Roar Brewing Co., Detroit’s First Black-Owned Brewery Opens

The name of the brewery is a tribute to Detroit's automotive history.

Evan Fay’s Roar Brewing Co., believed to be Detroit’s first Black-owned brewery, is opening on March 23 via a soft launch, with the company’s grand opening set for summer 2025. Fay’s brewery will launch with its flagship flavor, Honey Oat Stout, and the company’s name is a tribute to Detroit’s automotive history.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Fay said as much in a press release, noting that it is his desire for the brewery to take on the spirit of Detroit’s citizens themselves.

“Detroit is home to the Lions, the Tigers, the Pistons, and the Red Wings — teams that roar with pride. But the roar isn’t just in sports. It’s in the city’s engines, its music, its industry, and its people. We wanted our brewery to be a tribute to that spirit,” Fay said.

Fay, a United States Air Force veteran, also owns Detroit’s Café Noir and Chloe Monroe Galleries and all of Nain Rouge Brewery’s assets, including the building now housing Roar Brewing and all of its beer-making equipment.

Fay told the Detroit Free Press that his goal with his brewery company is to make craft beer accessible.

“We’re not trying to be everything to everyone, but we want our beer to be accessible and easy to enjoy,” Fay said.

Fay also told the outlet that like the craft breweries he visited in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Wyoming, he wants the space to become a gathering space for the community.

“When I was in the military and stationed in Wyoming, I would visit breweries in Fort Collins, and I realized they weren’t just places to grab a drink — they were community hubs,” Fay said.

Fay also told the outlet that Roar Brewing had to look outside of Detroit to the National Black Brewers Association because there were no Black craft breweries in Detroit.

“There’s a great ecosystem in Detroit to support small businesses, but in craft brewing, there aren’t as many direct pathways,” Fay told the Free Press. “Typically, you turn to people in your community who have done it before, but with no Black-owned breweries in the city, we had to look outside our immediate circles for guidance.”

He continued, “The challenge is that for a lot of Black entrepreneurs, luxury industries like craft beer haven’t been a priority because people are often focused on essentials first. But we want to change that by making craft beer a space that is inviting, exciting, and approachable.”

According to the National Black Brewers Association, less than one percent of craft breweries are owned by Black people. Before their formation, no entity existed to help Black brewers and brewery owners with needs specific to them.

In 2024, the group introduced the Brewing Equipment Donation Grant Program, an initiative connecting Black and Brown brewers with expensive equipment donated from breweries who no longer need it, an attempt to bridge one of the biggest barriers to thriving Black breweries: a lack of quality equipment.

According to National Black Brewers Association Executive Director Kevin Asato, solving the equipment problem helps Black breweries generate capital they would otherwise have to invest in infrastructure.

“You need capital to purchase half a million to a million dollars worth of hardware and steel. The equipment becomes so significant.…It is the primary reason for capital, right?” Asato said in a press release announcing the program.