This is the Colombian university that produces its own craft beers

The pandemic and the economic problems that the country had to affect, caused different sectors of the country to seek to reinvent their brand or look for other entries while Colombia returned to normal. One example of this is the Santiago de Cali University, where as part of their reinvention process they created the 'Usaca Brewery', which allows teachers, administrators and students to come together to work on this project.

“We start from the basis of research, the use of advanced technology and innovation, turning all that knowledge, all that academic theory into something real and tangible, that generates one of the highest expectations, to see how academia manages to transcend classrooms and laboratories and go to market,” said Carlos Andrés Pérez, rector of Santiago de Cali University to Semana Magazine and emphasized that the project already has seven types of this drink: “Each beer has a very special treatment and a research process that supports its flavor. The brewing practices are of such excellence that they ensure that each production retains the flavor, texture and carbonation characteristics of each style of beer.”

He added: “Our brewery is launched, not only as an institutional project, but as a business project, which permeates the industry and contributes to the economic and commercial reactivation of the country, generating a new market line that includes all the processes of the production and commercial chain, with new employability places in the production, packaging, logistics, distribution and marketing of our craft beers”.

Now, after some time of inauguration, the university decided to open a venue for its consumption, which will be inaugurated on March 18 in the 34 # 3-59 race and will bet it on being one of the most iconic places in the capital of Vallecaucana.

It is not the only sector that has bet on this type of entrepreneurship, because in the case of disarmed people of the extinct FARC, craft beer enterprises have been betting on it to collect the best of the Colombian countryside. One example is a venture that is based on August 7 in the city of Bogotá; and it is led by Rubén Darío Jaramillo, one of the more than 13,000 former guerrillas who joined the peace agreement in November 2016 to lay down their arms and return to society.

“It hasn't been easy but there we are fulfilling the agreement we signed in 2016. The Government has failed in several things, such as in the granting of land to develop other projects, but we hope that they will comply, that they will,” says Jaramillo, who spent 32 years in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), now a common political party to Newsroom Infobae, with words run over.

Let us remember that this is part of the government projects promoted for social reintegration. According to the Commons, these productive projects cover lines such as livestock, fish farming, beekeeping, tourism, clothing, supermarkets and other processing projects such as beer (La Roja and La Trocha), honey, coffee and panela, among others. In this regard, the National Council for Reincorporation (CNR) explains that in 2020, 39 collective projects and 1,326 individual projects were approved, to which 2,599 people in the process of reincorporation are linked. To support these businesses, 25,266 million pesos were disbursed.

But these have not been the only ones, because people like Alejandro Riaño also bet on beer production as an important project to start something new.

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