Evan Fay learned to like craft beer in Wyoming. He was Air Force, and he kept driving down to Fort Collins because the breweries there worked like community centers. People stayed all afternoon.
Nobody was performing. He filed it away. Roar Brewing Co. soft-opened at 666 Selden Street on March 23, 2025, which was Marche du Nain Rouge day.
The timing was either a coincidence or a joke, depending on how you read it. The space had been Nain Rouge Brewery before. Fay bought the operation outright, kept the equipment, ditched the curse-the-city mythology, and rebranded around the opposite premise.
He is the founder. He is also a co-owner of Café Noir and the Chloë Monroe Galleries on John R Street, which makes him one of the more diversified hospitality operators in the North End. Roar is the bigger swing.
According to the National Black Brewers Association, Black-owned breweries make up less than one percent of all U.S. breweries. There were zero in Detroit until this one. That ratio mattered to Fay's planning.
There were no other Black brewers in the city for him to ask. He had to network outside his immediate community and outside Detroit to get the technical help and the supply-chain answers. There was no playbook here.
The flagship is a Honey Oat Stout, which is the beer Roar opened with on March 23. The rotation runs Pilsner, Wheat Beer, and Saison. Fay says he is not trying to be everything to everyone.
The point is approachable craft beer, served in a room where the regulars look like the neighborhood. There is an outdoor patio. There is a three-and-a-half-seasons room for shoulder months.
Brewery tours are part of the plan, with a section on Detroit's beer history, which is longer than most people remember. The brand name comes from Detroit's sounds. Muscle car engines, sports crowds, music, F-22s.
Fay has used that phrasing in his press materials and in interviews. It's a tidier brand story than most. The beer should hold it up.
666 Selden St., Detroit.
