Sitting in a hotel room somewhere in downtown Istanbul, there was a feeling of helplessness filling my gut at the same rapid pace of a Turkish mass Lager. It was March 2022 and I was flicking through Instagram Stories of people in Ukraine, seeing pictures and videos of people trying to find normalcy in a suddenly war-torn county. Or trying to escape it. I kept thinking of how I could be useful to my friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, sending money to anyone I could find who was escaping Ukraine or charity organizations who could help.
Since the first day of the Russian invasion, I received emails from friends and businesses who were terrified of what the war might bring. They wanted to support the Ukrainian people and I wanted to find a way to get them help.
I don’t remember the exact day—it was when we counted the timeline of the invasion in weeks and couldn’t have yet thought about more than a year of war—but a colleague from Ukraine called to tell me that Kyiv’s Underwood Brewery had been badly damaged during the Russian’s assault on the Ukraine capital. Underwood could no longer make beer and was going to contract brew their beers at Eutropius Brewery in Menen, Belgium. With my contacts as an export manager, I started piecing together a puzzle of how I could help, connecting Underwood with companies to sell their beer in Europe.
By July, my family and I had made a temporary home at a farm in Spain as refugees from the war. The summer heat settled in with clear, blue skies that hid behind walls of golden hay, a reminder of the Ukrainian flag. A surprise arrived one day: A box of beer full of Underwood’s IPAs, New England-style IPAs, and Lager. I took a can of Kyiv Lager—its navy blue label a welcome piece of nostalgia in my hand—and set it in the fridge to cool. Not long after, I poured the beer into my glass, its golden color a reminder of the home I love. Coming from another brewery it tasted a little different, but in my mind it was better than ever, connecting me back to Ukraine and giving me a reminder of one small thing I was able to do to help others.
Words + Photo by Alex Kirilyuk