‘Beer Is Black History’ scores a limited edition beer with the Sacramento Kings

Sacramento Kings fans got a Black History Month lesson in a can this month. Through a unique collaboration between local brewery Oak Park Brewing and Hella Coastal Brewing out of Oakland, California, the OP Beam Hazy IPA was served at all home games during Black History Month. The union was brought together by craft beer lifestyle brand Draught Season as a part of their ongoing Beer Is Black History campaign.

The beer features African Queen hops imported from South Africa and paired with New Zealand strata hops, a popular choice among many craft breweries for its complex, dank aroma profile. There are also several stone fruit notes mixed with guava and citrus. The combination gives drinkers a less bitter, more juicy, flavorful experience, making the brew more inviting to people who don’t drink beer often and those who drink it frequently.

“We all just bounced around some ideas of how we want the mouthfeel to be and what notes we want to to be accentuated,” said Mario Benjamin, co-founder of Hella Coastal. “And then also, make it approachable at the same time.”

OP Beam was debuted on Feb. 7 at the Kings’ game against the Detroit Pistons. Fans heard about the collaboration during timeouts via interviews on the jumbotron and were invited to visit the section where the beer was sold.

“What’s dope is a lot of people who came over told us they’re not even really beer drinkers, they just came because they looked and saw it up on the jumbotron and was like, ‘oh, let’s go over that section and see what they’re talking about,’ ” said Kevin Irvin, co-founder of Draught Season. “They bought the beer, came back and let us know what they thought.”

The Kings lost the game, but the beer was a win.

“It was also important to be able to educate and give some understanding of what Beer Is Black History means,” Irvin said.

The idea for Beer Is Black History was born months after Draught Season’s launch in October 2020. Draught Season Initially sought to give craft beer lovers some clothing and accessories to express themselves, akin to how sports fans have the choice of dozens of brands. Their first drops featured trucker hats, T-shirts and hoodies with their logo and beer-inspired slogans. But as February 2021 approached, they wanted to make a statement for Black History Month.

“I started doing research and I came across the whole story of how the first known recipe for beer was created in 3900 B.C. in Mesopotamia by Sumerian Black women,” said Draught Season co-founder Branden Peters. “I was like, oh s—, because I had no idea this was a thing. We should tell this story, we should spread this message.”

Some historians argue that beer originated with the Sumerians, who were Black because they referred to themselves as “black-headed,” while others say they were North Africans who had black hair. Reports also say beer was brewed throughout Africa before the recipe emerged in Mesopotamia. While all of this may be true, Penn Museum biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern summed it up best when he told The Washington Post that the first beer probably came from Africa because that’s where the first people were.

“We had to have that real conversation about putting this in people’s face and not tiptoeing around it,” said Irvin. “If we’re going to wave that flag, we have to be willing to be bold with it.”

The statement was well-received and spread fast. The initial capsule collection featured a design by Atlanta-based multi-hyphenate (“International DJ/Event curator/MC/Writer/Producer,” according to his Instagram profile) Sean Falyon and was accompanied by a lookbook featuring Grammy Award-winning rapper Killer Mike. The release led to the Beer Is Black History campaign being introduced to Black-owned breweries nationwide that also believed in the message. In February 2022, Draught Season collaborated with three Black-owned breweries to drop a “Beer Is Black History” brew, including one with Hella Coastal.

“Once we met up and started communicating, it just felt like these the homies that we knew, but we didn’t know we knew,” said Benjamin, who was introduced to Draught Season by longtime craft beer reporter and expert Dennis “Ale Sharpton” Byron. Draught Season and Hella Coastal’s first collaboration, Hyped Out IPA, was released to great fanfare, and its can art was recognized by USA Today as one of the 10 best of 2022. “Everything was on the same page and we knew that we wanted the same goal, which was to break down those barriers of what Black ownership in craft beer looks like.”

Right now, Black ownership in craft beer looks nearly invisible. According to the National Black Brewers Association, African-American-owned breweries make up less than 1% of the roughly 10,000 craft breweries operating in the United States, despite making up 12% of beer drinkers.

“We don’t see enough of us in the space,” said Benjamin, “so people will start to feel like it’s not really a place for us. So I think it’s really just trying to create that lane and also have the resources available so that, you know, African American men and women, and the nonbinary can have access to those same resources. But there’s also a lot of allyship needed to help us get to that next level and really breaking down that barrier and the perception of beer only being for the white guy with the beer gut and the beard. No, it’s for all of us and there’s a lot of pieces behind it that you learn.”

“When people just shut Black and Brown brewers out, they’re just missing out on what could be,” said Rodg Little, co-owner of Oak Park Brewing. “With different cultures come different flavors. I know from experience with the different cultures that we work with, I’ve had some phenomenal beers.” 

Since most NBA players and many of their fans are Black, it would make sense for more Black-owned companies to have partnerships with NBA teams. If collaborations like OP Beam can be successful, maybe it won’t be such an anomaly.

“Having ‘Beer is Black History’ front and center in the Golden 1 Center and having it on jumbotron is the blackest thing to hit the NBA since Craig Hodges wore a dashiki to the White House,” in 1991, Peters said.