Why would I not expect this industry be filled with older white men? I don't think I ever saw a black person in a beer commercial growing up (unless you count the Bud-Wise-eR commercial, which later on they changed the Black dudes into frogs). I guess my personal experience skewed my expectations. Because my family drinks beer. My Dad, my sister, my uncles, aunties, cousins, neighbors. They drink beer. Even though the fancy craft beers were not present during my youthful observations of my family drinking preferences (they are now), they still drank it. And Terry. Terry is my librarian/craft beer guru. Being my work study manager in college, he really didn't have to teach me what he did. He would have been completely within his job to assign me something to do for 2 hours every time I decided to come in to work. But he did way more and I am forever grateful for this white ally. He introduced me to both librarianship and craft beer in college. And Terry is cool. Like Allman Brothers cool. If craft beer could connect me with even more Terry's, then that would be great being new in Charlotte.
After a few meetings with the local homebrew association, I figured I should expand my horizons. Maybe the people of color didn't know about this group. I had to search for it awhile myself. Also, the meeting location was really inconvenient for anyone that didn't live in Uptown at the time. And by this point, after realizing the lack of people of color in the industry, I wanted to own my own brewery to make a space for people of color and make money. Period. I will find out later that going into anything with the intention of making money is not the way I can/will operate on my way to living out a truer more realized self. But I decided to get a job in the beer scene. I needed extra money and I knew I needed experience. That's when I meet SC through a Craigslist ad and started doing brewery tours.
Doing brewery tours literally changed how I speak to people. Before doing tours, my presentation skills were horrendous. They had been horrendous since college and never progressed. But doing tours changed that. It was about nailing the information. Knowing the kettle sizes in breweries. Knowing where to park. Knowing the best bartenders to speak to so that drinks came quickly. Once you nailed down the definintes and particulars, it becomes a performance and you are the conductor. I have the beer and cool beer conversation starters that the riders want for days (well hours. The tours were 3 hours tops). And I met some more people of color who also liked craft beer. One of my favorite rides was taking an entire Charlotte-born Black family on a private beer tour. By the end of it, they were giving me a tour of the hidden gems and histories of Charlotte. Black people used to live here, you can still see the cemetery. This church serves the best fried chicken out of their kitchen. That was magic that night.
But a lot of the tour clientele was white. Often my knowledge would be challenged unnecessarily. I mean sure, let's have a conversation with a beer in hand, but not while I'm talking to the group. Or driving. Or making beer sample decisions at the cramped bar for the group. That shit irked the hell out of me. It is exactly the same energy of someone coming on your job and telling you how to do your job. After you've been doing back to back tours, patience would run thin. Also, why would you try to start anything with the driver? But I digress. The point of this paragraph is that while there were a few magical moments, the thing that kept me coming back was doing something that made me feel more confident in myself and my own abilities. And that same confidence is what made me say I'm done when I saw that even after becoming the senior employee tour guide to the new owners of the business my expertise was going to be disregarded.
But even with doing tours (and a later a short stint as a brewery trivia guide), I still saw that the majority of the industry was white driven. Even though a sprinkle of POC folk frequented these establishments, put money into these establishments, you rarely saw people of color working the executive, decision making roles. And over the course of craft beer scene that has gone crazy over the last decade, these industries finally started hiring people of color, but mostly in hospitality and food service roles.
And while working both my day job as a librarian and night/weekend job as a tour guide, I was still finding moments to brew. Purchasing even more ingredients. More equipment. But it started to become a rat race instead of the festive event it started out as. Brewing started as a "we" event along with Kezia and I. And I told my best friend that I didn't want to brew with them because I was trying to make this a business. What the actual fuck, right? And looking back on it, I was operating out a sense of desperation. Having a brewery was going to be our way out of having jobs we hated and increase our agency with our time. And it hadn't happened yet. And not only had it not happened, as I try even harder to connect with others I was becoming disenchanted even more with the industry. From beer competitions to beer festivals, the tokenizing became evident in these seas of white spaces.
And being a queer Black transman, I couldn't do it. I can't go into a brewery and immediately feel a sense of community. And I wanted that so bad because I saw my white clientele find it so easily within a brewery. I guess it could be different if I had community at the ready, but that isn't my reality. Finding connection is hard for introverts like me and then couple it with a few marginalized characteristics (Black, queer, Black transman) finding connection can be difficult. Maybe if I was getting good, steady queer community connection it could have been different. But this is the reality for many queer people of color. Too Black for the queers. Too queer for the Blacks. Always floating in between until you have that rejuvenating moment of Black Queer Magic that lifts and carries you through your fractured encounters. That is until you are thirsting for another real, meaningful connection with someone who relates.
This past year has done nothing but exasperate and magnify social issues around us and the same can be said within my personal life. I think before 2020, I knew that I couldn't cater to a majority white population within a brewery. After 2020, it's more of a hell no. I had this utopian idea of having a brewery that would double as an organizing/ community space. That community members that were trying to help others progress past their assigned social standing in life would use this space. And maybe it could work one day. But in the current climate of beer, I would have to cater to a customer base that is largely white populated and has a high under presentation of people of color within the industry (well, I guess the last part can be said for most industries).
I know another part of the issue was that I went into this venture of wanting to own a brewery because of the money. And there isn't anything wrong doing something for money in a capitalistic society. That's how the whole system is set up. But what I kind of knew then, but what has become magnified over the past year, is that I can't find success for myself without catering to my people. The queer, black, beer loving people of the world, that's who I need to cater to. That's my audience. I find connection with us even from afar and that is who I want to impress and speak to. If other people feel it, that's great, but my people are who I'm speaking to.
And I still love craft beer. I have plenty in the fridge. But craft beer is a much more loaded statement now. I hardly go into breweries anymore, prefering to take the goodies home and share them with family and friends, introducing them to something new and them me. Besides, the last time I was in a brewery was right before lockdown and I had to seriously consider whether I should invite a fellow transman with me to this establishment. Was it safe? Would we have restrooms? What would happen if we got arrested (which could be for anything, so the question is just that. Not for anything)? I look to see if labels are ripping off other musical artists and artists' likeness (who happen to always be Black artist which is crazy to me for an industry lacking in people of color). If it's a local brewery, before I support local and purchase immediately, I think if I've had some form of microaggression experience at their location (which has happened plenty doing tours).
I think that is why I went back to writing. Writing allows me to continue to cater to the people I want to cater to (including myself). Just like doing tours, I get share about topics that I find important or interesting that I think will be important and interesting to others. But my intention has always been to find connection. It always has been. Even the brewery was meant to be an avenue to find connection. But my focus was on making money in an industry that was becoming even more narrow in how it defined itself. Writing has always been a continual effort on my part to seek connection through lived experience. And craft beer has definitely reinvigorated that sense. I feel even more dedicated to share craft beer with others and share my experience in it. Maybe if I share mine we will start to greater diversity in the craft beer industry outside of the tokenizing the few people of color within the industry.
And some may say after reading all of this that I'm just being a hater because the brewery didn't happen for me. Well yeah, I am. I feel like I failed at something that I invested my time and energy into that never came into fruition as I intended. But I'm not deterred. And writing and getting back into the habit of writing has helped a lot. Writing has always been my saving grace and I'm going to use it to save me now. And I will write for the Black queer folks that, no matter the statistics stacked against us, like to drink and have a good time.
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