Common Hope is a collaborative craft beer initiative, started by the employees of Bent Water Brewing Co., to build awareness about Parkinson’s disease, particularly the ability of those who have it to live a long, fulfilling life, as well as raise funds toward a cure.
An estimated six million people worldwide live with Parkinson’s disease. Together, we can end Parkinson’s.
Parkinson’s is a complex brain disease that progressively gets worse over time. Today, there is no cure. Many of us at Bent Water Brewing have personally been impacted by Parkinson’s, and we know that we aren’t alone.
Bent Water has committed time and resources to raising awareness locally about Parkinson’s, but we wanted to do more. So we decided to open up the dialogue by reaching out to the craft beer community to join us in brewing a conversation starter.
The recipe for Common Hope is open source. You are free to use the name and artwork, with your brewery’s logo added, of course. We chose a pilsner to be mindful of the seasonality, the cost of ingredients, and because we know our brewer friends might appreciate the style. We invite each brewery to choose whichever hops you’d like for the dry hopping process, to make it your own.
We ask that a portion of the proceeds of the beer be donated to The Michael J. Fox Foundation. A suggested donation is 5-10% of overall proceeds, but of course we leave that to the discretion of each individual brewery.
If you are participating or helping us spread the word, thank you!
Common Hope is a dry-hopped pilsner with a 5% ABV. Each iteration will be slightly different to allow each brewery to put its own unique spin on the beer through the hops used for dry-hopping. Why a pilsner? It’s a great style to support moments of conversation and reflection. Part of the goal of this initiative is to raise awareness of people living with Parkinson’s, not only the challenges, but the fact that people can live a long, fulfilling life with it. A pilsner seemed great for those moments.
You can brew your Common Hope beer at any time during the year. Also, you can keep it as draft only or can it as well. Whatever works best for your brewery this year.
April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month, so the plan is to begin releasing beers starting in April, with beers continuing to trickle out over the following months to sustain a drumbeat of dialogue and awareness.
We’re coordinating promotion closely with Team Fox, The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s grassroots fundraising community, to bring as much attention to the organization and their mission as possible. That includes working with a PR agency to hopefully shine some big media attention on the initiative. As you scroll down, you’ll also see we’ve put together visual assets that may be helpful to you in selling your beer and raising funds and awareness to find better treatments and a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
We ask that you use the label we’ve designed. The name and artwork have been approved by Team Fox, The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s grassroots fundraising community. While we want the cause to take the spotlight, there is a place for your brewery’s logo on the front along with the Team Fox logo. Having the Team Fox logo on the label is a huge win for awareness!
The artwork for the label has been donated by Jenna Cascio, Creative Director, Kevin York Communications.
Resource Label Group (RLG), the participating label printing partner for Common Hope, has offered to print the labels at a discounted price. Additionally, in support of the Common Hope initiative, RLG will also make a donation to MJFF for each brewery requesting labels. They have locations throughout the USA, and have a network of local label supply facilities that will produce these labels. Resource Label Group can be contacted at salesinquiry@resourcelabel.com or by calling 1-888-526-8177. Be sure to let them know it’s for the Common Hope Parkinson’s Initiative.
We’ve pulled together social media graphics that you can use or create your own! We love being united for this cause, but we also know your teams are full of uniquely creative ideas.
We also have a sticker and t-shirt design that can be personalized with your brewery’s logo. Add it to your merch and get more people talking about funding and finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
If you aren’t a brewery, but want to support The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s high-impact research programs to speed better treatments and a cure for the millions of families impacted by the disease, please consider making a donation.
Want to join the initiative and help raise funds and awareness for the work of The Michael J. Fox Foundation? Let us know! We’re keeping a running tally on this website that we’ll share with the foundation.
Enter your email below and we’ll be in touch! In the meantime, feel free to download the recipe, label and other assets using the links above.