Santa Rosa, CA – Russian River Brewing Company announced on Sunday the proceeds so far from its Sonoma Pride wildfire relief fundraising efforts. More below from the brewery blog…

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2017 was the year of extremes. We were extremely excited to break ground and started building our dream brewery in Windsor. In September, we went to Germany to inspect our new brewhouse, which was successfully delivered and installed in December. You may have seen my Instagram and Facebook post on the day our “ship came in”. I camped out at the Marin Headlands for 3 hours waiting for the MSC Silvia, the container ship carrying our brewhouse, to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge for the perfect photo op. I had a blast taking pictures of tourists while watching the horizon for that ship we had been following (there is an app for that!) for 6 weeks.

On October 8th, we arrived home from GABF, taking an airport shuttle from SFO with some employees from Bear Republic. Little did any of us know that later that night the most devastating fire in California’s history would tear through Santa Rosa in a matter of hours, leaving countless friends, family, employees, and customers running for their lives and ultimately homeless. The following weeks were surreal, and the support and concern from our beer industry friends from all over the world was truly humbling. Within a few days, Vinnie and I partnered with a local non-profit, King Ridge Foundation, and started licensing our Sonoma Pride brand to breweries who wanted to help out.

The effort was remarkable, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars within just a few weeks. RRBC raised over $114K with our Pliny the Younger line cutting raffle, and over $116K with our donation from sales of Sonoma Pride. As of today, we have raised $708K! Jacob Totz, our pub brewer, was so inspired that he helped coordinate a comedy show last week which may put us over the $800K mark! Thank you to everyone who donated and is participating in the Sonoma Pride beer part of the fundraiser. There are still several breweries who have yet to sell out of their beer, so the donations are still rolling in.