New RealmTyrannosaurus Flex first debuted onHalloween week 2019. The dinosaurs may be gone, but this beer is back from seasonal extinction.
This imperial can of haze is rocking a sweet 80’s vibe and one of the largest land predators to ever exist. The New Realm team used all New Zealand hops for this release – specifically Moteuka, Wai-ti, and Rakau.
Brewed exclusively with hops from New Zealand…combined with Norwegian Kviek yeast gives this monster DIPA a cretaceous amount of juicy, fruity notes such as mango, pineapple, peach, apricot, and citrus.
To celebrate the 3rd release of Flex, the brewery created a special edition metallic label.
New Realm Tyrannosaurus Flex is a part of the brewery’s ongoing “Monsters & Myths” Double IPA Series. Available in 16-ounce cans and draft at both the Atlanta and Virginia Beach, and new Charleston, South Carolina locations for a limited time.
Homebrew club insurance open enrollment is open and runs to September 1, 2021. The insurance policy period will run from September 1, 2021 to September 1, 2022. Sign-up your club through West’s Insurance club enrollment form.
* * *
By John Moorhead, American Homebrewers Association
The AHA’s general and liquor liability insurance for homebrew clubs is facilitated through West’s Insurance Co. and is the only plan of its kind that will cover your club’s meetings and events up to $1 million per occurrence for the very affordable annual premium of $4.40 per member. More than 375 homebrew clubs signed up for coverage last year, representing approximately 14,100 homebrewers around the United States.
Following the AHA’s pledge to provide free insurance to clubs with high rates of AHA membership, 55 of those clubs also received checks reimbursing their premium payments, as 75 percent or more of those clubs’ members were also AHA members. As a result, the AHA reimbursed over $6,300 in total insurance premiums to eligible clubs during the 2020–2021 policy period.
The Diablo Order of Zymircale Enthusiasts (DOZE) in Walnut Creek, Cali. was one of the 55 clubs to hit 75 percent AHA membership and receive free insurance.
“As the club treasurer, I really appreciate seeing the money [from insurance premiums] come back from the AHA [to the homebrew club],” explains Gordon Mauger, DOZE Club Treasurer. “We do pride ourselves as a club that promotes the homebrewing hobby…we encourage all of our new and existing members to join the AHA. We inform them they will get some great membership benefits and that the AHA is working to promote and support the hobby at a national level.”
The AHA’s club insurance program had grown every year since 2014, except for 2020 when many homebrew clubs could not meet in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the program launched in 2014, many other homebrew clubs found themselves paying exorbitant fees for basic insurance packages that didn’t fully cover many of their group events.
The number of homebrew clubs opting for insurance coverage through the AHA’s program. The total has grown every year since its inception in 2014, except for the 2020/2021 policy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our club used to get insurance on the open market. It was about $900 to insure our board of directors and $1,700 for the whole club,” said Roxanne Westendorf, current AHA Governing Committee chair. Roxanne is the former president of the Bloatarian Brewing League in Cincinnati, Ohio. This club now gets general and liquor liability coverage for less than $500 for all 100+ club members through the AHA.
“The club insurance program has saved our club a lot of money and given us the alcohol coverage that we couldn’t get before!” Roxanne continued. “We participate in both the general and liquor liability and the D&O insurance programs.”
In addition to the general and liquor liability insurance coverage, the AHA also makes a directors and officers (D&O) insurance plan available through West’s Insurance. During the 2018–2018 policy period, 39 clubs signed up for D&O coverage, which offers added liability protection for club leaders in elected positions. The AHA does not provide reimbursement for the D&O plan.
Homebrew club insurance for the 2020/2021 policy is open, and the deadline to sign up is September 1, 2021. The insurance policy period will run from September 1, 2021 to September 1, 2022. Clubs that hit 75% AHA membership and become eligible for premium reimbursement will automatically be mailed a check from the AHA.
Clubs that miss the September open enrollment deadline will have the opportunity to sign up again for the late-enrollment 9-month policy that begins on December 1, 2021, for $4.40 per member, or they can sign up for the 6-month policy period that runs from March 1, 2022 to September 1, 2022, for $2.20 per member.
High school football is damn near a religion in Charleston, and it was a religion I was part of as a student. What’s striking about my gridiron experience is that, even as a teenage athlete, I was a witness to Charleston’s racial hierarchy in action.
Summerville High School was a crosstown rival to my school, and the quarterback for Summerville’s team was the grandson of its head coach, who happened to be the winningest football coach on any level—a record he still holds to this day. It was openly stated, not even whispered, by coaches and fans that the quarterback for Summerville would inherit the head coaching position from his grandfather when he came of age. To no one’s shock, it happened in 2016.
I have a few buddies who coach in the area. They are also African-American. When I asked them if they would apply for the position when it opened, each one said the same thing: “Man, you know Joe already got that job.”
The beneficiaries of Charleston’s antebellum society have long manipulated virtually all local industries for generational gain, in an effort to maintain that established hierarchy. Just as it could happen in high school athletics, so it could in the local brewing industry, whose skewed diversity statistics serve as a testament to that longstanding inequity. This isn’t anything new: Systems of oppression constructed during Charlestown’s slave era were disrupted at the end of the Civil War, only to be violently reintroduced after the collapse of Reconstruction.
The Charleston Schützenfest became, by semiconscious choice, a space where this process collided with the United States’ evolving beer culture. In Part One, we saw a tenuous and subversive relationship form between Black and German Charlestonians, one where illicit alcohol consumption allowed each community to subvert the established racial hierarchy in ways that benefitted them. But on the other side of the Civil War, that equation changed. German-Americans’ relationship with white society, in Charleston and elsewhere, shifted rapidly, as did their notions of citizenship and ethnic identity. And so the Schützenfest also changed rapidly, becoming a white supremacist stronghold in the battle for Charleston’s identity.
By tracing that change we can better understand how an ostensibly benign beer space can still exclude and marginalize Black participation in fundamental ways today. We can witness the immense work involved in forging exclusionary spaces, and further, examine how those spaces end up reflecting and reinforcing the wider inequities of the society they inhabit. The history of Charleston’s Schützenfest shows us that ideas like “Black folks don’t like beer” and “beer and breweries are some white-people shit” aren’t truths. They are constructs that people chose to erect centuries ago, and that we choose to maintain today.
CHARLESTON RECONSTRUCTED
The Union Army marched across the South at the end of the Civil War, reinforcing at gunpoint the freedom that thousands of the enslaved were taking for themselves. Federal troops entered Charleston in February 1865 and wouldn’t leave for over a decade. Black Charlestonians wasted no time in exercising their freedom. They built churches, acquired guns and booze, and seized long-denied spaces and opportunities.
The Fourth of July was transformed: White ex-Confederates shunned it and Black Charlestonians claimed it with gun salutes, parades, food, music, and revelry. In the words of a conservative German immigrant and ex-slaveholder, the Fourth became “the Day the Niggers now celebrate, and the whites stay home and work.” Local expressions mixed with national policy as new constitutional amendments codified Black citizenship and Black male suffrage. After 1867, Black voters made up the majority of South Carolina’s electorate. Hope for an inclusive national future seemed possible in that moment. We’ll cover more of the Charleston Black community’s experiences and agency in Part Three of this series.
