SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Story now about a small Chicago brewery called 5 Rabbit. It was the first company to break ties with the Trump Organization after the president's infamous comments about Mexican immigrants when he entered the 2016 campaign. Since President Trump's election, the Hispanic-owned beermaker has made a business of brewing protest. It's even the subject of a documentary that premieres this weekend. NPR's Tim Mak has more.
TIM MAK, BYLINE: This is how it all started.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
MAK: This was a big problem for Andres Araya and his wife, who were producing a house beer for the Trump Tower in Chicago. Araya and his partners decided to take a stand and became the first business to cut ties with Trump for this.
ANDRES ARAYA: When we hear the comments that he makes, it went in direct opposition to the founding principle of our brewery.
MAK: But this came with costs. They had the equivalent of 20,000 pints of beer sitting in their warehouse.
ARAYA: It was going to cost us $10,000. That is, basically, our working capital at that moment.
MAK: Local bars and restaurants hearing about their ordeal agreed to take the barrels they had on hand and sell it as a generic golden ale but not before workers in Araya's warehouse put a colorful twist on the name. Here's Jason Polevoi, who, along with his colleague Nick Jenkins, produced the documentary we mentioned.
JASON POLEVOI: Some of the guys working in the brewery wrote on the keg collars - there's no direct translation from Spanish to English. But the closest is [expletive] your mother.
MAK: In Chicago beer circles and on social media, critics began questioning why they had to bring Trump's mother into all of this. Beer historian Liz Garibay, a friend of the brewery founders, suggested something else that wasn't much more polite.
LIZ GARIBAY: So as we were on the phone, I said, you know, why don't we just change it to be about his hair, him and his hair? So I suggested call it [expletive] tu pelo, which means [expletive] your hair.
MAK: Beer sales took off at Chicago bars friendly with 5 Rabbit, backed by a logo that became an iconic sketch of Trump's tufts made by a local artist. Here's Scott Weiner, who owns a number of restaurants and bars in Chicago.
SCOTT WEINER: We sold an extreme amount in a short period of time.
MAK: As Trump's campaign ended, 5 Rabbit's founders thought that was the end of the story. But when Trump won the election, they decided to use that same beer recipe and make it into a social justice-themed beer called La Protesta. Each batch benefits a different cause - one for the environment, one on DACA and another on transgender rights. Here's Araya again.
ARAYA: We're a small business. But, you know, those small things of just getting involved with organizations that are working towards things that you think are important or just voicing your concerns or getting involved in politics - that matters.
MAK: We should point out that The Trump Organization did not comment despite multiple requests. It's been 3 1/2 years since Araya pulled out of Trump Tower in Chicago, and batches of La Protesta are still in demand. Tim Mak, NPR News.
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