Brewery collaboration to benefit Healthcare workers

Five Texas craft breweries have teamed up to create a collaborative foeder beer, titled “Good Grief.” A portion of the beer’s sale will be donated to the First Responders First fund to support healthcare workers. The remainder will benefit brewery employees, their overhead and their ability to fund new beers such as this one.

Participating breweries include Roughhouse Brewing, located between Wimberley and San Marcos, True Anomaly Brewing Company out of Houston, Jester King Craft Brewery of Austin just outside of Dripping Springs, Oddwood Ales of Austin and Lazarus Brewing Company of Austin, all of whom use foeders as part of their fermentation portfolio.

The concept behind the beer, according Alex Pasternak, co-founder of Roughhouse Brewing, is that grief can be a good thing — a conduit to recovery from trauma.

“We wanted to come together with our friends in the industry to create something that would say ‘thank you’ to those risking their lives, generate some needed income for our own businesses and also give people something to look forward to,” Pasternak said.

The presale for Good Grief started on May 1 via online ordering portals at each participating brewery’s website. The beer will be packaged in 500mL (16.9 fl oz) bottles, retailing for $15, with a limited supply of bottles distributed to each brewery.

The beer profile, while not finalized yet, will likely be a blend of each of the breweries’ foeder beers with a potential fruit addition and barrel aging, according to the press release.

Good Grief is scheduled to be brewed mid-summer and will be available for pickup fall/winter 2020 at respective breweries. To order a bottle on presale, go to Roughhouse Brewing’s online shop.

The First Responders First fund is dedicated to supporting frontline health care workers during the coronavirus pandemic. As healthcare workers step forward to address the public health crisis, their own health is threatened because of shortages in personal protective equipment including gowns, gloves and masks. The First Responders First fund, in partnership with the Entertainment Industry Foundation, launched a fundraising call to action to help address these needs. Donations will provide essential supplies, equipment, accommodations, child care, food, mental health support and other resources for protecting frontline healthcare workers and their patients. For more information, go to the First Responders First Thrive Global page.