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San Diego’s AleSmith Brewing Honors Women’s History Month with Fearless IPA

March 10, 2022

AleSmith Brewing Company is celebrating women in the craft beer industry with a new West Coast-style IPA, brewed by the women of AleSmith: Fearless IPA. The collaboration brew will be released Saturday, March 26^th at their tasting room. Fearless IPA will be available in 4-packs of 16oz cans that will feature a label showcasing the intricate designs of local artist Mary Jhun.

This brew is a collaboration between the ladies of AleSmith and their production team to create a crushable American IPA. With the additions of New Zealand hops Kohia Nelson and Southern Cross, this IPA features tropical hop flavors of passionfruit, guava, and lychee painted on a simple malt bill with light notes of caramel and a touch of bread and biscuit.

For the 2022 Women’s Day Brew, AleSmith has partnered with local artist, Mary Jhun. Known for surreal paintings out of her studio in Barrio Logan, the arts and cultural district in San Diego, Jhun is well versed in Surrealist Automatism, a method of art working directly from the subconscious without a planned approach. She refers to her work as “emotional self-portraits of a day remembered” for that the method allows the pieces to be thumbprints of haunting memories that delve into the beauty of life, death, and the journey between.

Inspired by the message of empowerment in the popular TikTok song “I Am Woman” by Emmy Meli, AleSmith chose the name “Fearless IPA” for their Women’s History Month beer. The craft beer business is a male-dominated industry, presenting obstacles for women and non-binary people to get into the field. “We want to recognize and celebrate the strength, resilience, and impact of those who are working towards or are currently in this industry” says Kristen Ballinger, Marketing Manager at AleSmith Brewing Company. “What better way for us to celebrate than to collaborate and brew a beer with the amazing women that work at our company.”

AleSmith asked Jhun to choose a piece of her art that best fits the “Fearless IPA” name. She said, “Dyad, a painting about the power of two becoming one amid life’s hardships, was one of my choices for the term Fearless. Aside from its unity and balance of the two lovers, it also represents two sides of the same heart. Often, we don’t recognize the strength of people when we see just one side to them, to be able to look deeper and see the impact the different versions of ourselves play, we become better humans for it.”

To Jhun, “Fearless represents strength, it’s the ability to see beyond what “is” and to ask why, and to not be afraid of changing perspective.”