Meet the New York woman bringing Iranian-inspired beer to the United States

At a brewery in New York, Zahra Tabatabai is trying to bring beer back to its roots with a taste of who she is and where her family came from.

Before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, about a dozen Iranian factories produced beer, vodka and other liquors. Tabatabai's grandfather even used to ferment homemade beer in his basement before he moved to the United States shortly after the revolution. One day in 2020, Tabatabai's grandmother reminisced that she missed the taste of the homemade brew. 

"It sparked the idea to try to brew a batch and we figured, 'Oh well, you know, it can't be that hard,'" Tabatabai said. "Um, it is. It's pretty hard."