I visited my first meadery a few weeks ago – B. Nektar in Ferndale, MI. We were celebrating my oldest daughter’s twenty-fourth birthday. My daughter is a craft beer lover (she particularly likes IPAs and Sours) and so my wife and I decided to take her to a few craft beverage producers in the Detroit area. She invited three of her friends to join us, so there were six of us altogether. Our first stop was B. Nektar Meadery. From what I can tell. B. Nektar has an excellent reputation in the world of mead and none of us had visited it before. B. Nektar is located in the Ferndale, a town of approximately twenty thousand population, about twelve miles north of Detroit.
In addition to mead, B. Nektar also produces both cider and beer. When I was there, two of its beers were on the menu – Blitzkrieg, an American Pale Ale and Bootknife, a New England IPA. I had a couple of pints of the Blitzkrieg, while sampling a number of meads from my daughter’s sampler. I kept a tab open at the bar, and as I was paying our bill I asked if I could leave a tip. I was informed that the staff did not accept tips, and that all tips were donated to the charity Bark Nation. Bark Nation is a Ferndale-based non-profit organization whose fund raising efforts support dog shelters and a number of other canine-focused initiatives.
As I left my tip, it struck me that this was not the first time I had been in brewery or a bar whose owners seemed particularly passionate about canine welfare. In March of this year, while visiting my youngest daughter and her husband in Portland, OR, I had a chance to go to Fido’s Tap House, a dog-friendly bar that also happens to have an adoption room for dogs. For a small fee ($4 for thirty minutes) patrons can enter the room and interact with the dogs. You can read more about my visit to Fido’s here. In November, 2016, on a visit to Wellington, New Zealand, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours at the Black Dog Brewing Co. As it turned out my visit there to coincided with the annual fundraiser that the brewery holds for the Wellington branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). You can read more about my visit to Black Dog here.
In November 2018, the voters of Florida, by a margin of sixty-nine to thirty-one percent, voted to end greyhound racing in their state, starting in 2021. The passage of this amendment to the Florida constitution will, however, mean that somewhere in the region of six thousand greyhounds will be forced into early retirement. Many of these greyhounds will be made homeless. One solution, of course, is for these greyhounds to be adopted. Enter, stage left, Ivanhoe Park Brewing Company of Orlando, FL. The brewery are partnering with Greyhounds in Motion, a non-profit organization based in Winter Park, FL , who assist greyhounds transition from racing animals to family pets. On December 2, 2018 the Ivanhoe Park hosted greyhounds at a fundraising event at their brewery. For every greyhound in attendance, an anonymous donor donated $100 to Greyhounds in Motion. The brewery will also donate a portion of their beer sales. Greyhounds are now in the process of being adopted, with some of them finding a new home as far away as the state of Washington.
Florida brewery owners seem to particularly fond of dogs, not just greyhounds. In the summer of 2018, Southern Swells Brewing received a warning letter from the Florida Department of Health. The warning stated that the brewery would face closure if it continued to allow dogs in their taproom. Word of the warning soon spread to other Florida breweries, with the result that the Green Bench Brewing Company of St. Petersburg, FL started a petition asking state representatives to pass legislation allowing pets in Florida Breweries. The goal is 50,000 signatures. At the time of writing the petition had just over 35,000 signatures.
Of course, not all breweries welcome dogs. In 2016, Holy City Brewing of Charleston, SC announced that they would no longer allow dogs in their brewery. Over a six month period, five employees had been bitten by dogs. Andy Sparhawk of the Brewers Association, presents a number of arguments against dogs in breweries. In addition to the possibility of brewery staff being bitten, there is the possibility of severs tripping over leashes, dogs clashing with unsupervised children, and dogs eating stray popcorn (apparently popcorn is not good for dogs and can represent a choking hazard).
Of course, if you decide to get a six-pack and enjoy a beer in the comfort of your own home, there are a number of beers specially brewed for dogs that you can purchase for your four-legged friend. For example, Good Boy Dog Beer, based in Houston, TX, brews four beers for dogs – IPA Lot in the Yard, Mailman Malt Licker, Session Squirrel, and Crotch Sniffin’ Ale. Made with ingredients such as pork, chicken, vegetables, and herbs, they are, of course, non-alcoholic. The beer costs five dollars a can, and are available in over a dozen bars in the Houston area. Don’t live in Houston? Don’t worry? You can have the beer shipped to your home. If you do, however, decide to travel with your dog, you may want to consider visiting the website tripswithpets.com, where you can find listings of dog friendly breweries in all fifty states.
For millennia, dogs have been referred to as man’s best friend. Any dog lover will agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. So it seems perfectly natural, when a person loves both beer and dogs, that he or she enjoy the former, while keeping the companionship of the latter.
