Cupcakes and Charity

Doing things for other people has a rejuvenating effect on you.  Being a naturally pessimistic person, it helps me on a personal level.  It's also nice to be able to bring beer and animals together.  I find that beer people tend to be dog lovers and it's a natural tie-in to fund raise for animals under the beer platform.  This being said, I had a particularly rejuvenating and inspirational experience this past Saturday.

In addition to my other fun activities, I work with the Cornell Alumni Network to "pre-interview" students in the local area who are applying to Cornell University.  It's fun and I've gotten to meet some really amazing kids.  I was able to meet an applicant this past weekend that I really hope gets into my Alma Mater.

I was notified in plenty of time by the Alumni Network to contact the applicant and completely forgot about the request.  It wasn't until I received a reminder a week before my report was due that I realized that contacted the student and asked if we could meet.  She contacted me back almost immediately and gave some times we could meet.  It was a very busy week for me and my time was very short, so I asked if we could multi-task and meet up at a fund raiser I was doing for The Animal Rescue Konsortium, the animal rescue who we do our charity work with.

The reply I got was awesome.  It read:

Mr. Carpenter,

The fundraiser sounds great! Does 12 pm work for you?

I am a huge advocate for rescue animals, having three myself and certifying one as a therapy dog. On this note, I am the founder of Kate's Charity Cakes, a non-profit organization that sells homemade baked goods and donates 100% of proceeds to different charitable organizations. If you would like, I am willing to bake some animal themed cupcakes that you can sell for your cause. If it wouldn't tie in, since I don't know what is planned, then I look forward to the interview.

Thank you,

Katie Batchelor

What luck!  As it turns out, Miss Katie Batchelor not only offered to do something incredibly kind for ARK, but also gave me a great argument for why she should be admitted into Cornell.

As it turns out, not only did she create delicious pastries to donate for the fundraiser, she completely caught me and everyone else off-guard for the quality of the work.  Each one of the cupcakes she delivered was very highly detailed and were perfect for the occasion.  The cupcakes were unbelievably delicious and the buzz quickly got around the fundraiser about how great they were.  In the end, we sold every one for $5 each!  This is a windfall for ARK, who operate from a very small budget.  Needless to say, Katie's contribution will be felt for a long time.

It is easy to get bogged down in business and not see the kindness all around us.  Again, I have a terrible streak of pessimism that I have to beat out of myself every now and then and re-establish my childhood faith in humanity.  Coming across folks like Katie provides a great aid in doing so.

If anyone would like to show Katie some support, help her with her business, or shoot her a kind note to tell her you appreciate her kindness, her charity's contact info is:

Kate's Charity Cakes

KatesCharityCakes@yahoo.com

Here's to everyone at ARK, to the folks at Davinci for allowing us to hold our fundraiser there, to those who came out to support, and to Katie and her mother for doing such a kind thing for ARK.  Cheers!  

Daytona Cubs Beer Fest

This is the 4th Annual Daytona Cubs Beer Festival to be held at Jackie Robinson Stadium and the Renegades have been luck enough to be at all of them (in one way or another).  Always a great time and one that we look forward to.
This time around, we had the good folks from World of Beer helping out and had the talents of some of my SR Perrott buddies on hand.  Rip manned this fest and served up some delicious Boulder and Lazy Magnolia Beers.  To make it all the better, this event also acted as a fundraiser to help raise money for ARK, so we were even more excited to be there.

As with the rest of the beer festivals at this locale, the setting is some of the most beautiful we get to attend.  Sitting just on the outside of the inter-coastal waterway and within a beautiful minor league baseball stadium, I am looking for this to continue to become one of the biggest in the area.

As I stated before, the Renegades and the stadium go back a long way, even before the Renegades existed as a corporate entity.  Not that we weren't who we are, we just weren't official yet.

As another funny aside, the first year that we worked this event, we volunteered to pour Dogfish at this event and introduced Vinnie's boss to a bottle of 120.  Keeping in mind this was four years ago, 120 was less known and much rarer.  Needless to say, he dug it and I try to share one with him every time we work this event.  Nostalgia kinda works that way, ya know.

Well, another weekend down, 4 beer events over the weekend, and the Renegades are back to working out the details for the upcoming events.  Stay posted to see where we will be next.  Cheers!

As an addendum, we'd like to give a HUGE thanks to Clint Cure and the Daytona Cubs as they donated a very generous sum of money to the Animal Rescue Konsortium to help out the dogs that they care so much for.  THANK YOU VERY MUCH Clint, you guys are awesome.  Cheers to you!

World of Beer - Westchase ARK Event

We had an opportunity to raise some money for the animal rescue at this event, and a huge thanks to Nicole and the other folks at WOB for helping us make this happen.  This is the happiest of situations for me in this business.  I love selling beer and I love making people happy.  But what I really love is to round all of this out with helping animals.  It's warming to have large and diverse groups of people come together, make the plans to help a good cause, and lots of people show up to support it.

Also, the folks at WOB agreed to donate $1 to ARK for every pint of Boulder Beer sold!  Again, a HUGE thanks to the folks at World of Beer.

Of course, this is a beer event and I was excited as all get-out to try the Nitro Flashback for the first time.  Boulder makes Flashback year-round, but this is a special occasion that they charge it with Nitro and I have yet to have had it.


Flashback is a dry hopped brown ale at just under 7% alcohol that has 5 additions of Cascade hops.  Massive citrus on this one and the balance created with the chocolate malt make for a very complex brew.  The nitrogen adds such a creamy characteristic to this beer and it also moderates some of the hops a tad.  The nitro is a beer that could do well as a year-round offering.

It began pouring rain, of course, at about 5:00 and the forecast showed no sign of reprieve.  This really sucked because the folks from ARK traveled all the way from DeLand for this event and I wanted it to be as successful as possible for the doggies.  They set up at the front of the building and created a nice showing as we were also auctioning off our limited release Sweaty Betty and Hazed & Infused posters.  This meant we were going to be taking donations at the door, WOB was making a very generous donation, and we were auctioning posters so this event was bound to be a success.

I met up with Beth from JJ Taylor and Nicole from World of Beer and we started getting some drink on.  I was also able to meet some of the doggies in the bunch including a beautiful and well-behave Pit Bull puppy that belonged to one of the bartenders.  It's always great to see the love that people have with their dogs, and especially to see them bring a Pit Bull out and show the world that they are not vicious killers.  


For Boulder drafts, they had Kinda Blue, Mojo Risin', and the aforementioned Flashback Nitro.   We began the night drinking on some Kinda Blue and needless to say I moved pretty quickly to the Risin' and to the Flashback, and back to the Risin', and back to the Flashback, and so on and so dizzy.  As I always say -  I love my job.  But I love it more when we get to make people happy AND support a great cause.  Cheers to everyone!  


NOTE:  When I was packing for my trip, I threw in a bottle of Port Brewing's Older Viscosity; a 12% bourbon barrel aged strong dark ale that pours like a river of 30 weight.  This brew is pretty rare and I have been waiting to share it for 2 years.  This seemed like the perfect time given the generosity of World of Beer and the hard work that everyone put into this event.  Needless to say it didn't disappoint.  This brew rates 100 out of 100 on ratebeer and it definitely was apparent why.  To make things even better, there was a loyal WOB customer who had just reached his 1000th beer, so we were able to share it with him.  Made for a great time and everyone loved this beer.