Brewing For Impact celebrates Brewmaster Garrett Oliver’s thirty year anniversary at Brooklyn Brewery. Garrett collaborated with seven breweries around the world to showcase fonio, a remarkable West African grain that can light the way towards a sustainable and equitable brewing future. Each collaboration will also support the Michael James Jackson Foundation’s scholarship program for BIPOC brewery and distillery professionals. Learn more about Brewing For Impact here.
Perhaps Guinness needs no introduction, seeing as it’s one of the most famous breweries in the world. While its flagship stout is ubiquitous in bars across the planet, Guinness’ experimental arm, Open Gate Brewery, is one of the most frequented tourist destinations in Ireland. As emblematic as Guinness is of beer and its native nation, the brand’s legacy draws some of its rich heritage from global roots quite distant from the Emerald Isle – even as far as Africa.
To mark the launch of their new collaboration beer, Brewmaster Garrett Oliver traveled across the pond to meet with the Guinness team. They explored how African grains have been shaping beer innovation for centuries — and how their full potential is just beginning to be harnessed.
Garrett joined Eibhlin Colgan, former brewer turned Archive and Heritage Manager, as she illuminated Guinness’ worldly history with an original recipe book from 1801. She discusses how the origins of its famously hoppy FES (as Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is affectionately known) are rooted in the West India Porter, a beer specifically brewed for long distance travel.
“I call it the granddad recipe of FES,” Eibhlin explains. “It had a much higher hop rate, because hops are a natural preservative, and a much higher ABV rate. This is a beer that was brewed to travel. It started being exported to Africa as early as 1827, when it landed in Sierra Leone.”
Guinness’ 19th-century presence in Africa shaped its legacy and set the stage for future innovations. One key move was using sorghum, an African grain, in brewing. Eibhlin calls it a “huge innovation at the time.” In 1962, Guinness opened its first brewery outside the UK and Ireland in Nigeria. Its success led to the creation of Guinness Farms just two decades later, a venture that invested in local farming to cultivate sorghum and maize, reducing the reliance on imported barley in their brewing process. Sorghum was not only more sustainable and locally sourced, but also offered a unique flavor profile, making it an innovative choice for Guinness’ brewing while supporting African agriculture.
That’s what makes Garrett and Guinness’ latest release both fitting and monumental – it continues the trailblaze toward a future of sustainable brewing. Fonio Stout will hit shelves in November 2024 in New York and will be at select retailers on the East Coast. It’s brewed with 15% fonio, a sustainable supergrain grown in desert regions of West Africa that supports primarily woman-owned family farms, and promotes soil regeneration that gives back to other crops.
“For me, it’s really cool to bring you guys fonio, which has its own 5,000 year history. I like to think I’m helping continue what is already a Guinness tradition, in African grains, but now a new one,” Garrett shares.
He sat down with more members of the Guinness team to talk about how their newest release is inspired by Guinness’ history brewing with other African grains, but brings something entirely new to the table (and the bar.)
“If you look at what we’ve done, we call it ‘OGCD’ or ‘only Guinness could do.’ In the case of fonio, a fonio stout is always going to be unique to Guinness. We’re using our Guinness yeast to make it a truly original beer that, as they say, only Guinness could do,” muses Steve Gilsenan, Guinness Global Head of Quality. “When I tasted it for the first time, I found a really nice fruit spice that balanced out the stout really, really beautifully. “
Peter Wiens, Brewmaster of Guinness North America, chimed in about how drinkers will find Fonio Stout reminiscent of the time-honored Guinness they know and love, but with a newfound, fonio-powered complexity.
“We took a typical stout recipe. We have the base malt, we have some caramel malt, we have some roasted barley, and a little bit of chocolate malt. But we subbed out some of that base malt for 15% of the fonio. Fonio has flavors you wouldn’t typically expect to come out of a grain,” he remarks.
“There was a little bit of concern that the roast might overwhelm fonio’s tropical fruit notes and white wine characteristics, but its flavors really do come through,” adds Ryan Wagner, Guinness US National Ambassador.
Though much of Fonio Stout’s significance is in its place on the flavor frontier, Garrett and the Guinness team delved into how the beer’s cultural and societal impact were key factors in its design development. They commissioned Haitian American artist Kirvine Brisseux to bring their concept to life, whose can design incorporates symbols of Caribbean and West African heritage.
“It’s certainly about beer, but it’s also about building community,” says Ryan.
Fonio Stout is the final release in Garrett’s Brewing for Impact Initiative, which helps fund his non-profit, the Michael James Jackson Foundation. He elaborates on how bringing Guinness into the project pays homage to both the history and future of brewing.
“Guinness was also one of the favorite beers of Michael James Jackson, who was the biggest beer writer in the world,” Garrett reflects. “He would have loved to see what we’re doing because it’s supporting the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which provides scholarships for technical education in brewing and distilling for people of color. This is really important.” Guinness is supporting the MJF with a $10,000 donation via the Guinness Gives Back Fund, helping fund technical education and career advancement for Black, Indigenous, and people of color in brewing and distilling.
Looking for more stories and beers from Brewing For Impact? Check out Garrett’s work with Maison Kalao, Russian River, Thornbridge Brewery, Omnipollo, Carlsberg, and Jing-A.