LYNN — Bent Water Brewing Company has launched an initiative called Common Hope to raise awareness for Parkinson’s disease.
Bent Water co-founder Aaron Reames, whose grandmother and wife’s uncle both died of the debilitating disease, helped to spearhead this initiative.
“It’s certainly a disease that affects millions of individuals and there’s no disease-modifying therapy for it,” Reames said. “There’s a number of really strong organizations that built a framework for both raising awareness and funding research and development so that one day, we might have a cure or a disease-modifying therapy.”
The Bent Water team decided to partner with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to raise more awareness locally and create an open collaboration with breweries across the country, with the same common goal.
“The whole idea is to have other breweries use the label and the creatives of the initiative to produce beer and sell it in their territory,” Reames said. “Instead of us making an incredibly large scale of beer and selling it across all of the states that we distribute to, we’ll sell a small scale locally that allows other breweries to do the same.”
Bent Water released the “Common Hope” beer around the North Shore on Wednesday and also has it available in its tap room.
Bent Water came up with the concept, the landing page, the recipe for the beer, and the artwork for the cans, which is made by one of its vendors and distributed to other participating breweries.
“We made a unique recipe that we think works for the season in which there will be predominantly more availability of the beer, as this is Parkinson’s awareness month,” Reames said. “We’re releasing ours now, but other breweries will release throughout the year, depending on what works best for them. The recipe is available for all breweries and they can make it their own.”
The brewing company has a history of participating and sponsoring a number of races and events to benefit Parkinson’s research each year. Bent Water also has an employee with Parkinson’s, so Reames said this is an initiative that hits close to home.
Bent Water will make the beer available at any of these Parkinson’s events throughout the year.
“This is an initiative that we’re starting now, that we’re releasing now, and we’re going to continue doing this every year and it will be sort of on a rolling basis,” Reames said. “What’s great about this industry is that it’s sort of a ‘we-win-together’ mentality, and so there’s a lot of collaboration and exchanging of information.”
He added: “Everybody’s really focused on delivering for their local community but also broader.”
Reames said Bent Water is excited to work with the highly-recognized Team Fox and take the lead on this national-awareness initiative. Bent Water is making its own financial contribution to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and hopes this initiative will encourage others to donate.
“Progress is made one small step at a time and it usually takes participation from a lot of different people,” Reames said. “We’re fortunate to be able to try to give back in a small way and keep moving the ball forward.”
Bent Water has a number of other breweries collaborating with them on this initiative, including Harpoon, which has a location in Boston.
For more information and a list of other breweries participating, visit commonhopebeer.com.
