At Newenham, we’re all about community, which means supporting not only our residents, but the broader Hills and country community, too.
We’re so lucky to call the Hills home, along with a host of local farmers. Beautiful though our Hills may be, Mother Nature can deal out her fair share of tricky times, too. Lately, farmers around the country have been hit with one of the worst droughts we’ve seen in recent history.
We’re thrilled to see local Mount Barker brewery and friends of Newenham, Prancing Pony, join in the nationwide drought relief with their very own initiative – No Grain, No Food, No Beer.
The team have developed ‘karma kegs’ of their brews. “We provide a venue with a keg, and then ask the punter to pay whatever they want for the beer. So the idea behind the karma keg is if you pay 10 cents, you get 10 cents worth of karma, and if you pay 10 dollars, you get 10 dollars’ worth of karma.”
They’ve donated 70 kegs of Indie Kid Pilsner to 32 venues across South Australia, raising money for the not-for-profit charity, Drought Angels. They put out the campaign asking venues to donate five dollars from every pint to the Drought Angels. “It’s been a really successful campaign, and a very quick campaign to get significant funds to Drought Angels,” she says.
Embracing our philosophy of community support, Prancing Pony founders Frank and Corinna Steeb are personally passionate about the cause. “It was just such a strong moral issue for us that we just had to get behind the campaign and do something about it because it’s devastating. We’re basically saying the drought is affecting all of us,” Corinna says. “If the drought continues, the grain growers will also be affected. If there is no grain available, there will be a reduction in food and a reduction, obviously, in beer.”
She says it’s not just about the beer, either, but our entire community. “If a farming community doesn’t do well, then they can’t spend any money in their local community, and it’s just a snowball effect.”
Living on a Hills acreage themselves, Corinna and Frank understand first-hand just how much drought can easily affect a property and the surrounding community.
“We have some animals and we can see there is not enough water in our dam,” Corinna says. “I think people realise that there’s a drought, but I generally think that as urbanised humans, we’re more and more disconnected from the food chain.”
Their initiative is all about reminding people where what we consume comes from – the land. “We forget when we go shopping where the food actually comes from and what people do in order to get the food to us. I think sometimes we can get too far removed and we make a disconnection from the land and the hard work that goes into the food and the beer that’s on our table.”
Why Indie Pilsner?
Corinna says there was a particular reason that the Indie Pilsener was chosen for the campaign to help the farmers in NSW and QLD. “The Indie Pilsener is a very approachable beer – it’s not over the top, so we knew that participating venues would have broad outreach on the beer style to their punters – so it wouldn’t be a very selective beer that only a small portion of beer drinkers would drink,” she says.
How can you support the campaign?
“There’s about four or five venues across the Adelaide Hills that are pouring the ‘No Grain, No Food, No Beer’ Karma Kegs as we speak,” Corinna says. This includes our local The Barker Hotel as well as The Haus.
You can find a full list of Hills and broader South Australian venues on the Prancing Pony Brewery Facebook page.
The campaign will also continue through our Oktoberfest event at Newenham with the Indie Pilsener on tap in the beer hall.
Corinna is encouraging all Hill’s residents and South Australians to get behind the initiative for our farmers. “Hopefully we can alleviate some of the pain for the farmers.”
To find out more about Prancing Pony’s involvement in our community at Newenham, click here.
