When brewers from small breweries get together these days, the conversation almost always turns to something now familiar: how to get more beer into cans for takeout sales. The topic is bizarre (you might even say uncanny) for some brewers, especially those who had little or no interest in canning their beer before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But times have changed oh, how they ve changed and canning beer for to-go sales, wholesale distribution and even home delivery is now paramount to staying in business, since social distancing requirements prevent taprooms from seating at full capacity and since a good percentage of potential customers will likely choose to remain at home for many more months.
In the fall, Indie 102.3 host Alicia “Bruce” Trujillo and Celesté Martinez, owner of the coaching and consulting company Celestial Alegria, launched season one of Colorful Colorado Collaborations as a way to highlight Colorado BIPOC musicians and businesses.
Trujillo and Martinez met in 2019 when Martinez was performing with her band, TuLips, at the annual Westwood Chile Fest on Morrison Road. They were fans of each other’s work and soon became good friends. In June 2020, they talked about hosting a festival-like show to give props to local musicians and small businesses.
“Celesté reached out to me after I posted a virtual festival over the summer where mostly independent artists across the country played a virtual set that would raise funds for local businesses who were taking a hit from COVID closures,” Trujillo explains. “As Celesté stepped out as an entrepreneur quite literally at the beginning of the pandemic, she was inspired to do something that could give
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The Story Behind Lady Justice Brewery’s Sandra Day IPA
How one surprising email led a legal-themed brewery to brush shoulders with the first woman on the Supreme Court.Courtney Holden •
January 20, 2021
That was the cryptic email subject line that appeared in
Kate Power’s inbox one August day back in 2015. Power along with friends from a two-year assignment in AmeriCorps,
Betsy Lay and
Jen Cuesta had just launched their dream project with Lady Justice Brewery Company. Not only would they be making and selling craft beer, but they had established a business model wherein the majority of profits over cost would be donated to organizations promoting opportunities for women and girls in Colorado. It would be set up as “a nonprofit with its own viable means of income,” Power says. No fundraising necessary. “We could just exist to do good.”
In advance of Inauguration Day in 2017, two Denver brewers decided that they needed to take action in order to support the people (and places) who were most at risk of being persecuted under the new administration. So Bess Dougherty and Kelissa Hieber did what they do best: They brewed beer. They were joined by a host of like-minded breweries who all made beer that was sold in order to raise money for nonprofits and charities. The effort, called Makin Noise, raised more than $40,000 over the next few years.
Although Makin Noise is on hiatus now as a new administration comes to Washington, D.C., its spirit continues among the breweries that participated. One of those breweries was Lady Justice, which was founded with the goal of donating profits to groups that benefit Colorado women and girls. As a community-service brewery, Lady Justice sells annual memberships, with the proceeds going to a charity at the end of the year.