Former brewer from Ukraine’s Pravda Brewery creates an Oregon collaboration beer

Cory McGuinness brewed at Pravda from 2015-2017 after beginning his career in the Portland area. He now brews in NYC.

This Friday, April 1st, Iron Tap Station in Beaverton, Oregon will be releasing a special collaboration with Integrity Brewing and a former brewer of Pravda Brewery in Lviv, Ukraine. The recipe is a dry-hopped golden ale that Pravda Brewery has made available and even livestreamed brewdays around to help raise funds for relief efforts in Ukraine and for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. You may have heard of these cause-focused beers being brewed around the US to support Ukrainians, but this effort is unique in that it involves the brewer who translated the recipe originally and another longtime figure of the Portland beer scene who lived in both Kyiv and Lviv over 3 years combined.

It's May of 2015. Cory McGuinness has just moved to Lviv, Ukraine to start his dream job as a brewer at a start-up brewery in Europe. It's been something he'd been thinking about - planting seeds along the way. He talked about it while at Walking Man Brewing in Stevenson, WA and while at Old Town Brewing in Portland. Ukraine's craft beer scene is young, harkening back to what Portland may have been like in the 80s. "You walk into a bar and they ask you, 'Would you like a light or a dark?' Those were the options," shared Cory. "You were probably drinking something from Carlsberg." Cory's first task at Pravda Brewery was to improve upon a beer called 'Putin Huylo' - roughly translated from Ukrainian to English as 'Putin's a Dickhead.'

Cory at Pravda Brewery in Lviv, Ukraine

"We made another beer called 'Fuck Trump,' but my mission was to make these beers great," said Cory. "I didn't want to rest on a gimmick, I wanted to make great beer."

"I still have a bottle of 'Fuck Trump,' chirped in Brook Riddick. "I can't find my Putin Huylo bottle, but 'Fuck Trump' has a special spot at my bar."

Cory and Brook Riddick, owner of Iron Tap Station in Beaverton, share a friendship that goes back before Pravda. This was a special phone call for this writer to be a part of as they shared memories both of Portland beer glory days and of their experiences in Ukraine. Brook recalls when Cory first got a job at a brewery in Ukraine. Hostilities with Russia were already red-hot in 2015. The Donbas region was in dispute and terrorist cells, Russian sympathizers and mercenaries made the Eastern border of Ukraine a dangerous place. These groups were never outrightly identified as Russian forces, but even seven years ago they wreaked havok in the Donbras region and everyone knew what their motives were. When Cory let Brook know he'd be living in Lviv, Brook replied, "Oh good. You'll be fine." Lviv was more than a 2-day drive from what many called 'the front lines' of the conflict. This is the country already brewing a beer called 'Putin's a Dickhead' over seven years ago

Label art. The mannequin on Putin's lap is former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. The man in the monkey suit is former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych - Ukraine drove him out into exile in Russia.

Little did Cory know this beer would one day become a lifeline to a wartorn Ukraine as Putin's forces inch closer to his former home of Lviv. A moment of inspiration would capture the attention of the entire beer world in an effort to support a myriad of causes to help the people and refugees of Ukraine as they're displaced by Putin's war in 2022. Only mere weeks ago Cory found himself as a central figure in helping brewers assemble and collaborate to help his former home. After the picture of Putin Huylo bottles as moltov cocktails went viral on social media, Cory reached out to Pravda owner and figurehead, Yuri Zastavny, about making the recipe available for fundraising efforts. Cory began the huge task of translating the recipe to English for the US. The hope was that perhaps Cory could align a few brewers near his current home in New York. The response was far greater!

"I thought I could pull together some NY breweries who might help do a fundraiser,' said Cory. "I was inundated with messages from breweries from Texas, Oregon, Britain, Hong Kong... all over! So, I thought we could take this one notch further." That's when Cory became the contact person for Americans who want advice on the recipe.

Brook wasn't even aware of the collaboration efforts already happening - mostly on Facebook - when he reached out to Cory with the idea to collaborate. Integrity Brewing made the most sense to contact first as Jeff Maynard of Integrity was a good friend and Brook hoped that a nano brewery would perhaps have the flexibility to brew the 'Putin Huylo' recipe on short notice in order to get the most support to Ukraine in the shortest amount of time. Brook had hoped to simply buy an entire 3bbl batch, but Jeff and Integrity Brewing went all in to brew much more beer for the effort. Brook has scrambled to create stickers, T-shirts and other merch for this event that will be made available with all proceeds benefiting the cause.

Said Cory of the collaboration, "I've been in contact with Brook and the guys from Integrity. This connection is just amazing!"

Iron Tap Station

Proceeds of this collaborative effort will go to the go fund me for Brew For Ukraine & Nova Poshta. The event at Iron Tap Station on April 1st aims to raise more than $5000 for the initiative to get more financial support to Pravda as they support the defense efforts of civilians called to arms in and around Lviv.

Coincidentally, Cory will be in Chesapeake, VA on April 1st - the same day as the Iron Tap Station event with Integrity - to collaborate with The Garage Brewery. A brewery founded & owned by a Ukrainian woman, Ulyana Wingard, who's from Lviv.

"We've both got a lot of friends and contacts in Ukraine we still haven't heard from," shared Brook on how this event on April 1st is no joke.

Iron Tap Station
8840 Southwest Hall Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97223
971.319.0998