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28 | Winter 2025 | ontapmag.co.za at Creature Comforts pursued the question: “What does good help look like?” Matt adds: “Q4 was everything Helene, and Q1 was everything LA, so we had back to back opportunities to work in that space.” It is at this moment that moderator Kate Bernot asks: do breweries play a unique role in this kind of disaster response? Are they different from other small businesses? “I think one of the cool things about breweries is that, for a lot of us, we are a lot of different types of businesses,” Brent Knapp of Common Space offers in response. “I had no idea that we were going to be a hospitality business, a production business, and a distribution or manufacturing business. That’s what makes us unique.” He also points out that breweries tend to be located in industrial areas, with lots of space, and can sometimes easily act as a distribution hub. “In general,” he concludes, “the culture of our industry lends itself to… we are a roll-up your sleeves type of people…” Matt vehemently agrees with this idea that there is a broader ethos of being community-minded in the beer industry. There’s also an incredible legacy: he points to the fact that “the first company on historical record that took seriously this call to serve as a business was a brewery!” That brewery being Guinness back in 18th Century Dublin. “Most practically, we are part of this vast and interconnected and collaborative network,” he continues. “We’ve seen it in both the locations we are talking about today…When something happens, somebody can raise that flag and the rest of the industry often comes running. That is a very, I think, distinctive thing you see in craft beer, that you just don’t see in a lot of other industries.” To that point, Burial Beer Company decided to go well beyond their initial role of ‘ad hoc gathering spot’ to launch “Manifest Eternity” in December of 2024. The program was started in support of the newly created North Carolina Craft Beer Foundation, to “raise awareness and funds for the long term recovery and rebuilding efforts of the [western North Carolina] brewing community impacted by the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Helene.” As Jess explains further, “The idea was that there are immediate needs in the wake of a storm, but there were concerns…that attention would get diverted, and rightfully so… But we wanted to ensure that awareness and support continue to evolve as needs of the brewing community evolved.” As part of the program, they have brewed beers with several of the local impacted breweries, including Zillicoah, in addition to breweries from around the country. “Collaborations are very natural in our industry,” Jess points out, “And we want to be able to use those opportunities to continue to raise awareness and [financial] support.” “We haven’t done a whole lot of asking for help: it’s just been there,” Jonathan of Zillicoah says. And not only from fellow breweries like Burial: immediately following Helene, people just rocked up to Zillicoah saying they had a few hours to spare, how could they help? Helene’s destruction in the end demonstrated to the brothers that they didn’t almost lose a business, or their source of income or an ‘asset’. The outpouring of physical and emotional support, from those folks lending a hand, to former patrons eagerly sharing with the brothers their personal ties to the brewery, made it clear that Zillicoah meant so much more. “We always knew that we loved the brewery, it was special to us, and we knew that people liked it…it didn’t really hit us what Zilicoah meant to other people…It’s not our brewery; we are just the steam that keeps it rolling. It really has changed our perspective on community and human beings and our place in all of that.” As for WE LOVE LA, the initiative is still going strong, with ongoing media pick- up here and there and plans in motion for a WE LOVE LA Festival, hopefully to take place at the end of September. According to their website, participating breweries have already committed over $325,000 to the fund. The work continues. What becomes clear to me as I listen to the panelists is the extent to which craft breweries in particular integrate themselves into a local ecosystem – and not just of fellow breweries. As Jonathan from Zillicoah puts it: “We love fostering community, and we love trying to prop up other local small businesses,” such as