Revolver Brewing plans to brew a golden ale next week as part of broader efforts to assist victims of Hurricane Harvey, the superstorm that dumped more than 50 inches of rain in parts of southeast Texas.
The Granbury, Texas-based brewery is pledging all profits from sales of the draft-only beer to the American Red Cross and select local charities, earmarked for disaster-relief efforts.
The yet-to-be-named beer will be distributed to on-premise accounts throughout Texas beginning in late September, pending approval by Texas regulators. The brewery plans to make an initial 60-barrel batch of the lightly hopped, sessionable beer, whose name will be chosen via a crowdsourcing campaign conducted on Revolver's various social media channels.
"We all have friends and family in the area, and we'd like to do anything we can to help people out," said Grant Wood, Revolver's co-founder and brewmaster. "What happened is a terrible, unprecedented disaster and we're just trying to help and do what we can for our friends."
Revolver, which was founded in 2012 and sold a majority stake to MillerCoors in 2016, also this week is dispatching a half dozen of its delivery trucks filled with emergency supplies nearly 300 miles southeast to the part of the state near Houston that was most affected by the storm.
In addition to 50,000 cans of clean water produced by MillerCoors, Revolver is transporting diapers, paper products, food and other supplies it has collected in partnership with its hometown Granbury Chamber of Commerce. The brewery has stationed its trucks as donation collection centers at a grocery store in Granbury as well as at a bank in nearby Mansfield, Texas.
Brewery co-founder and president Rhett Keisler said at least two of the trucks already have been filled with donations, which continued to pour in on Wednesday.
Keisler, who grew up in the Houston suburb Sugar Land, said watching the disaster unfold from afar has been equal parts painful and inspiring.
"It's been very hard to watch. You just realize the effort that common, everyday people are putting forward, putting their own lives at risk to rescue people off of roofs in the middle of the night. It's just amazing to me," said Keisler, who along with his father and co-founder Ron Keisler is still actively involved in Revolver. "We want to do our part to help."
The brewery’s charity beer is being modeled after Revolver's all-malt High Brass Blonde Ale, but it will be slightly lower in alcohol, not dry-hopped and brewed with an added hop, citra, that should impart a slight citrus flavor.
Revolver's efforts come as the brewing industry as a whole pitches in to aid the recovery efforts of Harvey, which has led to more than 30 deaths and displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Texas, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Other breweries such as Anheuser-Busch InBev and Oskar Blues Brewery have committed to send thousands of cans of clean water to the region, and Revolver parent MillerCoors has pledged at least $25,000 in aid to the Red Cross to assist with disaster-relief efforts.