When Robyn Gustard Weise named her company, Avenue and Road Beer Supply, she did so with care and consideration, tapping into sentiments that resonate with my own, very different, immigrant experience. This, says Weise, is the point.

“The story of having a journey is something that everyone can relate to,” she explains.

“Everybody travels on avenues and roads—they intersect to take you where you need to go but to get there you need to know where you came from.”

Robyn created Avenue and Road to launch her Windrush 75 Smoked Lager with Jerk Spices, the only beer [to our publication’s knowledge—ed] released specifically to celebrate the landing of the HMT Windrush at Tilbury Docks on June 22nd 1948. A third-generation Windrush baby, Robyn chose to create the beer as an expression of her own family history, the Caribbean immigrant community in the UK, and as a reflection of the cultural forces that power the immigrant experience.

If that sounds like a lot to pack into one beer, that’s because it is. Robyn, however, talks passionately about how immigration has shaped her, her family, and her community, consolidating and distilling her thoughts and feelings into brewing a beer that she wants to speak for those experiences, and to resonate with those both inside and outside the Caribbean diaspora.

Windrush 75 is Robyn’s first beer as Avenue and Road—a smoked helles lager with Caribbean jerk spices. The idea came to her when while sharing a post-work Aecht Schlenkerla smoked helles with a colleague. A longtime fan of smoked beer, Robyn began to consider how the flavour would pair with jerk spices and started experimenting at home, adding different combinations to the beer until she hit the right notes.

Robyn’s goal was to make a beer that showcased her culture, but that also spoke to the wider immigrant experience—as well as being inclusive and easy-drinking.

“I want people to understand that Windrush 75 is not jerk chicken beer, it is first and foremost a lager that you can enjoy with all types of food, from fish and chips to Sunday roasts,” she says with a nod to culinary integration.

The beer reflects Robyn’s own journey—which, like every immigrant’s story, is unique and universal all at once—and her observations on how immigration as a cultural force shapes our identities, the ways in which we identify, our tastes and our understanding of the world are at the heart of Windrush 75.

***

Speaking with Robyn for the first time was a bit of a shock as she slid between elongated Brooklyn vowels and South London slang, my expressions of surprise making us both chuckle. We shared dismay over the poor quality of fish and chips, chocolate and breakfast cereal in the United States, as two expat immigrant Brits complaining about missing our homeland, for want of a better word.

Robyn moved to the US while she was still growing up, hence her mid-Atlantic accent, but frequent trips back to the UK kept her connected to her Brixton roots, and her Jamaican heritage. Her earliest memories are of her Grandma Madge’s house, a force of nature she credits with inspiring her love of flavour and all things culinary, and leading her into first cooking and hospitality, and then brewing and the beer industry.

““The emphasis on community and group economics are tenements of our culture... having each other’s back is a huge part of survival.””

— Robyn Weise, Avenue and Road Beer Supply

Robyn describes experiencing a cacophony of different food styles under Grandma Madge’s roof before she was old enough to understand that they were not all from the same place. She was tasting was a melting pot of immigrant culture: bagels from the East End, rhubarb and custard, charcuterie from Harrods’ food hall, and traditional Jamaican sorrel and oxtail soup, her identity as an immigrant ingrained before she was able to articulate it.

Robyn’s passion for food and flavour and the way in which she was exposed to it casts a romantic spell over the immigrant experience, entrenched by the beautiful love story she shares about her grandparents, who met on their way to England from Jamaica. However, she is quick to dispel any rose-tinted illusions about the life they faced as young newlyweds in a foreign country.

‘No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish,’ a phrase my own parents faced in their first months in the UK two decades after Robyn’s arrived in the country, didn’t just limit housing and job opportunities but were indicative of the open prejudice that was rife against Windrush immigrants.

“It must have been so frightening for them as young kids coming to a completely different country starting their lives from scratch,” says Robyn, explaining how many Windrush families had to share houses in order to keep roofs over their heads.

It’s this sense of community, and its roots from the earliest stages of immigration, that Robyn cites as inspiration and gravitates towards in her work. “The emphasis on community and group economics are tenements of our culture, and are still very important in our community—having each other’s back is a huge part of survival.”

***

Robyn moved to Brooklyn, where carrying that connection with her helped the adjustment to a new environment where her accent didn’t fit in, and she hated American sweets and TV programs. “It wasn’t home,” she says.

However, her connection with the culinary arts was kept alive through regular visits home and a growing number of her family coming stateside.

“Food was a big part of all family gatherings, it was how we show love,” she explains. “As a family, we would bond around Sunday dinners, take-aways and birthday celebrations—food was the centre of family time.”

That depth of connection led Robyn into an after-school program that gained her a place at culinary college, and a successful career in hospitality followed. Moving to a front-of-house role brought her into contact with the craft beer scene, and with her highly attuned palate she was soon managing beer and food pairings, and nerding up on flavours, aromas, brewing and serving in her spare time.

Beer wasn’t new to Robyn. “Being Jamaican, Guinness was always in the house,” she says, “It’s a versatile ingredient in a lot of Jamaican cuisine, including punch and pastries.”

Robyn credits her familiarity with Guinness as leading her into the beer world. “I was open to trying different styles of beer because I was familiar with the taste,” she says, highlighting Golden Draak, 60 Minute IPA and Brooklyn Blast IPA as early favourites that she felt showcased beer’s flavour potential.