In the 1800s, public events and celebrations doubled as opportunities to advocate for ideologies, community values, and political agendas. For Black Charlestonians, the ability to participate freely in holidays affirmed their inherent rights, citizenship, and place in public society. In turn, local ex-Confederates understood that control of public spaces, including holidays, would help them resurrect pre-war racial hierarchies. Both communities asserted themselves, and began to compete for Charleston’s holidays.
When the rubber met the road, efforts to assert Black rights received instant backlash throughout the South. White supremacists refused to accept the end of the slave system that solidified racial oppression so harshly, and scrambled to cobble together the closest equivalent. Black Codes and suppressive election laws marginalized Black citizenship while a wave of white terrorism intimidated Black voters. The federal government retaliated with legislation protecting elections and Black rights, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. That same year, federal troops arrested hundreds of Klansmen in the South Carolina upcountry and forced thousands more to flee the state.
The Schützenfest quietly returned amidst this great upheaval. There was no fest in 1866: The German Rifle Club’s grounds along the Ashley River, known as the Schützenplatz, were needed as a makeshift smallpox hospital that spring. In 1867 the club lent use of the Schützenplatz for another German society’s “May festival,” possibly because military authorities still hesitated to let civilians carry rifles in public. When the Schützenfest finally returned in 1868, a battle over public space in Charleston was already well underway.
In the 1800s, public events and celebrations doubled as opportunities to advocate for ideologies, community values, and political agendas. For Black Charlestonians, the ability to participate freely in holidays affirmed their inherent rights, citizenship, and place in public society. In turn, local ex-Confederates understood that control of public spaces, including holidays, would help them resurrect pre-war racial hierarchies. Both communities asserted themselves, and began to compete for Charleston’s holidays.
On top of the Fourth of July, Black Americans created brand new holidays for themselves. Watch Night Service (December 31) and Emancipation Day (January 1), celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation itself and symbolized their long wait for its enactment. On May 1, 1865, thousands of Black mourners commemorated and celebrated deceased Union prisoners of war who had been held at a former horse track in Charleston. At the time, they called it Decoration Day. Today, we call it Memorial Day.
Charleston whites couldn’t keep up. They tried to overwrite Decoration Day’s Black and pro-Union origins into a holiday honoring the Confederate dead, but it didn’t stick. They turned to South Carolina’s long-standing Palmetto Day, now called Carolina Day, but it didn’t measure up. Again and again, white Charlestonians struggled to resurrect a public celebration that unequivocally reinforced white supremacy. Until they noticed the Schützenfest.
SCHÜTZENFEST REVIVED
Wearing green uniforms and with rifles on their shoulders, 130 members of the German Rifle Club marched through Charleston on May 6, 1868. They started downtown, then made their way to a northerly train depot which transported them three miles west to the Schützenplatz.
That was a major event: Groups of armed men marching through the streets of Charleston had been a common symbol of white power before occupying federal forces suppressed them. In fact, this was the first time since the Civil War that uniformed and armed civilians had been allowed to march at all. Historian Jeff Strickland, whose research informs much of this series, has speculated that authorities allowed the Germans to march only because they explicitly advertised their fest as an apolitical celebration of German culture. But white observers saw a blank slate where they desperately needed one.
Melchers called the festival ‘a mixed mass of people and overall tumult, full of bliss and pleasure, old and young, German, American, African, from all ends of the Earth but without the problems and troubles of the world in general.’ That protean mindset, at that particular time in that space, had the potential to mature over generations into a greatness that assured the value of every person in our country. But human error progressed instead.
The editor of the Daily Courier said of the event, “Since the close of the war, none of these celebrations have been observed, and therefore the appearance on yesterday of the German Rifle Club in the streets, armed and equipped for the bloodless contest, created quite a sensation among the good people of this city. Many pleasant recollections of the good old antebellum period were recalled in the minds of those who witnessed it.”
Alexander Melchers, the German Rifle Club’s president, also happened to run the local German newspaper. He welcomed all to the fest regardless of race; kept promotion strictly apolitical; and emphasized the club’s commitment to firearms education, “manly and athletic exercises,” and general military preparedness. This framing served German immigrants’ purposes nicely, by tempting both elite white society to participate and including the Black community with whom they had forged a close relationship, as we saw in Part One.
It also helped them sell beer. Over three days, around 5,000 visitors drank over 50,000 glasses of Lager beer during the 1868 fest. The city’s most prominent German saloon owners made a tidy profit off the fest each year, importing beer to sell from Northern cities, as Charleston had no breweries of its own at the time.
Melchers called the festival “a mixed mass of people and overall tumult, full of bliss and pleasure, old and young, German, American, African, from all ends of the Earth but without the problems and troubles of the world in general.” That protean mindset, at that particular time in that space, had the potential to mature over generations into a greatness that assured the value of every person in our country. But human error progressed instead.
Only Germans could enter the shooting competition, while non-German visitors amused themselves with carnival-style games and contests scattered around the Schützenplatz. Children entered sack races and attempted to climb a greased pole to claim prizes at the top. They also bobbed for dimes in broad bowls of molasses and fed boiled starch to other children while blindfolded. German parents kept their children out of the more vulgar games, but local Black and sometimes Irish children played freely. Newspapers, inappropriately, came to refer to these attendees as the “gamin class,” derisively using the French word for “kid” or “child.” Especially for Black participants, it wasn’t about amusement: The chance to win some extra cash or toys was a big deal at a time when opportunities were pretty few.
Gullah Geechee Charlestonians weren’t just seen as “gamins” at the Schützenfest—they were also welcome guests, employees, and entrepreneurs. The special consumer relationships they had built with German grocers under slavery had formed community bonds. Black Charlestonians heavily patronized German-owned shops, and frequently labored alongside working-class Germans. The German business owners who organized the fest often retained Black employees throughout the rest of the year. Those connections secured Black Charlestonians work operating games, running food and beer stalls, and serving as target minders on the shooting ranges.
These ties, and the social gray spaces that Black and German Charlestonians had used to form them, all coalesced in the new Schützenfest. This could have seeded a more inclusive American beer culture and sustained Black participation in the beer trade. But that’s not what happened. As the fest evolved, it would align ever more closely with the white community that instinctively sensed so much opportunity in the first parade to be held after the war.
After 1868, attendance at the Schützenfest grew. Melchers even invited outside groups to take part. In 1869, other German organizations at the Charleston parade included the New York Schützen Corps, the New Jersey Schützen Corps, the Augusta Saengerbund (a choir), and the Augusta Turners (an athletics club), all joined by Charleston’s own German clubs in the parade. As the Schützenfest gained popularity, the German Rifle Club watched with delight as white citizens began displaying an abundance of German flags along the parade route. More and more of them also trekked to the Schützenplatz to consume floods of Lager.
