Join Us Tonight for Virtual Happy Hour Featuring Ales for ALS™
Tune in at 7:00PM ET tonight as Hop Culture Founder Kenny Gould (@hopcultureken) chats with Claudia Pamparana, co-owner of Faction Brewing and the Ales for ALS™ Fest, and Mike Shannon, National Director for Ales for ALS, a program that encourages breweries from around the world to help #EndALS by crafting great beers.
In 2013, co-owners of Bale Breaker Brewing Company—Meghann Quinn, her husband Kevin Quinn, and Meghann's brother Kevin Smith (known as "Smitty")—helped start the Ales for ALS™ program with Mike and Cheryl Smith from YCH and Loftus Ranches.
Designed to raise awareness and money to find treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease), the initiative personally hit home for the Quinn and Smith family. Meghann, Smitty, and their parents have nine family members who have passed away from the disease.
There are currently no treatments for ALS and life expectancy is only three to five years. And while ALS can be devastating for the individuals and families impacted, Ales for ALS™ is proof that hops, beer, a little ingenuity, and a lot of elbow grease can help change the course of a degenerative disease. And hopefully, eventually, even lead to cures.
To date the program has raised over $3.5 million dollars for the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALD TDI) as more and more breweries signed up to participate.
Breweries like Faction in Alameda, CA. Claudia and her husband Rodger Davis actually featured their Ales for ALS™ Pale as its debut beer when the doors opened in the fall of 2013. The husband and wife team had attended an event in Iron Spring, CA, and met Corey Reich, who had been diagnosed with ALS at only 21 years old. An assistant coach for the local Piedmont High School men's and women's varsity tennis teams, Reich was well known in the community.
Impacted by Reich, in 2014 Pamparana and Davis decided to go bigger. They created an entire festival. Their Ales for ALS™ Fest invited all the breweries in California that participated in the program to come pour at their warehouse overlooking the waterfront in Alameda, CA.
In addition to raising awareness, Davis and Pamparana donated all of the proceeds from ticket sales (along with any additional money raised from a raffle) to fund research at ALS TDI. Each year since its inception, Faction's Ales for ALS™ Fest has attracted on average 1,200 to 1,300 folks and raised close to $50,000 dollars each year.
Don't miss out as Kenny, Claudia, and Mike talk about this amazing initiative and share how you can help by just drinking a beer. Or if you can't wait until then, feel free to donate now.
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