Saint Archer Brewery released a beer this week to aid victims, families and the firefighters affected by the California wildfires.
The San Diego-based brewery will donate 100 percent of the proceeds from its California Strong brand to the California Fire Foundation, a charity that provides emotional and financial assistance to families of fallen firefighters, firefighters and the communities they protect.
The beer is now pouring at Saint Archer’s tasting rooms in Miramar and Leucadia, and the brewery is shipping kegs of the double IPA to on-premise accounts throughout the state. For now, the medium-bodied double IPA brewed with Simcoe, Citra and Idaho 7 hops, will remain packaged in kegs only.
“The ability to support a charity that has a statewide mission is really important for us as a California brewery,” says Saint Archer Director of Marketing Adam Warren. “Unfortunately, fires are becoming an increasingly big part of what happens here in the fall and winter, and we wanted to do something on our own to assist anyone who needs help during and after these kinds of disasters.”
In addition to Northern California’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in the state’s history, some 1.9 million acres across the state burned in 2018, the largest amount of burned land recorded.
California Strong is the latest in a string of charity beers Saint Archer has brewed to benefit fire victims. It recently completed a batch of Resilience IPA, the Sierra Nevada-backed program in which more than 1,400 breweries across the country brewed the same recipe and pledged to donate all proceeds, and last year Saint Archer raised several thousand dollars by making a beer called Sonoma Pride IPA where all proceeds were donated to victims of a 2017 fire in Sonoma County, Calif.
For its own beer, Saint Archer opted to partner with the California Fire Foundation. Founded in 1987, the charity provides a wide range of support and services, including emergency aid to departments and families of firefighters killed in the line of duty and educational assistance to the children of fallen firefighters through an endowment and scholarship program. It also provides short-term relief to victims of fire or other natural disasters throughout the state and supplies public safety resources.
“We’re not just a company selling beer, we want to do our part to give back and be a support outlet for our community as well,” Warren says of California Strong, which should be available through January. “That is something that’s important to me, my team, our brewers and the Saint Archer brand as a whole.”