Yuriy Zastavnyy, an idea inspirer of “Pravda” Beer Theatre delivered a lecture on Brewery Culture at Craft Beer and Vinyl Music Festival. Here are the most exciting theses.

– Ukraine is culturally and botanically extremely various: with deserts, forests, uplands, altitudinal zonation - very many climatic conditions are owing to big territory. Every season we’ve got something that we can take in our product. That’s why, we can and must use all these botanical diversity in our kitchen and brewery.

– People are creating a whole sphere of craft brewery starting from scratch or losing money.

– We feel pleased here at Craft Beer and Vinyl Music Festival that we share the same opinion. But if we look around, 99,9 % of people live with an idea that has passed for us already. Thus, all of us, who are present here, should speak with people. This is our mission: if you know something, share it with others.

– In the world beer saved many countries from epidemics and served as a nutrient for others, a means to relax after a difficult day. It served as a tool of improvement for some technologies in churches and farms. The same as with cheese, wine and bread, beer was a product where technologies upgraded.

– Mutual relations of beer and technologies are also very exciting. For example, a chain of roads and supermarkets was one of the reasons that destroyed a farm brewery in Belgium. It was cheaper and closer for people to drive to a supermarket on a new road and they were satisfied. Technology of fridge equipment made beer expensive.

– Beer is unique in many aspects and a highly technological sterile product that can and must reflect what is surrounded around us. It must reflect our origin and pride where we live.

– Craft beer is self-respect, anyway. A person looks not only at a price but what he can get for his body. And it’s self-respect.

– In fact, we are in the stage of development of the business that asks plenty of questions and doesn’t answer. But we can form replies. We can be the shakers of our future. 

– If you’ve got some knowledge, share it; make your way through doubts, skepticism, and ambiguity, answer the questions and, of course, brew clean beer.

An Experiment

My “Pravda” partner is “!FEST” Holding of Emotions that owns more than 20 restaurants in Lviv. You can buy “Pravda” and another beer in the chain of restaurants. We did a small experiment for 6 weeks. It’s a very inspiring case for me.

When “Pravda” just sold beer in “!FEST” restaurants, we had 35% out of all beer in the Company. To understand a context, I’ll explain: we sold beer that is 4 times expensive than a “mass” product. Later on we spoke with bartenders and servers. Nobody paid them any money, any bonuses. We delivered them a beer lecture, showed a production area, spoke about the product, gave them to taste beer. In the end, in 6 weeks our part from 30-35% increased to 60-65%. Now it has reached 60%. This is inspiring.