The worldwide beer collaboration Black is Beautiful is once again hitting store shelves – a lot of them – and a couple of local breweries are playing a huge part. MobCraft Beer and the startup CAC Brewing Co. collaborated to create the stout that will be a part of a can release to 300 Walmart stores nationwide.
MobCraft and CAC are in rarified air; less than a dozen other regional breweries are participating the project with Walmart. The retail giant first offered Black is Beautiful in February-March 2021, employing eight craft breweries mainly from Southern states.
MobCraft worked with Chris Adams, an experienced homebrewer and founder of CAC Brewing, to develop the Black Is Beautiful recipe. Adams, who is Black, plans to open CAC later this year in Milwaukee. The collab will be available in 20 Wisconsin Walmart locations after Feb. 15. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to MKE Black, a local non-profit that supports Black-owned business, and The Harriet Baskerville Incubation Program, which offers brewery training and education opportunities for women and people of color.
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“(MobCraft co-founder) Andrew (Gierczak), Chris and I have been talking for years, both on a personal level about beer and about doing an alternating proprietorship together,” said MobCraft co-founder Henry Schwartz. “When this opportunity came up, it seemed like a great one to collaborate on.”
Added Gierczak: “Recipe formulation provided a bit of a challenge given Chris’s experience is in home brewing. However, building recipes based on ideas and concepts of flavor profiles is what we have built our reputation on, so while it might have taken longer than normal, we were able to come up with a beer both of us wanted to put our names on.”
Black is Beautiful began in the summer of 2020 as the brainchild of Marcus Baskerville, the co-founder and head brewer at Weathered Souls Brewing Co. in San Antonio. Baskerville created the stout recipe and more than 1,200 breweries from around the world, including several Wisconsin breweries, brewed their own version of it to raise money for social justice causes. So far, the initiative has raised over $3 million.
