OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Winter 2025 | 19 R afael D’Armas was born and raised in Venezuela, a country perched at the top of the South American continent, where you have a “wonderful geographical accident” involving the Andes themselves – boasting snow-covered mountaintops amid high altitudes – morphing into the sunny Caribbean coastline. Sociologically and demographically speaking, the two areas are distinct: “Most of us are a combination of different ethnic backgrounds, but in the Andes you tend to have a higher concentration of people of Spanish descent, where on the Caribbean coast, you tend to have a larger concentration of people of African descent.” Rafael is part of a generation of Venezuelans who have lived through near- constant political upheaval and economic crisis. The situation, from his perspective, has been deteriorating since hewas born. “I have the good fortune, or misfortune depending on whom you ask, of coming from a family that's very politically aware and politically active, so seeing the world through the lens of politics, it's something that I grew up with and in many ways, I felt it inevitable that I would follow down that path.” He clarifies that the members of his family did not necessarily work in politics, but it tended to be the frame through which they viewed their lived experience and a frequent subject of conversation. This may not have been noteworthy except that he has since learned that this framing does not exist for everyone: “a lot of people can afford to not be aware of certain…issues,” he adds with a half-grin. Rafael studied political science and international relations at Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida in Venezuela, before graduating in 2005. He confesses that in truth, history and political philosophy had always been his areas of interest, however, while at university, he felt he had no choice but to study something that would allow him to contribute to society in terms of policy influence – and to better understand the causes of Venezuela’s cycles of struggle. A young Rafael started to apply for various things – graduate studies or work opportunities abroad – when he came across a research position with a project on political parties at the Organization of American States (OAS). He applied, was accepted and moved to Washington, DC for what was initially meant to be a three-month long gig. Rafael ended up spending upwards of 10 years with the OAS. FROM POLITICAL ANALYST TO… HOMEBREWER For his final assignment at OAS, Rafael found himself in Honduras. Up until that point, he had been working on political analysis and elections, looking into the ways in which institutional corruption has a downstream impact on basically everything else in society. A combination of events occurred while in Honduras, all coalescing into the realization that he just couldn’t do this work anymore. “It's not like I was naive about politics or about corruption…at that stage in life. But then there are certain things that happen that really take away from your soul, I would say… The little faith that I had left in international development or the fight against corruption through those means – it just vanished.” While visiting a dear friend at his home outside of Philadelphia, this friend gave Rafael some beer he had brewed, while also providing a tour of his new homebrew set-up housed in his basement. A year prior, Rafael had tried this friend’s homebrew – it wasn’t very good – but this second attempt proved much better. Rafael realized that brewing beer is like any other skill, one can improve, and then get creative! This friend took Rafael to a homebrew shop that very eveningwhere he got all kitted out. “And then I was hooked. I loved the process…I went down a rabbit hole of learning everything that I could about beer.” An odd memory came to him: it was from a “Foundations of International Relations” course in university. One of their first assignments had to do with a labour strike in ancient Egypt in response to the labourers not receiving their rations, which included beer. This sent him looking for the connection between what beer has meant not just as a commodity, but also as a political and cultural product. “And by that I mean, it's not only the result of a culture producing something, it's also a way to reflect the climate, the social interactions and the social hierarchies and what's available in a particular place.” Rafael points out that people around the world tend to brew beer with ingredients that are available to them, and what is available depends on weather, which in turn depends on geography, and so on. “I used to go back and forth between the Andes and the Caribbean coast, which are within the same country, but the accent is different. The things that you find when you're sitting down to eat are different. It's all a reflection of the people who live there and their climate, their agriculture.” Rafael started to draw a line between those observations and his newfound interest in beer. He began to explore, historically, what it meant to become a brewer. What was the role of beer in society? Was it just treated as a commodity? (No.) Did it have social value in the sense that it was part of a culture’s rituals? (Yes.) When Rafael returned from Honduras, he started to homebrew in earnest, just in time Brewing on a 200-year-old brew system powered by burning wood at the Markus Wasmeier Freilichtmuseum in Schliersee, Bavaria. Commemorating the last "open competitive election" in Venezuela.