Thanks to its Black Is Beautiful stout, Weathered Souls is now essentially a household name among craft-beer enthusiasts. Nearly 1,200 breweries have taken their own cracks at that open-source recipe—a worldwide collaboration—agreeing to donate proceeds to organizations supporting police reform or legal defense to those facing injustice.
But before Black Is Beautiful, before Weathered Souls, before his first homebrew kit, co-owner and head brewer Marcus Baskerville didn’t even like beer. However, once his older brother introduced him to craft beer—and he developed a taste for West Coast IPAs and bold stouts—he began brewing them with the fervor of a religious convert.
“I [was] in a car accident, and instead of buying a new car—which I should have—I took the insurance money and bought homebrew equipment,” Baskerville says.