This craft beer lifestyle that we’ve created over the past couple of years combined with our love of craft beer and adventure over the last few decades, has made us realize how much love and passion is put into each pour of a brew. And now the breweries that are pouring these brews are struggling in the face of a pandemic, and they need our help.
Beer celebrates life and death
Whether sitting at the bar anticipating a new craft beer and saying hi to strangers or gathering at a local brewery for the umpteenth time with best friends and family, beer has always been a way to get together with people, a way to celebrate, to drown sorrows, to play games, to announce new relationships and end broken ones. To celebrate life, death, and all the dashes in between. Beer plays an integral part of our life.
Gathering around a beer
So when life the way you know it changes and the way you used to gather around a beer becomes something that is much more difficult to do, well, then you find something else to gather around, something else that brings people together. Are you saying to stop gathering around beer?
Bullshit! We will always gather around beer. For now, though, we will have to forgo the physical portion of community tables, impromptu backyard campfires, strangers becoming friends at the bar. For now, we will have to drink at separate tables, lonely campfires, and solo bartops.
Community keeps going
So what does this mean for us, for those that have built their lives around the craft beer community? How do we come together when life is all of a sudden about physically distancing ourselves when we were just starting to get the idea that maybe borders aren’t necessary, maybe life can be more about community and less about individuality?
It simply means we change the way we create community. We build each other up. We swap stories about our favorite breweries, we swing by for some takeout beer, we continue to cheers across the miles.
Breweries are struggling
These breweries, these taprooms, they are our third space, our gathering place, our second family, our community. And now they are struggling to stay afloat due to layoffs and decreased operations from current regulations regarding COVID-19. Yes, we are a bit disgruntled, irritated, frustrated, and maybe even a bit pissed off. Life as we know it, is no longer as we know it. But really, can we allow ourselves to wallow in this madness? No way, Jose!
So what can we do to help?
Thanks to our friends in the craft beer world, we’re sharing three simple ways to help support our beloved craft breweries.
- Drink the Story Campaign sponsored by The Craft Beer Concierge
- This One’s For You Campaign sponsored by Drink Local Think Global
- Support your local breweries by drinking their beer.
1) Drink the Story Campaign
#DrinkTheStory
“Drink The Story” means sharing the unique stories of our beloved breweries. This can mean anything from their community influences, specialty styles of beer, owners’ and employees’ backgrounds, fun times you had a favorite brewery, the people you met there, or anything else that makes that place, that beer, that beertender, special to you.
So how do I participate in Drink the Story?
On Social Media
Share a story and a photo about a brewery you love on your Facebook page or Instagram. Be sure to include #DrinktheStory and let’s spread the love for all our brewery peeps out there. Once breweries are opening back up again and normal programming finally resumes, let us know how they are doing now and what we can do to help build them back up.
On Your Website or Blog
Write a post on your website or blog and share it everywhere. If you send it to us, we’ll share it, too (along with a backlink to your site). Let’s keep the love going around the world. Let’s use social media and the internet to create some good for our beloved breweries, our beloved brewers, owners, and beertenders, our beloved beer, our beloved craft beer community.
I wrote a story, now what?
- Join the Drink the Story Facebook Group and share your story here.
- Hashtag the crap out of all this!
- Share your story on social media everywhere.
- Ask people to share your story.
- Encourage them to write their own story.
- Share it with us here at Living a Stout Life, and we’ll keep it going.
- Need inspiration? Check out our Stout Conversations series where we tell the stories behind the beer.
2) This One’s For You Campaign
#ThisOnesForYou
Drink Local Think Global is known for partnering with craft breweries and connecting them to communities in need of clean drinking water. And while that mission is still active, in this time of need for craft breweries, DLTG is temporarily changing their focus to reflect that need. That is why they created the This One’s for You campaign. This campaign gives you the opportunity to contribute specifically to supporting craft brewery employees in need of assistance. If you have an extra buck or two or know someone who needs an extra buck or two, this is where you can help out.
How can I donate?
Donations are being taken directly from DLTG’s site. They are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that specializes in working with breweries and taprooms. They believe it is their duty to show support to the industry that has continually supported them in the past. Click here to learn more and donate now.
Be sure to share your selflessness on Social Media and tag it with #ThisOnesForYou. Spread the word, the love, the money!
Can I nominate someone?
At this time only craft brewery employees can nominate themselves or their peers. Click here to learn more and nominate a craft brewery employee now.
If you are not an employee, but really want to help, please donate now. The more we donate, the better chance we have of seeing our beloved breweries opening back up again with our beloved beertenders right back behind the bar.
3) Keep drinking craft beer
God knows we all need it! The current state of affairs is ever-changing and every day brings something unknown. And while that really isn’t any different from last year or the year before, we can probably all appreciate that the unknown today is a little bit more unknown that any of us like right now.
So, in the meantime, pick up beer to go or have it delivered, but keep on drinking, my friends. We’ll all be back together again over a beer soon. And when we are, watch out! The craft beer industry will storm its way back like an Arrogant Bastard on a Golden Monkey being chased by a Yeti!
#DrinkTheStory Stories
- Three Strikes, And They’re Still Not Out! by Allo Gilinsky
- they have peacocks by Paige Latham Didora
For more stories on the Facebook group, click here.
