Pretentious Barrel House, a Columbus-based brewery, recently collaborated with Helping Hops and created two beers to benefit Rural Action. The beers are called Acid to Acid, Rust to Rust and Terra Amar. Each beer was inspired by Rural Action projects: True Pigments and Chesterhill Produce Auction, respectively.
Helping Hops is a volunteer-based nonprofit that seeks to promote sustainability and charity in the Columbus-area craft beer community. It is a relatively new nonprofit, having just established 501(c)(3) status in 2019, Andrew Stroh, co-founder of Helping Hops, said.
Past Helping Hops fundraisers have included toy drives and events at breweries. Despite the range of charitable causes, the nonprofit has maintained its goal of helping others through the years.
“A key philosophy has always been if we can drink these amazing beers that are a little bit of a premium, we can make sure that other people have the basics,” Stroh said.
Stroh’s interest in creating a fundraiser for Rural Action was born out of a Time article that highlighted Rural Action’s True Pigments project. The project extracts iron oxide pollution from Sunday Creek and uses the pigment from the iron oxide to make paints. The work done through True Pigments is directly beneficial to beer brewers in the region.
“We're making clean water, and what good is beer if you don't start with clean water?” Bob Benz, storyteller at Rural Action, said.
Stroh facilitated the connection between Rural Action and the Pretentious Barrel House. Joshua Martinez, CEO of Pretentious Barrel House, worked to create the beers’ flavor compositions. He experimented with ingredients until he created two beers that are “well-balanced and easy to drink.”
Acid to Acid, Rust to Rust is a sour blonde beer that’s dry hopped with Mosaic hops and finished with Apricot. Terra Amar is a sherry-barrel-aged dark sour that is sweet.
The brewery made about 150 bottles of Acid to Acid, Rust to Rust and Terra Amar in total, raising about $1,500 for Rural Action, Stroh said. Although the project was relatively small in scale, Stroh has hopes for a bigger collaboration in the future.
The fundraiser, however, was not only about money. Helping Hops also wanted to spread awareness about the work of Rural Action. The two beers’ labels tell the story of the True Pigment project and the Chesterhill Produce Auction.
“As you're sitting there enjoying your Acid to Acid, Rust to Rust beer, which is inspired by that True Pigments project, you're reading about True Pigments and you're starting to understand how Appalachian Ohio has these incredible assets,” Benz said.
Funds raised through the sales of the two beers will allow Rural Action to further its work preserving those “assets.”
“They can continue cleaning up the planet, at least in our little neck of the woods,” Martinez said.
Though Acid to Acid, Rust to Rust is now sold out, Terra Amar can still be purchased and people can learn more about the projects through the Pretentious Barrel House website.
