June 25, 2025
Provided image/Triple Bottom Brewing
Triple Bottom Brewing collaborated with Juntos and the Welcoming Center on Know Your Rights, a Mexican-style lager with immigrant rights printed on the can.
Customers who try Triple Bottom Brewing's latest release will find more than slogans and barcodes on the back of the can. The brewery has included a list of legal rights for immigrants and their allies should Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents come to their doors.
The new beer, called Know Your Rights, is a collaboration with the Philly advocacy groups Juntos and the Welcoming Center. A 30% cut of its proceeds will support the work of these partner organizations.The Mexican-style lager debuts Monday at a launch party at Triple Bottom Brewing's taproom on Spring Garden Street.
Partnerships like these are nothing new for Triple Bottom Brewing, a certified B Corp that considers beer, people and the planet its "triple bottom line." The staff often meets to discuss new ways to support the community, the brewery's CEO and co-founder Tess Hart said. But since the last presidential election, those meetings have increased.
"We've been having them more and more, thinking about the mental health of our team and the ways that we want to try to take action," Hart said. "It became very clear pretty quickly, we were seeing how our immigrant friends and neighbors were being so targeted right now. And we decided to try to learn how we could support those folks."
This impulse led Hart to Juntos and the Welcoming Center. In early conversations, both organizations stressed the importance of educating the public on legal rights. Triple Bottom Brewing invited the nonprofits to present a training seminar on the subject in March in its taproom, where staffers learned a few things themselves. Hart said the brewery installed new signs marking private spaces, where ICE agents are not permitted to enter, and established a process to handle any future visits.
"We did a lot of scenario and role playing in that workshop and it was really interesting because we all understood what we were supposed to do, but when someone even is pretending to be an ICE agent, it's scary," she recalled. "You have to develop the muscle memory of like, OK, here's what I do."
Triple Bottom Brewing worked with Juntos and the Welcoming Center to distill key points into text that would fit on the back of a beer can. The resulting guide emphasizes the rights to remain silent in ICE encounters and open the door only if agents produce a judicial, not administrative, warrant. It also reminds bystanders that they can record and document the interactions.
As for the beer itself, it's brewed with corn, which Hart says lends it a "light, smooth, slightly lemony" flavor. Know Your Rights is a 4.8% ABV lager that features can art by Manuela Guillén. It'll be available at Triple Bottom Brewing and select farmers markets until the single batch sells out.
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