A decade ago, Sergio Manancero—the founding business partner and president of La Doña Cervecería—spent a good amount of time visiting breweries and craft beer bars in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul. He quickly observed a noticeable lack of other Hispanics and Latinos in the taprooms.
There may have been more Spanish-speaking brewers in the Minneapolis area at the time, “but they didn’t make it,” says Manancero, who opened La Doña Cervecería’s Minneapolis taproom in 2018. “None of the spaces were trying to get Latino [or Hispanic] people to come to them,” he says. “You can’t just like be a brewery with good beer and be successful. You also must have a mission.”
Indeed, a 2021 survey by the Brewers Association, a trade group representing small breweries, revealed that just 2.2% of the country’s nearly 10,000 breweries are Hispanic or Latino-owned. A vocal handful of breweries, however, are hoping to change that narrative by attracting new customers and making the beer industry in general more attractive to Hispanics and Latinos.
Beers that Tell a Story
Embracing traditional Hispanic flavors and ingredients has been a way to reach out to the community through familiarity, but also revealing a broader range of beer styles beyond Mexico’s classic pale lager.
“We wanted the brand to represent our culture,” says Javier Lopez, who founded Casa Humilde Cerveceria and Coffee Roasters in Chicago with his brother Jose. In its beers and hard seltzers, the brewery uses ingredients like prickly pear, vanilla and corn, which are all sourced from Mexico. “Everything we do with the brand we just wanted to scream our culture.”
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In Washington, D.C., Atlas Brew Works recently debuted a horchata-inspired beer on draft for Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 until October 15. Goldchata is a horchata-inspired golden ale created by brewer Javier Rosa II. The 5.1% abv brew offers notes of cinnamon, oats and vanilla—essentially a horchata and beer, all rolled into one. Rosa, in a press release, said the beer was inspired “by his time growing up in Arizona where there is a rich Latino culture.”
Of course, there’s the fear of being pigeon-holed. Sarah Real and Mike Dell’Aquila, who earlier this year moved from Brooklyn to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to found Hot Plate Brewing Co., decided to launch with more standard beers while the operation finds its sea legs.
“We wanted to just kind of establish credibility with more conventional offerings before we started getting into more creative recipes,” says Dell’Aquila. But Hot Plate likely has Mexican-inspired beers in its future “reflective of some ingredients Sarah grew up around, like a jalapeño pale ale and a Mexican chocolate stout.”
Making Room for a Hispanic Beer Narrative
Ultimately, the many Hispanic brewers I spoke to for this story said they wanted to normalize Hispanics in beer and encourage others to join the industry. That’s especially true for Real and Dell’Aquila.
“There’s a green Latin community here in Pittsfield and in the Berkshires, overall,” says Real, the operation’s brewer. She’s deeply involved with a local nonprofit network called Latinas413, which aims to carve out space for Spanish speakers.
“We’re working with them to try to create a culturally authentic Mexican celebration,” Real explains. They recently collaborated on a “non-Cinco de Mayo Cinco de Mayo celebration” that educated people on the day’s true meaning and have plans to do something similar for Día de Muertos. “We’re also experimenting with pulque, a very traditional Mexican fermented beverage,” she adds.
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Manancero, meanwhile, is adamant about installing bilingual bartenders to interact with Spanish-speaking customers. It’s helped, he says, to create a welcoming space for Hispanic and Latino customers, a growing drinking demographic.
Lopez agrees, adding that Hispanic customers are often drawn to Casa Humilde Cerveceria because of its Spanish name. “They see someone who looks like them, someone they can relate to, and they feel good knowing that they are going to a Mexican-owned brewery and that it’s not something somebody created that’s Mexican-themed,” he says. “We’re just being ourselves.”
At the end of the day, though, beer is just a launching point for a broader conversation and focus. “We don’t see ourselves as just a brewery,” says Lopez. “We want to promote our culture.”
Published: October 4, 2023
