Eko Brewery
Anthony and Helena Adepipe
For both sets of our parents, the idea of success was to go to school, university and get a steady job. Starting a business carries a lot of risk, and we don’t know many African parents who encourage their kids to take that risk. We pretty much followed the set route, but when we met and got married, we discovered our love for the brewing process.
We decided to start an African-inspired brewery, making beer using ingredients from the continent. We were born in Nigeria and the Congo respectively and we wanted to incorporate our cultures into our craft beer. Traditionally, in villages when they brew beer, they add cassava or corn and we have tried to go back to that way of brewing.
We didn’t really have a blueprint or other people we could learn from. There isn’t that much representation of Black people having their own businesses – definitely not in craft brewing – and it can be difficult to feel it’s a viable career option. We are still a small business, but we hope that we can be a blueprint for someone else.
Image courtesy Anthony and Helena Adepipe
