All hail Frederick McKinley Jones, the inventor of mobile refrigeration for trucks and boxcars. Without his pioneering efforts, how would anyone ever get ice-cold beer efficiently delivered to their neighborhood?
Jones was the first Black man in America to win the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (posthumously, in 1991). This month, he and other Black innovators are getting more recognition with four limited-release beers made by Black-owned California breweries, including Hunters Point in San Francisco and Hella Coastal in Oakland.
The beers feature label artwork from Milton Bowens and celebrate several “unsung heroes” of Black history: Jones; Bessie Coleman, the nation’s first female African-American pilot; Mary Ellen Pleasant, a self-made millionaire in Gold Rush San Francisco who helped expand the Underground Railroad; and Robert Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender, at its time the most widely distributed Black newspaper in the U.S.
“I’m constantly thinking about stuff, so I was throwing it on the table: Let’s do something for Black History Month. This was two years ago,” says Rodg Little, coowner of Oak Park Brewing in Sacramento. “We reached out to three other Black-owned breweries – we wanted to be Black-brewery focused or forward – and we just wanted to do something different. I don’t think anybody had done that before at the time. It was just like, ‘Let’s share the love.'”
Black brewers and brewery staff could certainly use the love. “Across the nation, we’re less than 1 percent, and that’s including brewers, brewery owners, distributors and people of color in the industry altogether,” says Little. “For Sacramento, it’s definitely a rarity – we only have two Black-owned breweries, so that’s iconic in itself.”
Last year’s release featured various IPAs highlighting the colors of the Pan-African flag, like a red IPA and a black IPA. “The impact we had was so huge that people started placing orders for (2022) last year. They were like ‘Hey, we want first dibs,'” says Little. This year’s 4-pack celebrates hazy IPAs made with different formulas of yeast and hops, with each can bearing facts about the historical Black changemaker it celebrates.
Though the label art honors the past, Little hopes the collaboration will highlight the present and future of brewing, too. “We’re working with guys who have aspirations to open up a brick and mortar. They’re coming out of home brewing and going into commercial brewing. But it’s up to people like Oak Park Brewing to lead the way and guide them, so they don’t have to jump through the hoops to set up their storefront.”
Details: Hunters Point will release its Black History Month educational 4-pack at the brewery starting the weekend of February 19 and later at Bay Area stores. Check Hella Coastal’s Instagram for its release later this month. The 4-pack is also now available at Oak Park Brewing and stores around Sacramento and at Full Circle Brewing and stores around Fresno.