The Schützenfest was a beer festival as much as it was a shooting competition. The German Rifle Club drank with the invited clubs and organizations during the fest, then hosted a special reception (read: multi-barrel kegger) in their honor on the last night of the 1869 event. The next morning they took their guests on a tour of the city, including many private residences where they drank yet more beer. Then they escorted them back to the harbor so they could board their steamships home, but not before drinking even more Lager and Champagne together. To cap it all off, the German Rifle Club offered a barrel of Lager as a parting gift, and were given one back in return.
Beer also helped facilitate social ties between Germans and white visitors. As one guest put it in 1870, “[a German] without any ceremony, puts a glass [of Lager] in your hand. Being carried away by the force of his example, you drink it almost unconsciously. After having swallowed about twenty glasses, you begin to feel a kind of change coming over the spirit of your dreams.”
Such displays of German festive culture, as historians call it, were changing American drinking habits one glass at a time, and the Schützenfest became a cornerstone of that process in Charleston. But they focused almost solely on Charleston’s white community. Flags can help explain why.
FLAG SOUPS
I like to think of myself as a proud American citizen, but I still stay clear of large gatherings flying American flags. The January 2021 acts of terrorism at the U.S. Capitol are prime examples of why I keep away from those soups: Bigotry and oppression often come wrapped in a flag.
Beer also helped facilitate social ties between Germans and white visitors. As one guest put it in 1870, ‘[a German] without any ceremony, puts a glass [of Lager] in your hand. Being carried away by the force of his example, you drink it almost unconsciously. After having swallowed about twenty glasses, you begin to feel a kind of change coming over the spirit of your dreams.’
Flags were everywhere at the Charleston Schützenfest. As white society took more and more interest, Charlestonians began flooding the streets and buildings along the parade route with black, red, and yellow flags—the well-known German tricolor was then best associated with the Revolutions of 1848 and was a longstanding symbol of Germans’ desire for a unified, democratic nation. The rifle club proudly adopted the same design as their own. Massive flags flew over the entrance gate to the Schützenplatz alongside the American and South Carolina flags, and inside the fest, booths, the main stage, trees—anything else that could have a tricolor flag on it—did. But in 1871, the flag changed.
Germany did successfully unify that year, but its new flag was a different tricolor: black, white, and red. It was a small distinction with a big difference.
The German states had unified not under pluralistic democracy, but under the stark Prussian leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm and Otto von Bismarck. Theirs was a nationalistic, imperial, and ethnically proud regime with a flag to match. Though an ocean away, German-Americans (many of whom were “Forty-Eighters” themselves) had maintained vested ties with their homeland and its national fate. Bismarck’s new German Empire placed a fork in the road. German-Americans had yearned for unification as vociferously as any German in Europe, but many had also spent decades committed to the liberal democratic ideals of 1848. Was a unification based on conflicting ideals like ethno-nationalism, militarism, and power a deal-breaker? It was not. And as historian Alison Clark Efford has written, German-Americans were more ready to shift their politics than they were to abandon their support for the new Germany. Those political shifts reverberated throughout the United States, including Charleston.
German-Americans all over the U.S. had often supported egalitarian Reconstruction policies—those that most benefited African-Americans—with expansive ideas about who belonged in American society, because they saw themselves in those policies, too. But as they cheered on the bombastic new nation-state from afar, they began internalizing Bismarck’s ideas of ethno-nationalism and reforming their own model of citizenship. Support for previously held policies faded and sympathy for white supremacist ideas rose. Simultaneously, postwar society invited German-Americans into American whiteness like never before. Their military service, their entrepreneurship and civic engagement, and even their beer all vindicated Germans of many nativist accusations of the prewar era.
In 1871, the German Rifle Club in Charleston voted to adopt a new flag. It was black, white, and red.
The Schützenfest had become a soup of flags. Just like the military structure of the rifle clubs resembled pre-war slave patrols and KKK “scouts,” the festival’s flags betrayed a certain sympathy with segregation and white supremacy. They communicated to the Gullah Geechee community the Germans’ willingness to stand against the perceived threat of a free Black population. Whether or not the German Rifle Club intended that message when they first marched in 1868, it was there now. And the trajectory of the fest would only entrench it.
TRANSFORMING SPACES
Over time, the festival became more exclusive. In 1869 tickets could be bought in advance at various German-owned businesses around Charleston, and also at the gate. From 1870 the Schützenfest became “invitation only” (meaning “members of the club and their friends”) and no tickets were sold at the door. Rifle Club members were expected to police attendees and generally keep order at the fest. In later years sheriffs would take on this role, and their primary responsibility was reportedly “to keep the gamins from jumping the fences or from crowding the acrobats,” according to coverage in the Charleston News and Courier from 1876.
Black Charlestonians still attended the fest—in 1870, the Charleston Daily News described the Schützenplatz as “an arabesque pattern of humanity, changeable in its aspects as the colors of a kaleidoscope. The amount of Lager punished was fearful.” They still competed for prizes in the carnivalesque games, even as the grosser contests were phased out in favor of more presentable options. A “regiment” of African American servers kept the beer flowing all day in Schützenplatz saloons. But the needle was moving, and each tweak of the fest helped convince white Charlestonians that a postwar racial hierarchy could be restored.
The Schützenfest became the highlight of white Charleston’s social calendar. A reporter at the 1873 fest, lamenting the bygone (white) Fourth of July celebrations of ‘never-to-be-forgotten Antebellum days,’ thought it only natural ‘that in the absence of a fete of our own we should console ourselves with that of another people, and in the amusements of the Schützenfest vent those enthusiastic feelings lavished of yore on the Anniversary of American Independence.’
More and more, Black visibility at the fest became proscribed. From 1869-1872, a Black entertainer was hired to put on a brown cloth suit with a “hideous mask.” He would then imitate a monkey while greeting guests and being led around by a “keeper” with an ice cream cart. Minstrel singing troupes, featuring either Black musicians or white musicians in blackface, were immensely popular at the fest, starting in 1873. In one case, an “enterprising vendor of Lager beer” hired a troupe to perform right in front of his booth. Such examples show how Black association with the fest was transforming into a function—one of service and entertainment for white benefit, at the expense of inclusion.
Meanwhile, relationships between Charleston’s Black and German communities vacillated. Frederick Wagener, a German immigrant grocer and Democratic mayoral candidate in 1871, attracted widespread German support despite staunch white supremacist views. Obviously, this antagonized Republican Gullah Geechee Charlestonians. The night before the election, African-Americans led a torchlight parade through the heart of Charleston, and a militant minority of that procession began attacking Germans in the streets and destroying German homes and shops.
Wagener’s candidacy was only the catalyst for their anger—rioters specifically targeted shop owners believed to charge higher prices to Black customers or refuse to extend them credit, practices that were becoming all too common. As we saw in Part One, German-Black relations in Charleston had been built mainly upon capitalism and commerce, like grocery stores that sold alcohol. But as that German merchant class grew wealthier, and found more acceptance within white Charleston society, yet another motivation to resist racial hierarchy faded. Martin Luhrs, a German grocer who was among those prosecuted for serving Black customers in 1859, was investing his grocery profits into nearby plantations by the early 1870s.
