Wow. What else can we say?
The suggestion from the guys at Future Mountain that it might be a good idea to see if breweries were interested in coordinating their fundraising efforts to maximise impact has proven to be a rather good one, to say the least.
Events – both for January 18 and other dates stretching well into the future – continue to come in every hour. They're taking place in all parts of the country, including many of the worst impacted regions and places not traditionally associated with local breweries, such as Alice Springs and Cairns. There are others getting creative, such as the BeerFest team donating 50 percent of all festival ticket sales on Saturday to bushfire related causes.
Meanwhile, the Resilience Beer project that's taken shape in less than two weeks – and which received a shot in the arm from Sierra Nevada – has already turned global with breweries registering to take part in the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Denmark so far. And the big push on that front is yet to come.
Anyway, before Saturday's nationwide day of events, a quick update. If you've lined something up (on any date) and we don't know about it yet, please get in touch. We are trying to monitor every social platform on which we're active for tags into but email is best.
NB If you've sent us details and your event can't be seen on the main Beer For Bushfire Relief page or on this page covering other dates, we may have missed your message, so please send again.
We'd also love to attempt to get a handle on how much is being raised through beer-related activities so have created a couple of forms for event / fundraising organisers to input details of their efforts.
Head here to share details of your fundraising
Looking ahead, if you're posting about your fundraisers or sharing photos online, consider using the #beerforbushfirerelief hashtag so we can track activity and share where possible.
Aside from the remarkable response to this, it's been just as inspiring to discover what's been happening before we got involved rather late in the day. Just take the example of Lobethal Bierhaus, one of the breweries impacted by the fires in the Adelaide Hills. With no fanfare and all the while ensuring they're staying safe, they've raised more than $6,000 at their own venue, donated various karma kegs, given beer and dispensing gear to a local CFS event, donated $2,000 to the CFS, and made accelerated payments to all local winemakers.
Then there's the decision at One Drop in Botany Bay, early instigators of the collab brew concept. They're already one of the local brewers most keenly focused on sustainability but have chosen to shift their priorities in 2020 from investing heavily in second year growth to sustainability and change – growing slower but aiming to grow better.
In both cases, they're the sort of people that would probably rather we'd kept the above to ourselves, but it's these sort of activities that hint at the better future that can hopefully arise from this seminal moment.
Apologies again for ending up with the two lists of events – if we'd had time to think this through better, maybe we could have avoided that. Also, if you can in any way reach out to the impacted breweries below, I know they appreciate the support they've had to date. (If you know of others we need to add, get in touch as there are some we've yet to hear back from.)
- BLIZZARD BREWERY – DINNER PLAIN
MARK HUBBARD – MARK.HUBBARD@BLIZZARDBREWING.COM
- CRANK HANDLE BREWERY – TAWONGA SOUTH
MICK PIERA – MICK@CRANKHANDLEBREWERY.COM.AU
- RED BLUFF BREWERS – LAKES ENTRANCE
WAYNE BURNETT – WAYNE@REDBLUFFBREWERS.COM
- KING RIVER BREWING – KING RIVER
NATHAN MUNT – NATHAN@KINGRIVERBREWING.COM.AU
- BRIGHT BREWERY – BRIGHT
TOM MULLANE GRANT – 0439 316 600 OR SALES@BRIGHTBREWERY.COM.AU
- BLACK DOG BREWERS – GLENROWAN
JAMES BOOTH – INFO@BLACKDOGBREWERY.COM.AU
- BRIDGE ROAD BREWERS – BEECHWORTH
BRAD BRYCE – SALES@BRIDGEROADBREWERS.COM.AU
- BILLSON'S BEVERAGES - BEECHWORTH
NATHAN COWAN - NATHAN@BILLSONS.COM.AU
- SAILORS GRAVE – ORBOST
CHRIS MOORE – CHRIS@SAILORSGRAVE.NET
- MITTA MITTA BREWING – MITTA MITTA
TIM CABELKA – INFO@MITTABREWING.COM.AU
- TUMUT RIVER BREWING COMPANY – TUMUT
MICHAEL CICHOCKI – MICHAEL@TRBC.COM.AU
- THE SOUTH COAST BREWERS OF NSW (CUPITT, JERVIS BAY, LONGSTOCKING, STOIC, CAMEL ROCK, HUMPBACK BREWERY, DANGEROUS ALES)
LIAM JACKSON – LIAM@CUPITT.COM.AU
- DANGEROUS ALES – MILTON
LANDON GAULD: LANDON.GAULD@GMAIL.COM
- BULLANT BREWERY – BRUTHEN
NEIL TRIGGS – NTDESIGN@INTERNODE.ON.NET
You can download supporting assets here: poster, event image, social tile and logo – also in eps / vector format.
And you can input details of your fundraisers here.