Sankofa Beer Aims to Bring West African-Inspired Beer to Market

With hundreds, if not thousands, of breweries in planning around the country, it can be difficult to find a niche or angle that is untapped (no pun intended). Two homebrewers, Amado Carsky and Kofi Meroe, have just such an angle with Sankofa Beer Company, a brewery in planning that will aim to produce west African-inspired beers. The brewery, which is currently raising funds via a Kickstarter that concludes at the end of the year, has been in the works since 2012. Their Kickstarter will allow them to jump from a 1 BBL production scale to a contract-brewed 30 BBL production scale, which will then place beers like their HYPEbiscus Pale Ale into distribution in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

According to their Kickstarter, Sankofa “is a word from the Ashanti/Akan people in Ghana and translates to “Go back and get”. It is visually represented by a mythic bird with it’s head turned backwards with and egg in it’s beak, or as a stylized heart. Sankofa is a symbol for the understanding that in or