She became hooked on this potential, and began to segue her career towards beer, moving from buying roles at beer stores around New York to her first brewery role at Brooklyn’s Wild East Brewing, where she was able to move into production, and became a brewer in 2020.

This process wasn’t as easy as I’m making it sound. Without existing industry experience or connections, Robyn initially found doors were closed to her. Unphased, she launched her own creative events brand, Kicks and Kegs, and started hosting events celebrating her shared passion for craft beer and sneakers.

“I wanted to get into the industry but no one was giving me a chance,” she says. Her events at breweries and gallery spaces began to get attention and landed Robyn her first role at Prospect Heights Beer Works.

The same entrepreneurial passion that inspired Robyn to launch Kicks and Kegs is behind Avenue and Road—the focus on creating engaging, diverse beer events. “Observing in the beverage market in the US and the UK, it’s clear there is a need for spaces that are welcoming and fun for people from all walks of life, and that is what I want Avenue and Road to be,” she says, and kicking the company off with Windrush 75 is the exact way she wants to start it.

“I feel like this is one of the things in my life that I’m meant to do.”

***

Robyn first created Windrush 75 last year at Wild East for the 60th anniversary of Jamaican independence and the 74th anniversary of the Windrush landing, debuting it at Pittsburgh’s Barrel & Flow festival where it was a huge hit. All cans had sold out by Labor Day, but not before Celeste Beatty, owner of Harlem Brewing and the first Black female brewery owner in the US, had grabbed a couple of cans and taken them with her to London, where she shared them with UK industry friends.

Her feedback was so positive that Robyn decided to launch Avenue and Road in order to brew and release the beer in the UK for the 75th anniversary of the Windrush landing—a tall order. This, Robyn feels, is a reflection of the immigrant experience, both that of her own family and that of everyone who emigrates.

“Both are pushing boundaries,” she says, “Leaving home and starting a business are both leaving a space of comfort and going into the unknown—if you never leave then you’ll never know.”

Beatty connected her with Brixton Brewing, who brewed and packaged the beer for her, although she is keen to acknowledge this is not a collaboration, simply a business arrangement. “It’s interesting that everyone in the UK has such strong opinions about Brixton Brewing because they are owned by Heineken, but they are a business like everyone else, and beer revolves around business relationships and connections,” she says.

It was through networking and successful relationship-building that Robyn secured two launch events for the beer in London, the first in Brixton on June 22nd, and the second on Walthamstow’s Blackhorse Beer Mile on June 24th, both of which she attended, supported by her family.

“I am elated that Robyn has turned her passion for beer into a celebration and salute to her Jamaican heritage,” her mum, Layde English, tells me. “The beer’s ingredients showcase the main elements and flavours that predominate Jamaican cuisine, and I knew England would embrace the Windrush beer wholeheartedly—we’re a nation of pub lovers!”

Her family’s support has been incredibly important to Robyn. “They didn’t really look at this project as a thing I did as an individual, they see it as something that has been created for the community and they are proud because I am a reflection of them. They can point to and say ‘one of ours made this,’” she tells me.

On the 24th of June, the beer was launched as part of a large Windrush celebration across the Blackhorse Road Beer Mile, hosted by Wild Card Brewing.

“I’m literally a Windrush baby—my grandma came to the UK in the 50s so for me this is not just a story but my history,” says Wild Card’s head brewer, author and BBC Radio 4 presenter Jaega Wise.

The party was a celebration of Black drinks producers, including Eko Brewing, Rock Leopard Brewing and African Originals Cider, as well as an artisan market. “It was great to be part of a culturally specific event with other folks who are passionate about sharing their culture and businesses,” Robyn says, “The beer was received really well and a lot of people were surprised that you could make adjuncts like this work in a beer, especially a lager.”

“The beer that Robyn made is seen as the Windrush beer,” says Wise, who is stocking it at Wild Card’s Lockwood taproom in Walthamstow.

““I knew England would embrace the Windrush beer wholeheartedly—we’re a nation of pub lovers!””

— Layde English

Steve Ballinger of the British Futures thinktank, part of the Windrush 75 network, feels that the beer was a key part of the celebration.

“When we heard that Robyn was brewing a Windrush beer to mark the occasion it seemed a great fit with the ethos of Windrush 75. Drawing on her own family history of migration to the UK from the Caribbean made it a captivating story,” he says. “This wasn't just someone who has put ‘Windrush’ on the packaging to help market a product, but rather a product that was itself inspired by Caribbean culture.”

For Robyn, making the beer gave her an opportunity to connect with her history while making something of significant social and cultural importance, both within her community, in the beer industry and in society at large. Robyn’s vibrant, tenacious personality and inherited love of taste and flavour led her into the beer community, and being part of this community has enabled her to come full circle and create an expression of her heritage that resonates across the immigrant experience.

“I think it’s very important to keep our story alive in our own communities—if we don’t know our history we will just be told it through someone else’s perspective,” Robyn says.

“Each generation must keep telling stories in evolving and changing ways that are easily digestible and will leave a mark. from a photo to a video to making a beer. These are tangible things that say—we are here, we did this and this is why our story matters.”