Charleston’s Black and German communities fell into a kind of love-hate relationship during this era, aligning politically only over the odd local issue. Overall, Germans flocked to the Democratic Party—the party of enslavers. And the Schützenfest became the highlight of white Charleston’s social calendar. A reporter at the 1873 fest, lamenting the bygone (white) Fourth of July celebrations of “never-to-be-forgotten Antebellum days,” thought it only natural “that in the absence of a fete of our own we should console ourselves with that of another people, and in the amusements of the Schützenfest vent those enthusiastic feelings lavished of yore on the Anniversary of American Independence.”
MILITANT DISPLAYS OF POWER
After 1871, the Charleston Schützenfest parade became a fully militant display of white power. Each year the fest opened with an artillery salute—organizers originally had to keep the cannons outside the city, but soon they were invited to salute from the Citadel, the Confederate military college on the Charleston peninsula. Any and all elements of the fest reinforced this message—reportedly, one vendor’s booth “bore the expressive sign of a huge cannon shooting forth a tumbler of Lager.”
The public success of the Schützenfest inspired the formation of several white rifle clubs in its wake. These clubs intentionally modeled themselves after the German rifle clubs so as to mask their true intentions of enforcing white supremacy. Whether out of ignorance or ambivalence toward these aims, the Germans invited them to join the Schützenfest parade from 1871 onward. They marched under the protection of the new and heavily coded German flag just as federal troops were driving Klansmen out of the South Carolina upcountry. In 1872, a new flag joined the others over the festival entrance: a bullet-ridden unit flag from the Charleston-based German Artillery, a unit of the former Confederate forces. German-American nationalism offered a ready veil for glorifying the defeated Confederacy and broadcasting white militancy.
In 1873, the German Rifle Club officially opened its membership to non-Germans. That same year, the shooting festival concept began to spread—rifle clubs in South Carolina and northern Georgia established kindred Schützenfests while the Charleston fest became a kind of regional travel destination. Sometimes the Charleston club would travel to help another club kick off its festival.
As the Charleston clubs marched together through flag-covered streets each spring, commentators often remarked on gun ownership as a pillar or citizenship and guarantor of liberty, a coded way to signal their readiness for a future race war against their Black neighbors. Indeed, after 1871 select members would parade holding captured French firearms from the Franco-Prussian War, which had facilitated German unification, a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm himself and a clear symbol of martial citizenship. It’s no mystery why Charleston’s Black rifle clubs were never invited to join the fest. Indeed, the only Black marchers in the parade would be hired target minders for the tournament.
In short, Charleston’s white supremacists fully understood German festive culture as a cover for their own agenda, and for German Charlestonians that wasn’t a deal-breaker. So they cheerfully marched to the Schützenplatz together every year, immediately shared a meal and a beer, jointly competed in the shooting tournament, drank more beer, danced and played the games, and bonded over even more beer. There were no seats at the table for Black Charlestonians.
RED SHIRTS
The martial elements of the Schützenfest were anything but cosmetic. They were actively cultivated in response to thriving Black parades and celebrations on Emancipation Day and other holidays. While federal protections under Reconstruction laws and policies remained intact, Black assertions of agency often withstood white supremacy. But those protections were themselves eroding under white Southern resistance, and the Schützenfest played a role in that, too.
In the spring of 1876, the fest was held as usual, but it was also an election year for both South Carolina and the nation. Charleston Democrats, not including most of the city’s German residents, were determined to see Wade Hampton III elected governor. Hampton, no benign candidate, was also de facto leader of South Carolina’s “Redeemers,” or white terrorist groups who were also known locally as Red Shirts. At Hampton’s bidding, these groups launched a wave of political violence and intimidation in the runup to the election.
These terrorist groups had incubated as the local, private rifle clubs that the German Rifle Club had inspired in 1868, invited into the Schützenfest and parade, and embraced for nearly a decade. Through these clubs, Red Shirts coordinated attacks to disrupt Republican meetings and intimidate recently enfranchised Black voters.
That July, white rifle club members near Hamburg, South Carolina, provoked a local Black militia into confrontation, ultimately massacring dozens of Black citizens, including a state legislator. In September, Red Shirts from multiple rifle clubs, including several from nearby Georgia, joined forces in Ellenton to murder dozens more. And when Black Republicans organized a meeting in Cainhoy, just northeast of Charleston, some 150 members of the city’s gun clubs boarded a steamer and disrupted the meeting. A shootout took place, but not a massacre, as local Black militias fought back using weapons stashed nearby.
The violence mounted until President Ulysses S. Grant, egged on by South Carolina’s Republican Governor, dispatched federal troops to the state proclaiming a ban on all rifle clubs. But the damage was done. Thanks to the suppression of Republican votes, demonstrable voter fraud by Democrats, and the erosion of Northern will to continue Reconstruction, Hampton was elected governor in 1876 and all federal troops withdrew from South Carolina. With the end of Reconstruction came the rise of Jim Crow across the South.
The Schützenfest flourished. Charleston’s German Rifle Club became the Charleston Rifle Club, and still exists as a private organization on the same land as the original Schützenplatz. After much controversy, it accepted its first Black member in September 2020—less than a year ago.
REDEMPTION THROUGH DECONSTRUCTION
As we saw in Part One, our current deductive shortcomings are often the products of misunderstood events from history. Beer’s modern lack of diversity and the limits of its community are obstacles that could have been avoided.
Most of the time, I am either the “only one” or one of only a few people of color in beer spaces—a reality with which I am 100% comfortable. During those moments, I’m in the moment, remaining authentic in an industry I have grown to love and respect. But while I embrace the moments when I’m the only face of color in some beer spaces, I’m never hesitant to engage in conversations about race and inequalities in the industry.
I love beer. Not just the tangible product, but the culture, the science, the agriculture, and the people. That said, the paltry number of people of color working in brewhouses and owning breweries in my hometown is nothing short of unfair. Historical events such as the Schützenfest have proven how far back this inequity goes. By now, we can all admit certain beer spaces fall short of wide-ranging representation.
If our beloved beer industry is honest about its duty of fostering communities and creating safe spaces for all, then we should be working to understand how today’s inequitable spaces were originally constructed—if only so that we are able to deconstruct them and rebuild them for the better.
“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!” Martin Luther, native of Einbeck.
When you hear‘strong lager’ you probably think Doppelbock,(arguably the most popular of them) but the world of strong lagers also includes Dunkles Bock, Helles Bock or Maibocks, Eisbocks, and Baltic Porters! All of these beers are true malt showcases. Sorry, hop heads!
