Garrison Brewing aims to assist Ukraine with a fundraising beer

The president of Halifax’s Garrison Brewing Company found himself in a surreal situation recently while on a virtual conference call with Ukraine-based colleagues Pravda Brewery and Beer Theatre.

“It was crazy to be on a Zoom call with the brewers while they were brewing talking about beer, (and) then all of a sudden, air raid sirens kick in,'” recalls Brian Titus. “You start to realize that this is real, this is happening so we just felt compelled to do something.”

At that point, Titus and Garrison Brewing had already decided they were going to do what they could to assist their colleagues in the besieged Eastern European country by joining the global brewing collective, Brew for Ukraine, to produce a charity beer that would generate proceeds for humanitarian aid.

“It’s an exciting project to be a part of and we are shoulder to shoulder, at this point, with comfortably over a hundred breweries worldwide,” adds Titus. “It feels like a good thing.”

The 25-year-old local craft brewery became involved after the Federation of Beer reached out, looking for partnerships in the project. An Alberta-based beer agent with ties to Pravda Brewery, it quickly organized the Brew for Ukraine initiative with the Lviv-based company.

“Basically, they saw what was going on in Ukraine (and) because they were dealing with Pravda, they just said, we need to do something and it was kind of as simple as that,” says Titus. “As soon as we saw it, we thought that was absolutely something we needed to do and something cool to be part of and feel good about.”

Pravda Brewery has released the recipes for five of their unique beers, with hopes breweries around the globe will produce them in order to raise funds for Ukrainian causes.

Garrison is proud to be one of more than 100 brewers (and growing) and suppliers stretching across North America and worldwide in support of Ukraine after the illegal invasion by President Vladimir Putin and Russian armed forces.

While it will join a company of global brewers as far flung as Poland and Israel, Garrison will also be united with a quickly growing community of local craft brewers involved in the initiative as well.

“We found out that Nine Locks had also heard of this and so they are going to do something as well,” says Titus of the Dartmouth-based brewing company. “That’s great — I mean, the more, the merrier because this is about awareness and about raising relief funds. There’s nothing competitive in this.”

For its part, Garrison Brewing will be producing a limited run of Pravda’s signature Putin Huylo, a dry hopped strong ale with a moniker that makes a rather derogatory statement about the Russian president.

“The concept is obviously meant to humiliate and laugh at and embarrass him. If you can’t throw bombs, throw jokes I guess,” says Titus of the beer that’s label brandishes an image of Putin wearing a diaper.

“That beer was originally released by them in 2015 after the first attack when Crimea was taken,” continues Titus. “That was part of that brand new resistance movement that formed in Ukraine after they got attacked in 2014. They basically spent the last eight years preparing for what’s happening right now.”

Garrison is currently brewing Putin Huylo and expects the batch to be available in the first week of April. All of the profits from sales of Putin Huylo will go directly to supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine through such recognized charities as the Canadian Red Cross, Care International and United Nations Ukraine.

“We have capped it at 2,000 bottles, that’s our goal,” says Titus, noting the 650 mL bottles will be available for $10 each at the Garrison Seaport and Oxford Taproom locations. “The hope is that we are raising somewhere in the $12,000 to $13,000 range, so it’s pretty significant.”

For more information, visit Garrison Brewing Company’s website.