How a State College brewer’s yearslong journey brought him to ‘the right place to be’

Happy Valley is home to many breweries with head brewers that have a passion for the industry and the area. But not many have a head brewer like Paulo Nami, who helped launch Antifragile Brewing Company last year, alongside John Schaffer and Lisa Harpster.

Nami isn’t from the area and he didn’t plan on ending up in brewing at all, and yet where he finds himself now is the perfect place for him and his family to be.

“Thirteen years ago, it all started with 16-year-old me wanting to do an exchange program and leave home,” said Nami, for whom “home” was Brazil. “My dad was part of the Rotary Foundation back then and Rotary has an affordable youth exchange program ... I was able to choose coming to the United States for my senior year in high school.”

However, until the exchange program began, Nami didn’t know where in the United States he would end up.

“I was supposed to be assigned to a host family in Hagerstown, Maryland, and, last minute, that didn’t happen,” he said. “That’s how I ended up in State College.”

He knew nothing about State College before he arrived in August 2010 to attend Bald Eagle Area High School, living with Becky Koleno and her family in Julian. During his short year in Centre County, Nami fell in love with the area and resolved to come back.

“I instantly felt at home from the very first moments in State College,” he said. “I knew that the end of my exchange program wouldn’t be the last time I would be here.”

Over the next few years, he returned to Happy Valley multiple times, before attending college in Brazil, studying industrial engineering. During an internship, he discovered a love for brewing.

“I ended up getting an internship at a local brewery in my hometown. The first few months were doing nothing but industrial engineering things — production, quality, demand, et cetera — all aspects of production in the brewery, until the brewer was let go. I found an opportunity to try it out and, from 2015, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since,” he said.

In 2019, during a return trip to Centre County, Nami met Schaffer and Harpster. They began discussing the possibilities of creating a brewery together, something Schaffer had already been interested in, and something that would allow Nami to find an employer to sponsor his work visa and subsequent immigration to the United States. By this time, Nami had established himself as a prominent and award-winning brewer in Brazil, and the opportunity seemed like a perfect fit for all involved. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“Everything was put on hold,” Nami described.

He waited several more years in Brazil and, in the interim, consulted and worked for other breweries, married his wife and started a family. Finally, in 2022, the immigration process was wrapped up just in time for Nami to move to the area and help Schaffer and Harpster open Antifragile Brewing Co. in downtown State College.

The long wait and process wasn’t easy, but Nami noted that the three remained “very confident” in their plans.

“There was a lot of optimism that this would (be successful). That’s what had me invested in the idea all that time,” he said. “Not only that, but the opportunity to come back to State College was pretty appealing. This had been a very welcoming community from the get-go, from the very first day I arrived, and I felt like this was the right place to be, the right place to grow and raise my (family). It just made sense in every single aspect.”

Now, more than a year after Antifragile Brewing Co.’s opening, Nami brings his expertise to overseeing the brewing operations, from quality assurance to production scheduling, from designing new brewing recipes to adjusting existing ones. All the while, he holds on to that same optimism that brought him to the role in the first place, despite a pandemic and helping start a brewery from a continent away.

“I’m really hopeful that growth will be inevitable,” he said of the brewery’s future. “We’ve been getting great feedback from people in town and from out-of-town, but are still yet to be discovered by a lot of people. ... We (have) a fantastic team, a very warm reception from the community. ... There are very good signs that point toward growth.”

Holly Riddle is a freelance food, travel and lifestyle writer. She can be reached at holly.ridd@gmail.com.