Two months after his Ukrainian brewery stopped making beer and started making Molotov cocktails, Taras Maselko heard air raid sirens outside his office in Lviv. He had just enough time to race into the street and halfway to the bomb shelter when a missile blasted out the windows of an auto garage one kilometer away.
He dropped to the ground, uninjured but in shock. Two more missiles exploded nearby. The garage was engulfed in flames; his hands trembled for hours afterward. Officials later told him that Russia’s airstrikes had killed seven civilians, including a child, injuring 11 more.
“They didn’t hit any of our Molotovs,” Maselko tells the Sun Sentinel by phone. Maselko handles marketing for Pravda Brewery, located in downtown Lviv in western Ukraine. “This is a new reality for us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brewer or a PR guy. We are all united in defending our kids and cities from Russian tanks who came here to kill us. That’s why we do this.”
Since Feb. 24, the day Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Maselko and Pravda Brewery have made and shipped 2,500 homemade firebombs to Ukrainian soldiers at checkpoints between Lviv and Kyiv in central Ukraine. Then Yuri Zastavny, Pravda’s owner, went a step further: In early March, he posted online recipes and label graphics for five of his beers, and called on breweries around the world to make beer for Ukraine and raise funds for relief efforts.
“We can’t just do nothing,” says Ihor Chertov, Pravda’s head brewer. “We brewed beer in our normal lives, but since the war started, no one needs beer, so we try to help somehow. Ten Molotov cocktails can stop a Russian tank if they go to Lviv.”
Pravda’s call to brew – dubbed Brew for Ukraine – reached 26 Degree Brewing Co. in Pompano Beach, which on May 7 will release a beer based on Pravda’s Ukrainian imperial stout recipe. Proceeds from the event, Beer for Bombs, will head straight to Pravda, which is distributing humanitarian aid directly to Ukrainian soldiers, civilians and refugees.
The beer will be called PSB – illustrated with a fist gripping a Molotov cocktail – and is named after the first initials of three journalists – Pierre Zakrzewski, Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova and Brent Renaud – killed in Ukraine while covering the war. A pair of local Society of Professional Journalists members, Joe Pye and Gillian Manning, came up with the name after Pye brought Pravda’s struggle to the attention of 26 Degree’s head brewer, Yonathan Ghersi.
At the beer release event, the first 50 visitors to buy PSB on draft ($8 a glass) will receive a free to-go can. The Beer for Bombs fundraiser will also feature free food from Flanigan’s, discounted beer flights, tasting lessons and a recorded message from Pravda Brewery.
“Everything about this beer is influenced by Putin’s war,” says Pye, 33, a beer blogger who noticed Pravda posting recipes online in March. “I had a Zoom call with [head brewer Ihor Chertov] last Friday, and he says, ‘We can stay here and fight, or we can die.’ I put myself in their shoes, and I think I would have hopped the first flight out of there. These guys are as tough as nails.”
Pye and Ghersi settled on Pravda’s recipe for Ukrainian imperial stout because, as Pye says, Pravda is “known for poking fun at Putin, and calling it Ukrainian imperial stout is a kind of a f— you to Russia.”
They did come close to brewing another of Pravda’s beers, a dry-hopped summer ale called “Putin Huylo,” which roughly translates to “Putin is a d—head.”
PSB, a note-for-note replica of Pravda’s Ukrainian Imperial Stout, is still fermenting but it’s already thick and complex, punched with hints of coffee, chocolate and smoky, rich malts, Ghersi says.
“It’s great that we got to brew this beer,” Ghersi says. “To think that I would have to stop brewing and start making Molotovs is unfathomable to me as a father. They’ve given up what they do to say, ‘I’m going to defend my country.’ This and common human decency makes me want to help.”
After the Beer for Bombs release party, PSB will go on sale across Florida from Jacksonville to Orlando by mid-May. Total Wine and local craft-beer stores, including Craft Beer Cellar in Fort Lauderdale, will also carry the stout. A four-pack of 16-ounce cans costs $16.
So far, some 500 breweries across the world have brewed Pravda’s beer recipes in solidarity with the Ukrainian brewery, according to Maselko. A Facebook group named “Brew for Ukraine” is splashed with posts of upcoming beer-release parties, plus updates from Zastavny spelling out how funding will be spent. A former Pravda brewer, Cory McGuinness, also started a GoFundMe, which so far has raised $23,000 toward its $50,000 goal.
The reality is, after two months of sustained warfare, Ukraine needs more serious weaponry than Molotov cocktails, Maselko says. All told, Pravda has collected nearly $1 million in worldwide donations, much of it heading to Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces for the purchase of drones, diesel generators, rifles and scopes and even fighter jets. Pravda donated the equivalent of 30,000 meals to chef Jose Andres’ nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which has fed soldiers, refugees and other civilians on the frontlines.
“When you cannot hug your relatives and daughters and fathers, but then you see the world is on your side, it makes you strong,” says Maselko, whose 4-year-old son and wife evacuated to Austria in late February.
Worse than the anxious, sleepless nights cut short by air raid sirens, worse than being unable to brew beer, Maselko feels driven to anger by the “relentless propaganda” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“When I see this bull—- not being recognized as truth except in Belarus or Russia, it’s like, ‘OK, what will he sell next?’ ” Maselko says. “Then you see the pictures of what they’ve done, the people they’ve killed. These are the reminders that you need to go to work and do your best to make it stop.”
The Beer for Bombs fundraiser and beer-release party will take place at 5 p.m. May 7 at 26 Degree Brewing Company, 2600 E. Atlantic Blvd., in Pompano Beach. Go to BeerforBombs.com.
