The Associated Press / Timothy White Jr. (from left), Jerry Thomas and brewmaster Shaun Harris pose at Harris Family Brewery in Harrisburg.

HARRISBURG — Some hard-core craft beer lovers just didn’t see the point. Why was this trio of beer-brewing partners from Harrisburg so insistent on opening what they believe will be Pennsylvania’s first Black-owned microbrewery?

Shockingly, their dreams were dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders from craft fans, who believe the beer is the thing. What does the skin-color of the brewers have to do with it?, the skeptics scoffed.

Turns out, everything.

“Why does it matter if we’re the first Black-owned brewery?” said Harris Family Brewery partner Timothy White Jr., while standing in the converted warehouse building on Harrisburg’s Allison Hill that will become the brewery.

“That’s the question we were getting,” he said. “It’s kind of like when we say, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and people go, ‘All lives matter.’ It’s that thing, and it’s bad. That’s racism at its core right there. Representation matters. Every industry, we’ve had to fight to represent ourselves.”

In fact, the very mission of the Harris Family Brewery is bringing people of color into the craft brewery movement.

“The craft beer industry knows it has a diversity issue,” White said. “They’re trying to figure out how to get more people of color into their breweries to drink their beer. Nobody ever thought, ‘Hey, why don’t we have someone of color make it?'”

Since many Black people have been slow to come to craft beer, the Harris Family Brewery partners plan to bring beers specially brewed to appeal to Black drinkers right to inner-city bars. It’s no accident their brewery and planned tasting room is opening at 300 S. 18th St., smack in the middle of Allison Hill, long the city’s African-American cultural center.

“How do you bridge the gap between people of color and craft beer? Why don’t more Black people drink craft beer? That’s a simple question,” White mused. “The answer is, it was never sold to us. It was never marketed to us. I want to adapt our recipes to what works for our community.”

Not since Billy Dee Williams sipped Colt 45 has there been such a direct outreach to Black drinkers as what brew master Shaun Harris says he and his partners are planning.

“I understand that I have to sell a beer to Miss Betty up the street, or someone down the street who only ever drank Colt 45 or Coors Light,” Harris said. “It’s going to be hard to snatch that Coors Light out of their hand. We have to get them to try it.”

Harris said he’s already working on special brews that will ease that taste transition. One is what he calls an easy-drinking lager with the working title, “Street Dreams.” The name and its custom-designed urban logo perfectly reflect the brewery project, itself.

Harris purchased a home brewing kit after tasting a Blue Moon nearly a decade ago now. It was the closest he got to craft beer — and he liked it. Now, he wanted to go further. Much further.

The venture became a business when Harris brought his beers to a family picnic and invited Tim White to give his concoctions a taste. White, whose wife and Harris’s spouse are sisters, didn’t just taste the beer. He and Harris swilled the entire supply.

“Day One of me drinking his home-brew, I said, ‘Yeah, we need to sell this’,” White said.