SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio brewery is making waves to raise awareness on racial inequality and police brutality.
Weathered Souls Brewing Co. has shared its base imperial stout recipe as part of their campaign, “Black is Beautiful".
The campaign consists of a collaboration beer that encourages craft breweries to put their own spin to it.
“We kind of left it up to the other breweries as far as the creativity that they want to throw into the actual physical beer once they do the base beer,” Marcus Baskerville, founder and head brewer of Weathered Souls Brewing Co. said.
“(A stout) is typically a like mildly APV 10% stout. It’s pretty heavy considering it’s summertime, but, you know, this is a heavy situation. So, it kind of goes hand in hand,” he said.
Baskerville said he also chose the imperial stout due to its color.
“Stouts range from any color of deep, dark brown to the (darkest) black,” Baskerville said. “It just (all) melted together as far as the perfect style of beer (that deals with) the whole initiative.”
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Baskerville said the campaign was inspired after the deaths of unarmed black Americans such as Breonna Taylor and most recently George Floyd, at the hands of police. Although Baskerville hasn’t joined protests in San Antonio that call attention to the death of Floyd, he said as a black business owner, he still wants to show solidarity.
“It’s my way of trying to help,” Baskerville said.
Since its launch on Monday, more than 200 breweries worldwide have signed up to be part of the campaign.
“Since the last time I spoke to my sales manager, we were around 285 (participating breweries including) a brewery in Brazil, Japan, Germany, Ireland (and) Rwanda,” Baskerville said.
Participating breweries are asked to donate proceeds to organizations in their communities that focus on legal defense funds or support a reform on police brutality. Proceeds from Weathered Souls will be donated to Know Your Rights Camp as well as a local organization.
“It’s the original organization that Colin Kaepernick started when he kneeled three years ago, and, so, I kind of felt that (it) went full circle (with) what happened to George Floyd,” Baskerville said.
Baskerville hasn’t decided what local organization will also benefit from the proceeds.
The beer is set to launch on the July 4. Baskerville hopes the San Antonio community will support his efforts to raise awareness.
“Persons of color, black, Asian, Mexican, anybody, you know, we need everybody's support right now, Baskerville said. “Everybody deserves equality. Everybody deserves inclusion. Everybody deserves respect, and that's pretty much all we're asking. If everybody, you know, makes the effort to respect everyone, the world will definitely be a better place.”
Breweries can sign up to join the campaign at Weathered Souls Brewing’s website here.