This may seem like your regular glass of cold beer,
but it was brewed by this woman:
Celeste Beatty, the first African American woman
to own a brewery in the United States.
Her brand is called Harlem Brewing Company,
and with it, she attempts to capture
the legacy of Harlem and flavors of Africa.
Take the 125 IPA,
named after Harlem's famous 125th street.
Celeste Beatty: It's just a very vibrant corridor,
from east to west
of retail, of culture, of organizations
like the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Theresa Hotel,
the state office building.
That entire street is just full of stories of marches.
It's really celebrating and not forgetting
what 125th Street has been.
Narrator: But she's doing more
than just celebrating Harlem.
She represents a revolution in the craft-brewing industry
just by being in it.
Picture a typical beer commercial.
Yes, there's that nice, chilled beer,
but let's get past that.
Picture who's drinking the beer.
Most likely a pretty homogeneous group.
There may be that occasional black beer drinker,
but the representation we see in beer commercials
accurately represents
what the craft-beer industry is really like.
In its four-decade history, the craft-beer industry
has remained a predominantly affluent-white-male industry.
Celeste estimates that African Americans own
less than 1% of all US craft breweries,
and surveys suggest African Americans made up
only 10% of weekly craft-beer drinkers in 2016.
These low numbers are a result of the long history
of discrimination in the alcohol industry in the US.
From the late 1700s to the late 1800s,
laws were passed across several Southern states
that forbade retailers to give, sell, or deliver alcohol
to any enslaved or free African Americans.
In the 1920s and '30s, white Southern prohibitionists
claimed that, quote:
But black Americans have a long history of brewing beer,
spanning back to Peter Hemings,
who took over malting and brewing
at Thomas Jefferson's plantation, Monticello.
Celeste: Even though we brought our traditions from Africa,
and we brewed beer for Thomas Jefferson and
various people that enslaved us,
we were never able to actually open the brewery,
we were never able to actually
be the entrepreneurs early on.
So, there is no tradition of owning breweries,
of owning bars, because of that discrimination.
And I don't know if I would say the discrimination
continues that blatantly today,
but I think the biggest barriers
is the lack of capital.
We just don't have it.
Narrator: Celeste represents a shift in the industry,
not only as a black brewer,
but also one who's unapologetically black,
representing her heritage
with every beer flavor profile.
Like her Renaissance Wit, which won
the Best Brew of New York City in 2018.
Celeste: I grew up in the South.
Since many of us migrated from the South to Harlem,
it was all about flavor, you know, we were always competing,
who had the best banana pudding, who had the best,
you know, chicken, beef, you know.
So, the Belgian style, Harlem style,
is really about adding more layers of flavor.
Narrator: To add those layers, she uses
a surprising mix of ingredients, including coriander;
cumin; grains of paradise, which adds a peppery taste;
and orange peel.
Celeste: So, it's high citrus, low hops, a lot of spiciness,
and it's been received very well.
The next steps for us is to get the brewpub open
here in Harlem, with plans to do a few other locations,
and my interest in that is to make sure that some part
of the company is owned by the community.
But I really think in this world that we live in,
we've got to find a way to get people in the community
not just working there,
but they've got to have some equity in it.