Brew For One 2022
Brew For One
Just because we can’t do everything for everyone doesn’t mean we can’t do for one what we wish we could do for everyone. Unlike Get Comfortable, our year-round impact initiative designed to address community-level priorities, we created Brew For One around micro-service opportunities, in particular the needs of specific individuals. The program aims to help a neighbor in need and invite others to follow suit. ‘The One’ – which is what we call the recipient every year – is flexible by design. The One can be an individual, a couple, a family, a classroom, an agency, or a natural disaster.
Over the years, the funds raised during our Brew For One release helped seed a college fund for the son of a deceased colleague, invested in Neurofibromatosis medical research, purchased a car for a formerly unhoused person who was getting back on their feet, and last year partnered with the Athens Habitat For Humanity to build an apartment unit for an individual who was transitioning into stable housing.
The Collaboration
In Brew For One’s fifth year, we decided to pilot the program as a collaborative project in 2022, beginning with WeldWerks Brewing, based in Greeley, CO. In the first half of 2022, we worked alongside the WeldWerks team to help contextualize this program for their community. We then participated in their recipient selection and service project in Greeley (June 2022) before inviting them into our service opportunity here in Athens (September 2022).
The Beer
This year’s collaborative beer involves a selection of special casks in honor of The One. As a symbol of passing on the torch and the collaborative spirit, each brewery selected a singular special stout aging in barrels that they deemed exceptional enough for the project. Once the visiting brewery selected the specific barrel, the host brewery chose another barrel to complement that selection. This special blend of two barrels, hand-picked by each brewery, is a unique beer that cannot be replicated or reproduced.
“We wanted the opportunity to collaborate, yet also be very intentional about our focus on “The One” beneficiary. With this in mind, we asked WeldWerks to select their favorite barrel from our cellar, and then we picked a complementary barrel as ours to blend with it,” says Blake Tyers, Senior Director of the Catalyst Division at Creature Comforts. “This singular focus allowed for a blend of some of our favorite barrels in-house, as well as a pure and beautiful Barrel-Aged Stout that came together as one for our community. WeldWerks selected a Willett Distillery bourbon barrel aged for 34 months, which was blended with our selection, a Jimmy Red Corn bourbon barrel from Highwire Distilling that aged for 28 months.”
Creature Comforts’ Brew for One release is a 500ml bottle with 13.7% ABV. The focused and complex stout’s aroma is a mix of nutty and roasted qualities paired with sherry-like expressions from the extended aging with notes of roasted almonds, pecan, oak, and dark fruit.
Brew For One Greeley
WeldWerks is committed to Brewing Better Communities through their four community impact programs, the WeldWerks Community Foundation, and their annual philanthropic beer festival, the WeldWerks Invitational. For their Brew For One recipient, they chose to serve a Weld County-based nonprofit named Jobs of Hope, who supports the re-entry and stability programming for post-incarceration individuals.
While our team members were in Greeley last June for the WeldWerks Invitational and Brew For One barrel selection, we had the chance to interact with the Jobs of Hope leadership, tour their facilities, and even meet ‘The One’ WeldWerks selected this year.
“From the very beginnings of WeldWerks, we have valued the well-being of our community. We share many of these values with Creature Comforts, who have been amazing leaders in exemplifying what is possible when a brewery is committed to the health and development of their community,” says Roy Van Anda, WeldWerks Community Engagement Manager. “The scale and complexity of the world’s challenges can be overwhelming, but we saw Brew For One as a tool to scale this down and start with just one individual in our community. Jobs Of Hope, our nonprofit partner that works with the recently incarcerated and gang-affiliated men of Weld County, helped us select Manny as our Brew For One benefactor. Unfortunately, Manny passed away during the final stages of this collaboration. Brew For One: Manny is now dedicated to Manny’s memory and the relationship we built. Proceeds from this bottle will be donated to his family to cover the cost of funeral expenses.”
Brew For One Athens
To close the loop and complete the home-and-away barrel selection, we hosted members from WeldWerks the week of September 26th, who participated in a service project coordinated with the Joy Village School: Creature Comforts’ 2022 Brew For One recipient. As a startup private school with a mission to create joyful learning experiences for Black youth, Brew For One helped purchase the school’s core curriculum, helping to set them up for years of success.
“Every day our hearts break for a broken world. It can be difficult to know what difference we can make, or where even to begin. However, the fact that we cannot address every need doesn’t mean we haven’t anything to offer—everybody can do for one person what they wish they could do for everyone,” says Matt Stevens, Senior Director of Community Impact at Creature Comforts. He continues, “That’s a transformative idea and the heartbeat of this program. With that in mind, we are thrilled to partner with the Joy Village School, a private school with a mission to create joyful learning experiences for Black youth, to help them go further faster, especially as they are getting off the ground in their first year.”