DUNKLES BOCK
Bock beer, also known as Dunkles Bock is a stronger, dark beer style generally 6.3% ABV and above. It is believed to have originated in the town of Einbeck, Germany. Einbeck used hops in their beer, instead of the more common gruit. They were not fans of the Church’s high prices on gruit, and were in one of the first hop growing regions in Europe; they used this to make a beer unlike anyone had ever tasted before.
DOPPELBOCK
Doppelbock literally means“double bock” and while it isn’t truly double the strength, it is a bit stronger. Paulaner brewery in Munich claims to be creator of the Doppelbock style with Salvator. Brewed to help sustain the monks during fast, they are dark amber to dark brown and most in the range of 7-8.5% ABV. It is common to see other breweries making Doppelbocks with the-ator suffix for them, in homage.
HELLES BOCK/MAIBOCK
Helles Bock or Maibocks are the lightest of these malty gems. Mai means“May” in reference to the fact these beers were often brewed in the Winter, and stored until they were tapped in the Spring.
EISBOCK
Taking a Doppelbock and using a special technique on it- freezing it- results in an Eisbock. Only the water freezes, the beer is concentrated when the ice is removed. Pronounced like“ICE-Bock”.
BALTIC PORTER
Often confused for an ale, probably because of the history and tradition overlaps with Imperial Stout. British porter(made stronger and hoppier) was exported to the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. Soon the people in these countries started to make their own dark, strong beers, and thus we have the bottom-fermented Baltic Porter. Think of these like soup-ed up Schwarzbiers.
WHY THE GOAT?
So, why the goat iconography on bock beers? Bock literally translates to ram or billy goat in German. So it began as a visual pun(and maybe a slight poke at the Northern Germans by the Bavarians) and has now become the symbol of bock beer.
Since the pandemic hit in early 2020, the food and beverage industry has been hit particularly hard. But that hasn’t stopped breweries across the country from finding ways to give back to their local communities. And by giving back to charities, breweries aren’t just helping others — they are gaining loyal customers and helping themselves stay in business too.
Heroes Brewing Company, Rochester, New York
When you walk into Heroes Brewing, you’ll notice a large white board on the wall, listing all of their beers and the names of local charities. Why? Because the sale of each different 4-pack contributes $1 to a different local charity. The white board tracks purchases of beer to go and shows how much each organization is getting that month, allowing customers to see the direct impact of their purchases in their neighborhood.
The owners, Greg and Marlene Fagan, just opened the brewery in December 2020, nearly a year into the pandemic. Restaurants and breweries across the country were struggling to stay open. But the Fagans saw an opportunity to change that narrative – and to give back to their local community at the same time.
Greg had spent several years homebrewing and brewery hopping before opening Heroes. “I loved the people that I met and knew that I wanted to be part of this community in a substantial way.” And become a part of the community he did.
Having partnered with nearly two dozen local charities, the brewery’s impacts are already being noticed. The local organizations are involved in every step of the process, from choosing the style of beer to use to providing input on the name and label design.
Raising Money for Gigi’s Playhouse
One of the many charities benefitting from Heroes’ donations is Gigi’s Playhouse, a center providing free programs to community members with Down Syndrome. The treasurer, Chris Tumminelli, says people were excited to hear about Heroes and what they planned to do for the Rochester community. “I felt this was a long time coming for nonprofits. Heroes is filling a need for those in need.” In just the first month of their partnership, Gigi’s received over $100 to help fund virtual programs!
Attic Brewing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“Go deep in your own backyard.” That’s the quote that stuck with Laura and Todd Lacy when they were gearing up to open Attic Brewing Company in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. The couple quickly determined that their community would be at the heart of the brewery’s operations, and they started establishing relationships around town.
Attic Brewing opened in January 2020 and started their charitable work immediately. When they saw the devastation from the bushfires in Australia, they went to work on their first “Give Back” beer to raise money for Zoos Australia. This set the tone for how they would operate as a business in their community. Three more “Give Back” beers followed throughout the course of the year, but this time with a local focus.
In March 2020, Attic raised $1,200 for their local Pink Boots Society chapter, with $1 from each pint of “You Can’t Tame Wild Woman” being donated. 100% of the proceeds from their “Breath of Change” beer went to support local nonprofits in the black community. They ended the year with the collaborative “Black is Beautiful” stout, which became their best seller.
Taking Care of Attic Brewing Staff Along with the Community
When the taproom was forced to close due to the pandemic, Kidz Meals on Wheels used the space to store and prepare lunches for students doing virtual learning. The staff members have helped with neighborhood clean-ups and hosted outdoor markets for local small businesses. But it’s not just the local community that Attic Brewing supports. The Lacys ensure that their staff is taken care of as well. By hiring diverse employees, paying them fair wages, and providing good benefits, they help foster a resilient, supportive community.
Having just opened a little over a year ago, Attic Brewing finds that the charitable beers help to build their reputation in town. Laura Lacy adds that “It makes us feel good, but expands our consumer base as well.” Each charity they partner with also promotes the brewery and the “Give Back” beers. New customers are drawn into the taproom because they know that by drinking Attic’s beer, they are helping give back to their community too.
Mitten Brewing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Raising money for local charities was a priority for Mitten Brewing Company from day one. Since opening in 2012, the brewery has raised over $350,000 for more than 50 local nonprofits. And the pandemic hasn’t changed their success. Chris Andrus, co-owner of Mitten Brewing, said, “60% of customers we surveyed said the reason they went out of their way to give us their business during the pandemic was the community work we do. I believe it’s the reason we survived.”
Giving back is so crucial to the core of Mitten Brewing that they created a charitable branch of the company in 2017. The Mitten Foundation chooses organizations that are local and small enough where their donations will make a measurable difference. The money raised through the brewery reaches every corner of the community. Medical care for injured pets, sports equipment for inner city youth, and shelter for domestic abuse and fire victims are just some of the benefits the foundation has seen.
Breweries in Maine Pay It Forward
At the heart of Maine Beer Company is their mission to “do what’s right.” That’s why they are a member of 1% for the Planet, a Vermont-based nonprofit, and have been since 2009. The organization is comprised of businesses who’ve committed to donating 1% of their annual sales to environmental nonprofits. Through their participation, they’ve helped raise money for organizations including Maine Audubon, The Center for Wildlife, The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and several others. Their famous Lunch IPA is actually named after a finback whale that was tracked by Allied Whale, another organization they’ve supported.
Up in Lewiston, Maine, Baxter Brewing Company has a Passion Project series, donating proceeds to charities including Man Up to Cancer, the Pink Boots Society, and Friends of Acadia. Their Popham Beach beer was released last summer as the first in a series dedicated to the preservation of Maine’s state parks.
Through the creation process of each beer, the charity partners can have as much input as they want. Tony Grassi, Baxter’s Communication Manager, shared, “We want to ensure that the beer reflects something the organization feels strongly about, whether it’s style, design, name…” He adds that the beer quality does not suffer when creating their Passion Project beers. “It’s not enough to create a sub-par beer and say it’s for charity. You still need to pour your heart and soul into making it.” While their intention with these beers is simply to support the charities, they do find that it also helps them attract customers familiar with the organizations.
