Women in beer industry team for beer that preaches kindness

The Young Lion Raise Up tangerine cream seeks to raise awareness for the Willow Domestic Violence Center and the Women Raising Up Women campaign

A new beer dropping Wednesday to celebrate International Women’s Day is designed to empower and uplift.

A team of 20 women from throughout the beer industry came together last month in Canandaigua to brew the Young Lion Raise Up tangerine cream ale. Through the Women Raising Up Women organization, the beer is designed to raise awareness for the Willow Domestic Violence Center and to kick start a campaign of kindness among women.

“It’s really an entity for female collaborations on brew days,” said organizer Kim Porter. “Every year I hope to do another collaboration with another brewery and a different women-in-need charity. It’s really just a place for women to raise up other women.”

The beer will be released at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Young Lion Brewing, 24 Lakeshore Drive in Canandaigua. A host of celebrity bartenders will serve patrons with all tips being directed toward Willow. The beer itself will raise awareness for the group. (There is important information written directly on the can.) And then after the beer release, Young Lion will make a donation to Willow in honor of the campaign.

Porter, the special projects manager for the New York State Brewers Association, started the #WomenRaisingUpWomen initiative “to raise up women through words of encouragement and positivity, while also raising awareness for nonprofits that lift up women in need.”

“The plan this year is to raise women up by complimenting each other with positive affirmations,” Porter said. “So do it daily. It could be a complete stranger, it could be your co-worker, it could be somebody in your friend circle. Just give one compliment a day. If you do that for a while, it becomes habit. Just in this current climate, we need more kindness toward women.”

The cause

Willow is a leading provider of support services for survivors of domestic violence and their families. It offers a 49-bed shelter, as well as hospital and court resources, school talks for children about healthy relationships and prevention.

Porter hopes #WomenRaisingUpWomen becomes a yearly movement and wants to partner with other valued nonprofits in the future.

The beer

Young Lion CEO and co-founder Jen Newman reached out to Porter about hosting a brew day for this year’s campaign. Once the partnership was formed, talk shifted to what kind of beer they wanted to produce. They decided to make a Rochester classic. Cream ale is a quintessential Rochester staple. (Thank you, Genesee.)

“We wanted to honor the Rochester area with a cream ale,” Newman said, “and we wanted to create a beer that was accessible to all drinkers.”

Fruiting a cream ale with something like tangerine was the perfect fit, Newman said. The beer, which features all New York state ingredients, is a perfect gateway to spring.

The mission

Porter said she has struggled with her body image for years. And it wasn’t until she learned to stop comparing herself to others that she began to think about how she could help others. She saw the craft beer industry, which has long wrestled with its lack of diversity, as an opportunity to reach and uplift other women.

“I discovered I wasn’t alone in struggling,” Porter said.

She decided she would start that mission simply. Through the #WomenRaisingUpWomen initiative, Porter envisions inspiring other women to put aside differences. Instead of viewing other women as competition, Porter said, she tried to make a point of complimenting another woman at least once a day.

“Complimenting can take any form,” Porter said. “It could be choosing a charity and donating your time. It’s really a place to start and then we can grow from there.”

And the campaign is starting to gain some momentum. In a soon-to-be released video, local leaders and women in the beer industry engage in a compliment train, passing off the Raise Up cream ale as they encourage each other.

The goal is to see the campaign catch on in different parts of New York state and maybe become the next viral sensation like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

“My hope is that if only one other person is impacted by this, then my job is done,” Porter said.

Along with Young Lion, the beer should be available at most Wegmans stories in our area, as well as beer retailers like AJ’s Beer Warehouse, Fattey Beer Co., and a bunch of other places.

For more information, check out Women Raising Up Women on Instagram and Facebook.

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