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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Do good, drink well

Rick Bonino

By now, local beer drinkers are familiar with the growing number of community pint nights to benefit nonprofits. This week alone there are fundraisers for the Centennial Trail tonight at Perry Street, animal rescue Thursday at English Setter and for colon cancer research Saturday at Big Barn.

The Second Harvest food bank is offering a more hands-on approach with its VolunBEER event Thursday starting at 5:30 p.m. in its facilities at 1234 E. Front Ave.

For the first hour in the volunteer center, participants will sort and package food for Second Harvest clients – a full 55,000 of them each week in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

And for the second hour, they’ll move back to the kitchen for a tasting of Deschutes beers with a brewery representative – Pacific Wonderland lager, American Wheat, Fresh Squeezed IPA and Black Butter Porter – and a light snack incorporating some of the brews.

For $25 you get samples of each plus a full pour of your favorite. Everyone receives a Deschutes glass, sticker and bottle opener and the opportunity to win hats, shirts and a stainless steel growler.

“We wanted to come up with an event that would engage a different audience than perhaps normally interacts with Second Harvest,” says Chris Houglum, the food bank’s director of donor relations.

“People like to come here and volunteer, and local and regional craft beer is just growing exponentially,” he says. “We thought, let’s see what we can do to combine the two.”

Deschutes, a perennial participant in Second Harvest’s major Taking a Bite out of Hunger fundraiser, was an eager partner for the project, Houglum says.   

“It gives people a chance to interact with Second Harvest for the first time,” he says, “or in a way they’ve never done before.”

It’s also “part of an effort to raise awareness that we have a great kitchen in our facility, which we built two years ago,” says Julie Humphreys, Second Harvest’s community relations manager.

The kitchen offers both free classes for clients – a valuable service, since half of the food distributed is fresh fruits and vegetables – and paid classes for the general public.

Regular volunteers for the daily 5:30 food sort like to listen to music and have fun while they work, Humphreys says, and “sometimes they want to hang out and do something afterward.”

Thursday’s event, she says, “is an opportunity to come back into the kitchen and have some suds. And you get to financially donate as well, which allows us to teach free classes for our clients.”

Houglum says Second Harvest plans a similar beer or wine event each quarter, maybe more often if it proves popular.

“People are getting fed as a result, and that’s really what it’s all about,” he says.