Beer Lovers Love to Give Back
The charitable projects from breweries across the country are not only attracting more customers, they are making their customers feel good about drinking beer. And they aren’t feeling guilty about opening their pockets.
According to Chris Andrus, co-owner of Mitten Brewing, “Craft beer has the best and most generous customers in the world.” Mitten boasts that their customers love to support the brewery, knowing that their money is being paid forward in the community.
The same story is being told out west. During the monthly charity night at Holidaily Brewing in Colorado, the customers “usually stock up on beer, knowing that 10% of their purchase goes to the charity.” Kaitlyn Gipple, Beer Marketing Guru at Holidaily Brewing said, “Someone who might come in for a pint leaves with a 3-pack of crowlers too.”
What Actually Happens with the Donations?
Companies are always eager to share how much money they’ve raised and donated, but what are they actually doing with the money?
Lots!
Mitten Brewing is helping to fund new additions to Richmond Park to make it fully ADA accessible for nearly 9,000 children with disabilities in their community. The sale of their “Teddy Rasberry” wheat ale is specifically raising funds to restore Historic Hamtramck Stadium, one of only five remaining Negro League baseball stadiums.
Down in Charleston, South Carolina, Palmetto Brewing Company is providing life-saving surgeries for animals in critical care. After partnering with the Charleston Animal Society during a naming contest last fall, they raised over $70,000 for the shelter. In addition, $1 from each pint of “Rescue Brew” sold is going directly back to the shelter.
Through the “Raise a Pint, Lend a Hand” program at Holidaily Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado, the fire department was able to purchase additional equipment not covered in the city’s budget. The brewery hosts the event on the last Thursday of each month, each time benefitting a different local organization.
Brewery Partners Get Creative for Charity
Charitable efforts are not just happening in taprooms. With the rapid rise of virtual events, breweries are hopping on board and utilizing video conferencing to host virtual beer tastings and brewery tours.
The idea of the Curtain Up beer was created by The Happy Hour Guys, Mike and Jimmy. The pair had previously been working on the Broadway Brews Project, organizing collaborations between breweries and Broadway cast members to raise money for different charities. But when the pandemic hit, the project pivoted to the Curtain Up initiative to raise money for The Actors’ Fund and local arts organizations to help support artists who have lost their jobs.
Nearly 60 breweries nationwide are currently participating in the cause. Gun Hill Brewing Company in the Bronx created the base recipe: a New England IPA made with citra, centennial, azacca, and amarillo hops. Each brewery participating can put their own spin on the recipe and choose when to brew it throughout the year. They also each decide which local organization(s) to support along with the Actors Fund, as well as how much of the proceeds to donate.
Drink Like a Girl Partners with Curtain Up
In New York State, Curtain Up is going virtual. Following a recent collaboration, Gun Hill asked Kelly Guilfoyle, the founder of Drink Like a Girl, to participate in the Curtain Up initiative. Using her connections in the industry, Kelly has organized the Drink Like a Girl x Curtain Up virtual event happening on March 27th.
Beer lovers who sign up for the event will be sent 15 different varieties of the Curtain Up beer from 15 breweries across New York State. The virtual event will include live performances by musicians, interviews with the participating brewers, and other festivities. Event attendees can also choose to make additional donations to The Actors Guild when purchasing their tickets.
Raise a Glass to Support Your Local Charities
These breweries are just a few of hundreds that are doing amazing things across the country. Because of the costs incurred through distribution, most charitable beers are only available onsite in the taprooms, allowing the breweries to donate the most money possible to their local organizations.
Don’t worry if you don’t live nearby any of the places mentioned here. Just check out your local breweries to see what charitable efforts they are doing. Perhaps you can even encourage them to contribute if they aren’t already.
Bell’s Double Two Hearted Ale makes another return to shelves in July 2021.
For years, Bell’s Two Hearted Ale overtook Russian River Pliny the Elder as #1 India Pale Ale in America, according to Zymurgy Magazine, published by the American Homebrewer’s Association. Elder had the spot for seven years straight. Two Hearted Ale has both “classic” and “epic” statuses in our book.
In the past, you might have been lucky to come across Bell’s Double Two Hearted Aleon draft. It’s a hoppier and definitely boozier edition of its famous predecessor, to the tune of 11% alcohol by volume. If you’re a fan of Two Hearted Ale, this bigger edition really delivers.
Expect 12-ounce bottles and draft of Double Two Hearted Ale to starting hitting shelves within the week.
Style:Imperial IPA Availability: 12oz Bottles (New), Draft. Debut (Bottles): July 2019 Latest Return: July 2021
Mead can be as simple as combining water, honey, and yeast, but it doesn’t have to stop there. A myriad of ingredients—from herbs and spices to fruits and vegetables—have been added to mead with great success. Berries are among some of the more prevalent fruit additions and can add layers of complexity that can help accentuate the varietal honey being used.
Dive into to these 9 berry mead recipes! Looking for more inspiration? Browse our Mead Recipe Library!
Mr. Sammy Backman has been a family friend since I was three years old. A significant part of my upbringing took place on James Island at Backman’s Seafood, a family-owned dock and seafood market that’s been around since the late 1950s. In my life, I’ve never referred to him as anything other than “Mr. Sammy.”
“Back then, Black folks didn’t own any boats. It was hard for us to get loans,” Mr. Sammy says. “My mother once paid off a $100,000 loan, only to have the bank ask for collateral when she later asked for a $10,000 loan.”
The Backman family descends from the Mosquito Fleet fishermen who navigated slavery and Jim Crow to fish South Carolina’s coastline. History runs through Backman’s Seafood: It was once the only Black-owned seafood company not only in Charleston, but in the entire state. At one point, Backman’s secured a contract to supply oysters to Maryland. Shortly after, South Carolina passed laws designed to restrict the Backmans from shipping oysters out of state. As Mr. Sammy puts it, “That was pretty damn disrespectful.”
At a very young age, I learned how to “bait de line” and roast oysters on scrap metal covered with potato sacks and water “from de hose.” Most everything I’ve learned about seafood came from either my dad or from Mr. Sammy while I was running up and down Sol Legare Road on “Jimmy” Island.
And I don’t think a person like me could have ever made a career in the beer industry if I had stayed in Charleston.
We’ve written about the history of the Charleston Schützenfest as a beer-soaked microcosm that is emblematic of exclusion across industries—and across centuries. The festival demonstrates the immense work that has gone into removing Black faces from professions, spaces, and neighborhoods for generations.
Its effects can still be seen today. The grounds where the event once took place are now flanked by local breweries, new condos, and an absence of Black faces due to gentrification. As the festival matured later in the 19th century and helped embed German-American culture into Charleston society, it became a crucible for realigning community relations and the resurgence of militant white supremacy in the state. It shows just how easily refrains like, “Black people just don’t like beer” could be more accurately phrased as, “Black people have been aggressively and violently prevented from liking beer.”
