San Antonio’s Roadmap Brewing helms collaborative beer project benefitting mental health initiative

San Antonio’s Roadmap Brewing is set to take the reins on Hops for the Day, a collaborative IPA project to benefit suicide prevention and mental health education.

Roadmap will oversee the partnership with Hope for the Day, a Chicago-based nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention and mental health education. According to the brewer, the Craft the Conversation initiative aims to improve mental health in the beer industry and raise money for mental health causes by releasing fundraising IPAs.

“The overall goal is to start conversations in taprooms across the country surrounding mental health,” Roadmap Brewing owner and brewer Dustin Baker told the Current. “Ours will be released on the first Friday in May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month, but we want breweries to be encouraged to release their versions throughout the year, because mental health isn’t something that’s just important in May. It’s something that needs to be discussed year round.”

In 2021, the local participated in a similar campaign, dubbed Things We Don’t Say: Craft Beer for Mental Health. As a participant of the nationwide initiative, Roadmap raised nearly $11,000 to split between nonprofits Hope For the Day and Solace House, which offer free suicide prevention assistance.

This year, Roadmap Brewing was tapped by Hope For the Day to develop an IPA recipe that other breweries can replicate and customize to fit their own styles. Baker said Roadmap will release the first of its two fundraising brews — a 6% West Coast IPA with notes of grapefruit and tropical fruit — in four-packs and on draft in the taproom on May 6.

The brewer will release the second beer, a hazy IPA, in the fall.

“Being alcohol producers, it’s sometimes difficult to discuss mental health, because alcohol is so often abused. We’re really focusing this year on taking the conversation to the people, wherever they’re at,” Baker said. “That isn’t just at a doctor’s office, it can be at a taproom or brewery. We noticed that people are becoming more and more open to discussing it, and that’s encouraging.”

As of press time, Boerne’s Free Roam Brewing and Amarillo’s Pondeseta Brewing Co. had joined in Roadmap’s initiative.

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This article appears in Apr 6-19, 2022.