OnTap Magazine

20 | Winter 2025 | ontapmag.co.za for an important election that was to take place back home, in Venezuela. He decided to brew a beer specifically for that election and name it after the significant number of opposition members that were elected to parliament. When Rafael served his beer to friends, he enjoyed their enjoyment of consuming it –anexperience familiar tomany a homebrewer. But there was more: “Even though I was a craft beer fan, I'd always taken beer for granted as the product.” You can go out and buy a product, he elaborates, but now he was seeing it as a shareable skillset, and importantly, as a convener of people and conversation. During those years as an analyst, Rafael traveled to various countries in LatinAmerica, holding meetings with people working in NGOs, academia, political parties and government. He would use these meetings to draft briefings for the decision makers at OAS on what was happening politically at a particular moment, in a particular country. “And then I realized that the best learning experiences that I had in many of those countries were not necessarily the meetings with high-level officials, with people in academia. Thebest conversationswerewhen we would transition from having a formal talk to going out and getting a beer. And it was over beer – and sometimes coffee – where I learned the most about a country.” Around the time that Rafael was deciding he could no longer work for OAS, his wife got a job in New York City, and the two subsequentlymoved there fromWashington, DC. Toying with the idea of becoming a brewer, Rafael thought to himself: I don’t know a single soul in this industry, nor do I have the experience necessary to get a job in a brewery. It seems the stars were aligned in his favour, however, because Rafael came across an organization called Beer Kulture which provides entry-level scholarships for people of colour to work in the beer industry. Rafael applied, went through the rigorous interview process, and ultimately received an internship at the Bronx Brewery. That internship, which started in July of 2021, soon turned into a job. Rafael’s experience at the Bronx Brewery made several things clear to him. For one thing, brewing is hard labour. And it often doesn’t pay very well. “This is a profession where there’s a lot of romanticizing what it means to work as a brewer,” he says. But despite the labour-intensive nature of the job, and the underwhelming compensation, Rafael felt happy – unlike his previous, better- remunerated job at the OAS. He maintained a passion for this new line of work, adding: “And all that, for lack of a better term, wonderful magic that comes from brewing beer and sharing beer keeps you going.” From Bronx Brewery, Rafael moved on to Mont Clair Brewing in New Jersey about a year later. While there, he heard about the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling (MJF), a nonprofit founded by Garrett Oliver that provides funding for people of colour to acquire a formal education in brewing. Once again, Rafael appliedandshortly thereafter, received an exciting email from “the” Garrett Oliver – one he was not expecting. “I thought it was a scam,” he confesses with a laugh. It was not. BECOMING A “MASTER BREWER” As an MJF awardee, Rafael attended the World Brewing Academy’s (WBA) Master Brewer Program, which involves six months of full-time study split between Chicago (at the Siebel Institute) and Munich, Germany (at Doemens Academy). Something that struck Rafael early on in the program was the differing paths the various brewing professionals took to get where they were. Surrounding him were highly skilled professionals, many of whom, especially thosecomingout of largebreweries, hadvery technical backgrounds. Some had studied food sciences or chemical engineering – others had focused on fermentation. You could perhaps say that those brewers had had a more linear path than those like Rafael. And it was in his conversations with those brewers – “these highly skilled and really technical proficient people, wonderful brewers” – that Rafael could see how their approach towhat beer is or what beer means was different than, say, a homebrewer who had become a professional brewer. “It means different things and I think that goes back to what I was saying about beer as the product, because you can make a really good product and that is wonderful, but with beer you have the opportunity [to create] something that also has cultural value. And then it can reflect identity, it can reflect politics…” For Rafael, treating something as a cultural product allows for a deeper connection to bemadewith your consumers, and he feels many breweries are missing out on that opportunity. “As an industry, there's a lot of potential we can tap into tomake those connections. The funny thing is that you can only make those connections if you're genuine about it and if you're truly reflecting on what's making that connection. If not, it's just another ad campaign and people will know.” Top cropping yeast from an open fermentor at the Doemens Akademie in Munich.