But there’s other work to acknowledge as well, work that the Backmans and others represent—the work of not only surviving white supremacy in Charleston, but of leaving vibrant and indelible marks on the community in the process. Some of that work played out in Charleston’s 1850s markets, as we mentioned in Part One, and it blossomed in the wake of emancipation and the Civil War. Much like Backman’s Seafood, it continues today. And the brewing industry could still embrace Black persistence if it so chooses.
EMANCIPATION CELEBRATION
New Year’s Eve 1862 in Charleston was unlike any that had come before. President Lincoln had announced the pending Emancipation Proclamation, promising that all enslaved Americans within the rebelling Confederacy would be free on January 1, 1863. Black church congregations across the South Carolina lowcountry gathered together late into the night to watch, pray, and hope that the promise of emancipation would be fulfilled. These services came to be known as “Watch Night,” and they’re still held today. I know, because I grew up attending them.
It is impossible to overstate the disruption, the release of emotion, that came with the Civil War and emancipation. In rural South Carolina, formerly enslaved people divvied up land and plundered plantations looking for food, possessions, and at times, revenge. At Middleton Place plantation, just up the Ashley River from Charleston, they burned the plantation house to the ground, broke into the vaults in the slaveholders’ family graveyard, and scattered the bones.
The parade included a group of schoolchildren carrying a banner reading ‘We Know No Master but Ourselves.’ A mock funeral procession was the centerpiece of the parade, featuring a coffin with a sign saying ‘Slavery is Dead’ followed by a train of women ‘mourners.’ A steamer called the Planter, crowded and decorated with flags, went up and down the harbor, and its captain was so overcome by the occasion that he accidentally collided with another ship.
Five weeks after Union forces, including the Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, marched into Charleston in 1865, the Black community hosted a “grand jubilee” to celebrate emancipation. Four thousand Black Charlestonians marched in a procession two-and-a-half miles long, including Black Union army units and their bands. Cheers for Abraham Lincoln rang out almost continuously. The parade included a group of schoolchildren carrying a banner reading “We Know No Master but Ourselves.” A mock funeral procession was the centerpiece of the parade, featuring a coffin with a sign saying “Slavery is Dead” followed by a train of women “mourners.” A steamer called the Planter, crowded and decorated with flags, went up and down the harbor, and its captain was so overcome by the occasion that he accidentally collided with another ship.
That was only the beginning. Black Charlestonians immediately set out to build the lives they had never been able to realize. Charleston’s population swelled with African-Americans moving in from the countryside. They discussed job prospects openly, or what share of the coming crop they could sell themselves instead of handing over to some white landowner. One travel writer at the time noted: “The Courthouse and the City Hall are substantial edifices. Around them are always lounging crowds of negro men and women, as if they delighted to linger in the atmosphere of government and law, to the powers and responsibilities of which they have lately been introduced.” Black fire companies, social and welfare groups, and militias all formed overnight. These organizations countered the negligence and hostility that the Black community faced from white supremacists, and often coordinated directly with the local Republican Party.
As we mentioned in Part Two, Black Charleston’s catharsis generated and transformed many of the city’s public holidays. Memorial Day as we know it was born out of Black ceremonies to honor fallen Union soldiers. The Fourth of July transformed, temporarily, from a mostly white holiday to a majority Black one. Watch Night soon found a partner on Emancipation Day, held on January 1, and Black Charlestonians came to celebrate the anniversaries of other civil rights milestones like the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, among others. If white interest in the Schützenfest and its parade was a response to Black public celebrations, there was much to respond to.
Because most whites, including Germans, actively refused to help Black Charlestonians celebrate the Fourth of July, Emancipation Day, and other holidays associated with civil rights and the federal government, these events became wholly Black in procession and character. White Southerners thought they could ignore the Fourth in 1865, only to scramble when they discovered that local Black organizations had organized an extensive celebration independently. But rather than simply continue European-American celebratory frameworks, these new Black-led celebrations melded them with African elements. They were boisterous, musical, and interactive.
Spectators didn’t just watch—they were integral to the procession. Sometimes individual audience members would move along the parade route, forming a second line in the parade that kept pace with specific performers. Humor, satire, embellishment, and drama were all valued elements. As historian William Piersen has explained, Black musicians and performers had injected some of these elements into white-majority parades during the antebellum era, similar to the West African negotiations in Charleston’s marketplaces that we saw in Part One. But these practices split as white and Black celebration diverged following the Civil War. Whiteness only sanctioned African-American culture when it could be harnessed for its own purposes. In fact, white participants in Black parades were often assigned a form of Black status by white supremacists.
These celebrations were also opportunities for entrepreneurship. White shop owners generally closed on holidays, so Black vendors—mostly women—would walk ahead of the parade selling refreshments, or else open small stands along the route. They sold sassafras beer, gingerbread, soda water, ice cream, lemonade, and other street-style refreshments. Lager beer doesn’t seem to have been a large part of the festivities—it was all over at the Schützenfest. But homemade brews such as persimmon beer had been produced by Black Americans since before the Civil War. Food historian Michael Twitty has written about the persimmon beer his ancestors made to toast the end of American slavery in 1865. But of course, the future of American brewing was fizzy, yellow, German, and increasingly white.
MADDER THAN A WET HEN
At this point, you may be wondering why there isn’t more beer in this beer-media article. There won’t be much, and that’s the point. As Charleston’s dominant beer culture swung toward Lager beers in the mid and late 19th century, white supremacy purposefully carved out the city’s beer spaces as separate from the Black community. It did so just as it had transformed the Schützenfest parade into a display of white power; just as the German Rifle Club (and others around the state) attacked Black militias and political meetings; just as the Red Shirts intimidated Black voters; and just as these things paved the way for the quiet, polite, and often duly elected agents of Jim Crow to hold back the many Backmans of Charleston. Black freedom and celebration during Reconstruction, as we saw in Part Two, was systematically hobbled within a decade.
As Charleston’s dominant beer culture swung toward Lager beers in the mid and late 19th century, white supremacy purposefully carved out the city’s beer spaces as separate from the Black community.
When Charles Werner built his Iron Palace in the 1850s, with ornate Lager halls and German-style concerts, he catered to white society and used the proceeds of enslaved labor to do it. When Black Charlestonians tried to get a drink at the city’s poorer, German-owned groceries, white society criminalized and brutalized them for doing so, and persecuted immigrant grocers for good measure.
After the war, when the Black community caught its best glimpse of an equitable society, German and white rifle clubs began clinking mugs of Lager together at the Schützenfest. In inviting German-Americans still further into the white supremacist fold than ever before, white society claimed the dominant local beer culture as its own.
Charleston didn’t have a large commercial brewery until 1880 or so, but even if it had, and even if Black Charlestonians had secured jobs there, they likely would have been relegated to auxiliary roles rather than brewing positions. White brewers and owners would have claimed all the credit and filled all the history books. That’s what happened with Edmund Egan, a slaveholder who used enslaved Black brewers to operate a Charleston brewery during the American Revolution. And now there’s a Charleston brewpub named after Egan and not the Black brewers who did the work. Hell, we couldn’t even find record of their names while researching this project.
