Celeste Beatty (born 1964) is the first Black woman to own a brewery in the United States. She established her brewery, Harlem Brewing Company, in 2000.

Personal life

Beatty was born in 1964 in

Winston-Salem Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in N ...

, North Carolina. She graduated from

Shaw University Shaw University is a private Baptist historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. Founded on December 1, 1865, Shaw University is the oldest HBCU to begin offering courses in ...

in 1984 with a degree in International Relations. Beatty was interested in studying at Shaw in part because the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...

, a civil rights organization, had been founded there. Some of Beatty's family members had moved from North Carolina to

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

during the 1950s and 60s, and in the early 1990s she followed in their footsteps, moving to Harlem. Beatty has a son, Khouri, who was born around 1982.

Career

Beatty first started working in the non-profit sector for organizations that ran homeless shelters and worked with artists. However, after experimenting in the 1990s with a

homebrewing Homebrewing is the brewing of beer or other alcoholic beverages on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Beer was brewed dom ...

kit that she had received as a gift and teaching homebrewing classes in her home, Beatty's interest in brewing turned professional. Beatty was also influenced by her interactions with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of

Ben & Jerry's Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc., trading and commonly known as Ben & Jerry's, is an American company that manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet. Founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, the company went from a single ice cream p ...

ice cream company. Beatty helped operate Ben & Jerry's first partner shop in Harlem at the intersection of 125th St. and 5th Ave, which opened in July 1992. The ice cream shop was operated in partnership with Harlem Ark of Freedom, a non-profit organization that operated a shelter for men experiencing homelessness, some of whom worked as employees at the ice cream shop. Beatty cited her experiences working there as inspirational in understanding how small businesses could engage the communities around them. Beatty founded her brewery, Harlem Brewing Co., in November 2000. Beatty had the support of

Sylvia Woods Sylvia Woods (February 2, 1926 – July 19, 2012) was an American restaurateur who founded the restaurant Sylvia's in Harlem on Lenox Avenue, New York City with her husband, Herbert Woods, in 1962. The soul food eatery is a popular gatheri ...

, founder and owner of

Sylvia's Restaurant Sylvia's Restaurant of Harlem, often called Sylvia's Soul Food or just Sylvia's, is a soul food restaurant located at 328 Lenox Avenue, between 126th and 127th Streets, in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1962 by Sylvia Woods. It ...

, who helped Beatty promote Harlem Brewing Co. in her restaurants. Beatty has cited the histories of the Harlem neighborhood and West African brewing techniques and ingredients as influences in developing her beers. Harlem Brewing Co.'s beers include Harlem Sugar Hill Golden Ale, inspired by

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...

's song ''Take the 'A' Train'' o Sugar Hill

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

Wit, flavored with cumin, grains of paradise, orange peel, and coriander; 125th Street IPA, an India Pale Ale named in honor of one of Harlem's most iconic avenues; and Queen Stout, a

stout Stout is a dark, top-fermented beer with a number of variations, including dry stout, oatmeal stout, milk stout, and imperial stout. The first known use of the word ''stout'' for beer, in a document dated 1677 found in the Egerton Manuscript ...

flavored with coffee, chocolate, and cinnamon, brewed in honor of Beatty's mother, Rachel Patterson Beatty Jackson. In 2006, Anheuser-Busch offered to acquire Harlem Brewing Co., but Beatty declined. Harlem Brewing Co.'s beers are sold in

Whole Foods Whole Foods Market IP, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon, is an upscale American multinational supermarket chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which sells products free from hydrogenated fats and artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. A USDA ...

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

, and

Fairway Market Fairway Market is an American grocery chain, founded in 1933 by Nathan Glickberg. It is currently one of the store banners owned by the Wakefern Food Corporation, a company famous for its flagship supermarket cooperative network, ShopR ...

and distributed in New York, Virginia, and North Carolina. Beatty's "Renaissance Wit" won the "Best Brew of New York City" in a 2018 competition. Beatty has collaborated with Black brewers across the country. In 2018, Beatty partnered with Briana Brake, founder and head brewer of Spaceway Brewing Company, LLC, to open Rocky Mount Brewery in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Briana serves as the head brewer and CEO, while Beatty is the Co-Brewer and Adviser. In 2021, Harlem Brewing Co. collaborated with Montclair Brewery, a Black-owned brewery in Montclair, New Jersey, to create a

porter Porter may refer to: Companies * Porter Airlines, Canadian regional airline based in Toronto * Porter Chemical Company, a defunct U.S. toy manufacturer of chemistry sets * Porter Motor Company, defunct U.S. car manufacturer * H.K. Porter, Inc., ...

called "Noble Like It Is" in honor of

Gil Noble Gilbert Edward "Gil" Noble (February 22, 1932 – April 5, 2012) was an American television reporter and interviewer. He was the producer and host of New York City television station WABC-TV's weekly show '' Like It Is'', originally co-hosted with ...

, a Black journalist who was born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents and lived in Montclair. Brewers chose a porter style because porters and stouts are favored by Jamaican beer drinkers and they flavored the beer with Jamaican pimento (

allspice Allspice, also known as Jamaica pepper, myrtle pepper, pimenta, or pimento, is the dried unripe berry (botany), berry of ''Pimenta dioica'', a Canopy (forest), midcanopy tree native to the Greater Antilles, southern Mexico, and Central America, ...

). In 2020, Celeste Beatty and her brothers Carl Beatty and Pernell Beatty incorporated Harlem Brew South, a brewery, taproom, and training center in a former tobacco warehouse located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The team plans to open the facility in 2023. In 2021, Beatty was featured in the

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

''One Pint at a Time,'' which also featured Alisa Bowens-Mercado,

Teri Fahrendorf Teri Fahrendorf (born February 18, 1960) is an American brewer and founder of the Pink Boots Society, an organization that supports women in the brewing industry. Fahrendorf was one of the first women to enter the craft brewing industry, and her ...

, and others''.'' Beatty is also a member of the New York State Brewers Association, the

Brewers Association The Brewers Association (BA) is an American trade group of over 5,400 brewers, breweries in planning, suppliers, distributors, craft beer retailers, and individuals particularly concerned with the promotion of craft beer and homebrewing. Two of ...

, and the New York City Brewers Guild.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beatty, Celeste Living people 1964 births Businesspeople in brewing 21st-century African-American women African-American women in business People from Winston-Salem, North Carolina Shaw University alumni Women in brewing