POSTED AT 22:33H IN COLLABORATION, HOUSTON BEER NEWS BY BEER CHRONICLE TEAM
A legendary Houston business lends a hand on brew day for the launch of a series of philanthropic beers. It’s a one-of-a-kind collaboration beer that’s happening in Humble, and we’re beside ourselves at the role we get to play in it.
2020 has been a polarizing year. Domestic relationships have been challenged as we spend more time with our significant others than we’re used to. Friendships have come into question as lines are drawn about what’s wrong, what’s right, and how there’s not a gray area for certain things. Let us not overlook that it’s an election year, and that can be quite divisive. It seems like everything about 2020 has left so many people picking sides on one thing or another. Not to mention, we went from scoffing at 3 week old brewery-only-release IPAs to happy to drink an 8 week old grocery store shelfie at one point.
And to think, we cheered, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” when that ball dropped… For this? Sheesh. Can we pull out the cartridge, blow on it, and hit the reset button?
Unfortunately, we can’t. But what we can do is make the most dank lemonade out of the lemons that we’ve been handed, and that’s exactly what Ingenious Brewing has set out to do while trying to band us all together.
A History of Philanthropy Leads to the Humbled in Humble Project
Ingenious recently celebrated 2 years during this quarantine. Despite that, they’ve managed to win our coveted annual MVB award, and they’ve done it in style. Day one of Ingenious’ started off with dramatic financial losses due to a business deal gone awry with their brewing equipment, but Ingenious has been dead set on making the craziest beer they can imagine and giving back to the community whenever they can.
Picture this. You’re 2 years into your new business, and a historic global pandemic strikes. What do you do?
Donate over $15,000 to worthy local causes and figure out how to keep on doing it.
Wait.
Wut.
Everybody’s downsizing somehow. Be its product offerings, labor costs, or physical locations in some cases, and Ingenious is no different. But while many businesses are tucking their tails and trying to mitigate their losses, Ingenious has decided to make benevolence a part of their recurring business model at any cost even while they have to suffer cutbacks in other areas. This is probably why they got so many votes during the MVB voting last month!
Between their event collab with The Answer (VA), where 100% of ticket sales went to the charity Sky High for Kids, raised $7,800 and additional contributions from participating partners and individuals tallied over $10,000 donated total.
Not too long after that, Ingenious donated to the city’s frontline workers to the tune of $2,499. Feed the Frontline Texas – $833 Assist the Officer Houston $833 Firefighters Foundation of Houston $833
Immediately after the dust settled from those frontline-worker donations, they were one of the first breweries in Houston to throw their name into the ring for Black is Beautiful, the global collaboration beer spearheaded by Weathered Souls of San Antonio. Ingenious has been able to donate $3,800 to Houston’s Shape Community Center.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Ingenious decided to push benevolence, social justice, awareness, and advocacy to the next level with a series of beers titled the Humbled in Humble Project.
Head Brewer James Carlyle reached out to the most influential, diverse, group of people in Texas, and he asked for some help with this collab. He wanted black and brown people to have a stake in the collaboration, and he wanted it to be an infinite project. Like a real stake – designing the recipe, milling in the grain, canning, what organizations to donate to once the beer’s done, and everything else in between.
So he reached out to Houston’s own, Hop Topic, Brew Bros HTX, The Pint Exchange as well as Austin’s homebrewing standout, Shannon “The Brew Brotha” Harris who is opening his own location soon. You should support a budding black-owned business right about now. Oh, and us.
James said to all of us, “I want you to be a part of this collaboration. I want it to be ongoing, and I want y’all’s help to make it mean something.”
So one evening a few weeks ago, we shared a few beers via Zoom and put our heads together on how we could make the Humbled in Humble Project something that’d bring Houston together when so many polarizing topics are dividing us.
Humbled in Humble Brings Together a Dozen Men of Color to Influence Change
Here’s what we came up with.
Humbled in Humble is our way of grabbing the baton in an infinite marathon of community outreach in the form of a beer.
Each new release of the Humbled in Humble Project will raise awareness of inequalities in our community while donating to reputable local causes that equip, empower, and educate on a variety of topics. Each release will feature a different beer. Different styles, different ingredients, different contributors, and a different cause.
Volume 1 will benefit 100 Black Men of America’s Houston, TX, and Austin, TX chapters to help mentor young black men to help them avoid traps laid out by systemic racism.
Other Humbled in Humble releases will benefit Domestic violence survivors Families that have been broken up by ICE and immigration law Houston’s maverick LGBTQIA+ community And prostate cancer awareness just to name a few
In addition to Texas heavy hitters in the beer world, we linked up with a Houston L E G E N D just to solidify the foundation of this project. Getting them to be a part of this beer collaboration was one of the inspirations for the recipe to begin with.
But I bet you’re wondering what the first beer recipe will be. All we can say for now is that it’ll be a pastry stout featuring some delicacies from the Houston Institution known as THE Breakfast Klub, with a THE and a K, and some homegrown love from everybody that can fit in the brewhouse.
The Breakfast Klub has been recognized as one of the best breakfast restaurants in not just Houston, but the nation, by Good Morning America, USA Today, Esquire, Forbes Magazines, Zagat, and locally Yelp and Houston Press have given them plenty of number one spots throughout the years. Heck, even THE Queen, Beyoncé endorsed them.
If there was anybody in town we wanted to collaborate with on a pastry stout, it was the humble restaurant on Travis St. with a humbling reputation of community.
The Breakfast Klub, much like Ingenious, has built their reputation on community. “Our restaurant is rooted in principles of faith, family, kommunity and empowerment; we treat every customer like our family and we believe that family is the cornerstone of any community, so we place an emphasis on supporting activities and causes that enrich and strengthen families.”
Additionally, also much like Ingenious, The Breakfast Klub regularly has lines out the door and around the corner as people line up for their soulful meals that extend far beyond breakfast. It’s a match made in heaven.
We’ve spent a lot of time these last few weeks on calls, texts, putting together schedules, designing labels, merch, and so on with each of these folks. We wanted to share a bit about their background and why this Humbled in Humble Project is so important to each of them.
