Heard so often in the beer world: “Brewers and taproom owners are some of the nicest and most generous people around.” Visit your local spot and you’ll quickly find that’s so true.
One of the ways we see true community and soul in the craft-brew world lies in the large-scale collaborations of the past few years: The trend seemed to garner national attention a few years ago, with the Resilience Beer project begun by Sierra Nevada Brewing, a worldwide brewing fundraiser with proceeds going to benefit survivors of the deadly and destructive 2018 Camp Fire in California. The Resilience project raised more than $8.4 million for area residents and businesses from more than 1,400 participating breweries.
2020 and the pandemic's devastating effects on the hospitality industry spurred the New York-based Other Half Brewery to start the All Together Beer Project, with more than 700 breweries in 51 countries around the globe collaborating on brews meant to raise awareness and provide relief for struggling service industry workers and breweries.
In early summer 2020, Weathered Soul Brewing's Marcus Baskerville launched the Black is Beautiful initiative, a collaborative effort with the mission, Baskerville said, of providing a platform to show that the brewing community is an inclusive place for everyone of any color; he called on his peers in the brewing industry to collaborate in unison for equality and inclusion amongst people of color. The project brought together 1,207 breweries in 22 countries in a stout-brewing project.
Several more collaboration projects have popped up lately, including the #BrewStacheStrong campaign for brain-cancer research, the Things We Don't Say IPA collab brew for breweries from around the globe to use their platforms to raise awareness of and conversation around mental-health issues, and The #CurtainUp beer project that is intended to raise awareness about the live-performance industry which has been decimated by COVID-19, and to raise funds for The Actors Fund and associated charities to aid workers in the industry suffering from the shutdown.
Are there any other beer-collaboration projects out there--even more locally focused ones--that we haven't mentioned? Drop us a line and let us know--we'll promote them!
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