As Reconstruction crumbled and newly opened doors closed again, the lavish potential beer culture we might have written in this space diminished. This story remained. That’s not a reason to stop scrolling—it’s a reason to continue. We must not shy away from the chapters of beer history that lack beer, lest our silences write new ones. What we must do is learn to differentiate negative spaces from denied spaces.
EVERYTHING ON THE MENU
Food, the heart and soul of Gullah Geechee culture, is the only commodity allowed to peek its head from the back row of Charleston’s economic house party. Anything else associated with that community—anything the city can’t appropriate or monetize—is methodically shunned.
“I don’t think the City of Charleston has done a good job of espousing all of the virtues of the Gullah people,” says KJ Kearney, the founder of Black Food Fridays. “Gullah Geechee cuisine is the foundation to which Southern cooking is based upon. Charleston is recognized as a Southern cooking hotspot, which is an inadvertent shoutout to Gullah Geechee culture.”
You can walk in most bars or restaurants in the Holy City and see a lineage of Gullah Geechee influences on their menus: shrimp and grits, red rice—virtually anything on the menu that incorporates rice—or any type of Frogmore Stew. Some even go to great lengths and appropriate the title of Geechee. Examples of erasure, appropriation, and mascotification abound.
‘I don’t think the City of Charleston has done a good job of espousing all of the virtues of the Gullah people. Gullah Geechee cuisine is the foundation to which Southern cooking is based upon. Charleston is recognized as a Southern cooking hotspot, which is an inadvertent shoutout to Gullah Geechee culture.’
— KJ Kearney, founder of Black Food Fridays
This is the history and cultural context I’ve experienced my whole life. I can recall countless Sundays when I ravenously hightailed it to an aunt or family friend’s kitchen to stow away red rice, fried fish, okra, and oysters by the mouthful. The cuisine is at the core of our being, and traces its lineage directly to the Caribbean and West Africa—links that still impact our dialect, agriculture, and community.
“I remember being in college and a couple students heard me speaking with another friend from Charleston,” Kearny says. “They thought we were from the islands, like a Caribbean island.”
There’s no other city in the United States like Charleston, and growing up there immediately gives you a distinct life experience—but only in spurts, as the city of Charleston has a history of minimizing the voices of Gullah Geechee culture through violence, redlining, and exclusion from a variety of spaces.
As a result, segregation in Charleston is evident across many industries, fostering all those archaic beliefs: White people only do this. Black people only do that. To a certain extent, there may be some kernel of truth in these suppositions. Just ask Mr. Sammy how flounder is harvested, and learn how the formerly enslaved members of the Mosquito Fleet developed that method. Or ask my buddy KJ, who posed that question at a local brewery: Where are all the Black people? The answer is hidden in undertones—and calls for a conversation longer than one session of pint-drinking.
Taprooms in Charleston, implicitly or not, uphold the city’s historical patterns of exclusion. When the violence of white supremacy played out yet again in Minneapolis last year, many in the beer industry spoke out, often just performatively, in solidarity with African-Americans experiencing racial injustices. During that time, I noticed most breweries—all but two—in Charleston stayed clear of making any statements opposing systemic modes of oppression.
A small glimmer of hope revealed itself during a conversation I had with the owner of one of those two Charleston breweries, who did make an effort to speak out. “We don’t have all the answers and we’ve been welcoming to all, but realize that’s not enough,” Jaime Tenny, owner of Coast Brewing Company, said. That sentiment could help to compensate for the city’s history of oppression, violent racism, and exclusion, if only more breweries shared it with the same honesty and humanistic perspective.
Eliminating the potential Gullah influence during the Schützenfest was a lasting disservice to beer in Charleston. If it had been allowed to inhabit that space, it could have been a precursor to vast creative possibilities across the industry. Yet Charleston—and other cities throughout the country—still fail to address the root causes behind such segregated spaces. As Kearney says of the local food scene: “Charleston cuisine is Black in its foundation, but not Black in its manifestation or marketing. The Blackness of Charleston is not a part of official city business.” Charleston’s attitude regarding its food culture eerily parallels that of the current beer industry and its spaces in the city.
THE GREATNESS OF MIGRATION
In 2007, I left Charleston for Washington, D.C. In 2016 I found my path in the beer industry, and have been at it ever since. Thanks to a casting call I applied for and won, my life was forever changed. I’ve stated in past interviews that beer was “under my nose” the entire time I was searching for the thing—the one pursuit that I could dedicate a large portion of my life to. I’m now in spaces where I can share my opinions and experiences and have others learn from them. Even more significantly, I get to learn from others.
One thing I’ve learned in that time is that we don’t achieve societal harmony by pinning our ears back, or listening to only one group of people. We all benefit when we’re all accounted for. Since this project’s inception, I’ve come to understand how our country suffers from rampant exclusion and segregation. When I first moved to D.C., I was searching for my authentic self. I found that self by building a life in beer, one which I should not have had to leave Charleston to obtain.
The fear of change and lack of understanding I’ve encountered exist beyond beer, of course. Now, we have to locate the why in every space of exclusion, because it exists in all corners of American culture. The more time the seed of generational exclusion has had to germinate, the deeper and stronger those roots grow.
Beer could lead to this change. My experiences in the industry have been favorable, and I’ve met many interesting people with noble missions that aim to use beer for reform—from women’s rights to LGBTQ+ representation, from addressing excessive excise taxes to community waste management and renewable energy sources. Beer has everything needed to sustain communities, no matter where they fall on the spectrum of income or ethnicity. At its best, it can be a real place of intersection.
The exclusion of specific groups of people hinders this ability. I often wonder, “What if a career in beer had been a reality for me as a college student?” When I see major universities like UC Davis or Appalachian State which offer brewing and fermentation science degrees, I get a glimpse of what could have been, of the missing African-American influence on beer. Had the exclusion from beer spaces never happened to the Gullah Geechee people in South Carolina, and to other underrepresented groups, it could have been my reality earlier in life.
The only way to make our industry right with our communities and history is to provide opportunity for those who have, by design, been excluded from brewing and beer spaces. Before the tree can heal, care and attention should be given to its roots. The creation of inclusive spaces across the beer community, or any community, generally falls on the shoulders of those already in it, which can hinder expansion and recruitment. The marginalization of African-Americans during the German Schützenfest is one of so many roots leading to the lack of diversity in beer spaces today.
Addressing these hard truths means working to right ongoing exclusions. For beer and for Charleston, the Schützenfest is a guide for how we can begin that change. We can trace the root of why certain groups of people are underrepresented, and we can actively correct for that now—but we’re still only speaking for Charleston. If the beer industry is to continue its rhetoric of community-building, then it’s going to need to pay attention to the roots of oppression in its own communities, and across the country.
There’s no genetic makeup that means certain human beings just don’t like beer. As lazy as that assumption reads, wouldn’t it be even lazier not to figure out why it exists in the first place?
Words by Jamaal LemonIllustrations by Colette Holston Language
