West Side Brewing is one of the most prolific beer collaborators with local non-profits. They’re a 15-barrel brew house with 15-20 beers on tap, and make about 60 different beers annually. The brewhouse and tap room are in the burgeoning Westwood Business District, which also has a great foodie scene popping up around it.
Thankfully, in Cincinnati, it’s hard to say what brewery in our microbrew scene does the most non-profit collaborations per year. Rhinegeist does Charitable Tuesdays where they donate a portion of sales to a charity who gets the floor to tell imbibers about their org. West Side has for several years collaborated with one of my fave local Germanic organizations, the Krampuslauf, who appears at Bockfest and several Christmas events like Germania’s Christkindlmarkt. Krampus Candy and Krampus Coal Baltic Porter were two of the beer collaborations West Side Brewing did, which donated a portion of sales to the Cincinnati Boys and Girls Club. They’ve collaborated several years with Cincinnati Pride for a beer that donates sales to charity.
This month’s new collab is called West Side Braille Ale and is the second beer can in America that will have raised Braille on the outside. This is the second year of the Braille Ale collab. The first year was a German style sour gose ale with flavors of coriander and raspberry, but the pandemic prevented a release party. The salty tartness of a gose beer goes well with any type of grilled meat or veg. It’s a special collaboration with the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CABVI). This year’s style is a Tangerine Juicy IPA and the release party is August 11 from 5-7 PM at West Side Brewing.
CABVI’s mission is to empower people who are blind and visually impaired to live independent lives. They offer services like screen readers and magnifiers, a Radio Reading Service, and employment opportunities in its “Industries Program.” They are a private non-profit, so they get little government funding, aside from the occasional grant. They do an annual Dining in the Dark fundraising evening, which is where West Side sales rep Ben Metz met the VP of Development at CABVI, Aaron Bley, starting this wonderful partnership.
The words in braille that were on the first can were “CABVI,” “West Side Brewing” and “Braille Ale Raspberry Gose.” This year the words “Braille Ale Juicy IPA” will replace last year’s style. West Side Brewing will donate $1 to CABVI for every six-pack sold. My friend Sue G. has worked for the CABVI for over twenty five years and is their printed braille editor and reviewed the braille on the prototype can. West Side Brewery could have just collaborated with the CABVI without adding braille, which was a challenge in itself, but they did a “yes, and” collab. There are no commercial can printers in the U.S. who print braille on any beer or food and beverage cans for that matter.
West Side Brewing had to work with a company in the Netherlands to print the braille on the cans – which is both technically difficult and expensive. West Side hopes to include braille on all their cans, and offer a full braille menu. They also plan to work with other breweries to implement braille on their cans. Ben Metz, West Side’s sales rep, says braille should be on Budweiser and Miller cans, and be an industry standard. With more adopters of braille on cans, the cost of printing will go down, and it will be more accessible to smaller breweries.
This and last year’s cans will be collectible as the first American beer cans with braille. This past weekend a Bruckmann Brewery cone top can sold for over $2100 at auction. Maybe in 50 years West Side’s Braille Ale can will fund someone’s monthly grocery bill, which with current inflation may be $2100 by then.
If you’d like to donate directly to the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, please go to Donate to CABVI | Learn How to Support CABVI (cincyblind.org)
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