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The craft beer scene in Ukraine
Since 2013, the owner of Lahnsteiner Brauerei, Dr Markus Fohr, has maintained close contact with Octo Microbrewery in Cyprus. In 2020, this contact resulted in the first German-Cypriot collaboration brew, the Cyprus Grape Ale, which has since developed into a vintage beer.
Since March 2022, this collaboration has been a speciality that neither brewery had intended in this form. Taras Lozhenko, the owner of Octo Microbrewery, and his family are Ukrainian.
Together with Lana Svitankova, the first Ukrainian Certified Cicerone and beer sommelière living in Switzerland, Taras Lozhenko reports on the difficult state of the Ukrainian brewing industry in four short brewery portraits.
The staff of the Underwood Brewery in KievUnderwood Brewery in Kiev
Paul Liniewicz, Chief Marketing Officer at Underwood Brewery in Kiev, describes his experiences at the start of the invasion: „From the very beginning, the brewery was plunged into chaos. It was swarming with troops and warplanes. On 24 February 2022, the staff had to leave the brewery. It was a sad farewell, because no one knew if they would ever see their brewery again.“
Fortunately, the invaders were soon driven out of the Kiev region. Paul Liniewicz and his colleagues were able to return. But rebooting was difficult. Door and gate had been smashed. Crushed cans lay everywhere. Fortunately, the brewing vessels and fermentation tanks were intact. Two thirds of the beer in the tanks did spoil due to the lack of electricity. So everyone involved spent the first two weeks tidying up, cleaning, repairing and selling the remaining beer before they started brewing again.
A really important point was to keep the whole team together. Everyone came through this phase alive and well and now they can all still do the work they love.
But the impact of the war did not end there. By the end of 2022, the Russian invaders were increasingly turning their attention to the infrastructure and causing power cuts throughout Ukraine. A diesel generator had to take over the brewery’s power supply. Commodity prices reached unprecedented heights. It was a real struggle to keep things running in the face of so many additional expenses.
But despite all these difficulties, Underwood Brewery is still doing its bit to support the Ukrainian army. It brews special beers to raise money to donate to both humanitarian organisations and the military.
To increase sales, the brewery began exporting. Today, their beers can be found all over the EU. They have even made the long journey to Korea. It’s a testament to the quality and craftsmanship they put into every batch. In these uncertain times, it is a real challenge to plan. Of course, a business needs goals and long-term plans, but it has been necessary to learn to adapt and take things day by day. So Underwood Brewery is trying its best to navigate through these uncertainties. It doesn’t always prove to be easy, but the brewery is determined to keep brewing great beers no matter what the future holds.
The brewers at Mova have learnt to work under daily changing conditionsMova Brewery in Dnipro
The second portrait depicts the situation at the Mova brewery in Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. It started in 2017 with contract-brewed beer and opened its own production in 2021.
After the pandemic, the Russian invasion was already the second difficult phase in Mova’s young business activities. But despite all this – or perhaps because of it – the team came even closer together and also developed social activities. The new times set the pace. The circumstances of existence changed not just every week, but every day. The brewers at Mova have learnt to work under conditions of constant change and to act more responsibly towards each other and the people around them.
Mova is a small regional brewery, but a very ambitious one. They still plan to grow and start new projects. The company has already launched a new line of non-alcoholic lemonades with new flavours. More new products and international co-operations are to follow.
Pravda’s brewers opened their recipes to the public and received overwhelming support for doing soPravda Craft Brewery in Lviv
Yuri Zastavny from Pravda Craft Brewery in Lviv experienced a significant slump in business in the first few weeks after the invasion, as logistics were completely disrupted. After May 2022, production and sales began to recover. In the west of the country, hotels, restaurants and caterers are still missing 30 to 50 per cent of their sales volume. Air raid alerts are forcing closures and people are staying in basements. Opening hours are affected by the curfew. People are short of money and tourism is very limited.
To develop some activity, Pravda’s brewers opened their recipes to the public and received overwhelming support. Some 800 brewers worldwide brewed the beers, resulting in a storm of donations. The company launched a series of „Punisher Beer Weekends“ and raised funds for locally manufactured „punisher drones“.
Yuri Zastavny: „Life goes on and victory is a common goal. Whether you are a lawyer, an IT expert or a brewer, you do what you can to donate, to support the army, to generate ideas. Getting your country back is something that needs to be sorted out here and now. Nobody can do it for us.“
The Ten Men Brewery in Kharkiv was occupied on the first day of the war, and since then it has been bringing new creations to market every month at a brewery in western UkraineTen Men Brewery in Kharkiv
The last portrait depicts the situation at Ten Men Brewery in Kharkiv. The war changed everything for Ten Men too, just as it did for its colleagues.
Production used to be located in the small town of Vochansk near Kharkiv, very close to the border with Russia. The town was occupied on the very first day of the invasion. In order to continue working, the Ten Men Brewery leased a plot of land and brewing facilities in western Ukraine.
This relocation was associated with considerable challenges for the company. Nevertheless, the brewers at Ten Men continue to launch beers with new flavours every month. Since February 2022 alone, this has included 40 new beer varieties and special products such as beer boxes and loyalty programmes for regular customers.
Ten Men aims to export Ukrainian culture through the production of beer. It is of course very hard to plan in a rapidly changing environment, but the brewery is trying to stay agile and be ready for this challenge.
A Ukrainian brewmaster for Cyprus
Taras Lozhenko needed a master brewer himself for his production facility in 2023, so he sent a message to the Ukrainian brewing scene. In May of the same year, Tetiana Volynska arrived in Cyprus as an official refugee from Kharkiv. At the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian army occupied the brewery, where she used to work, and used it as a warehouse. The brewery was only able to sell its stock and then had to close.
Taras Lozhenko expresses a final word in the full interview that appeared in BRAUWELT Inbternational No. 1, 2024: „The Ukrainian beer scene used to be a relatively closed society. Now Ukrainian brewers are scattering across Europe and the rest of the world. Because our identity and our traditions are in danger, we try to find and preserve or revitalise such local identities and traditions wherever we go. In Cyprus, for example, we brewed Bronze Age Beer based on archaeological excavations from 3800 years ago. It is a beer with figs and spices. In the end, something positive comes out of this terrible situation of war.“
