Doing Good for the Community through Craft Beer at the 2nd Annual Pasadena Brewfest

When you hear about the city of Pasadena, you may think of football and the Rose Bowl, or if you like marching bands and elaborate floral designs, you may think of the Rose Parade. Whatever your preference is, Pasadena is more than just roses: it’s an amazing city in Southern California that I would love to own a home in if I could drop close to a million dollars for a three-bedroom, two-bath house.

Nathan McCusker is a Rotarian and homebrewer who loves philanthropy, and he strives to make the community of Pasadena an even better place through the one thing that we can all get behind: craft beer. He achieved this goal by organizing and hosting the Second Annual Pasadena Brewfest.

It had been too long since I made it out to a brewfest and that sunny April Saturday afternoon was a perfect day to get my craft fix on. After a short search, my craft beer buddy, Matt, and I found T-Boyles Tavern in Pasadena, which is covertly located in an ally that makes you feel cool and important when you get to the front door. This brewfest definitely gets you the most bang for your buck as online tickets were only $15, which included a collector mini mug and ten taster drink tickets to sip on the surrounding breweries’ best beers. That’s about 40 ounces of delicious crafts for 15 bones and the money goes to mini grants for teachers of Pasadena for unique projects through the Rotary Club.

I documented all the beers that I drank by live tweeting throughout the event, but my POS phone wasn’t posting the tweets to my Twitter account (I don’t know what’s more lame: my Twitter problem or me talking about my problems with Twitter). Trust me, my phone did the world a favor because my jokes trying to praise the beers were awful. My best tweet had something to do with Dr. Seuss being proud of Fig Mountain’s Hoppy Poppy IPA. The downside to this is that I lost the list of beers that I had, but as many craft beer lovers know, you never forget your favorite beers. Some notable standouts that will forever be engrained in my gustatory cortex are the Horchata Stout and Dunkelweizen from Pacific Plate Brewing, Kinetic Brewing’sPotential Blonde, and the Atticus IPA from Strand Brewing.

Nathan’s Pasadena after-hours club is not your grandfather’s Rotary. I have to admit that I didn’t know a whole lot about Rotary until I attended this Brewfest. I thought they were responsible for assembling the welcome signs outside of towns and small cities. Rotary’s biggest project is to end polio worldwide, but with the celestial hand of FDR blessing the healthy citizens of Pasadena, the local Rotary can focus on building goodwill and better friendships and “being beneficial to all concerns.” Nathan’s Rotary club is a younger club that ranges from 20-somethings to 60-year-olds and meets once a week at places like T-Boyles for happy hour, where they drink beer and talk about service projects. They have a good time with friends and strive to do good for the community. This seems like a win-win for everyone.

Last year’s brewfest had 72 people and 12 breweries. Nathan’s goal was to double the turnout, which he did and then some. He reached out to thirty different breweries in the area and T-Boyles owner, Troy Boyle, contacted distributors. Nathan chose T-Boyles because Troy is heavily into philanthropy, Rotary has a great partnership with this bar, and it’s flat out a great venue. Next year, Nathan plans to extend into the parking lot or ally way (if the Pasadena bureaucrats find time to stop powdering their wigs and allow people to have some fun) and to have an indoor and outdoor stage. He also plans to expand to more local breweries in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties. This follows suit with one of FDR’s lesser known quotes, “More beer, more people, more philanthropy.” Nathan McCusker and his Rotarians seem to be right on track.