An interesting beer on Alberta store shelves this month is the Edmonton and Area Land Trust Oatmeal Brown Ale. This beer is a charity beer produced by Phillip’s to support the Edmonton and Area Land Trust, a small non-profit devoted to saving and stewarding ecologically sensitive plots of land around the Capital Region.

I liked the idea (and the beer) enough to make it the topic of my CBC RadioActive column last week. You can listen to the column here. (It is SO nice to have these posted on line once again!)

The beer is part of Victoria brewer Phillip’s Brewing annual Benefit Brew which is a once-a-year release where the proceeds – and I mean the entire proceeds, every penny of the wholesale price, not just the profits – of its sale are donated to a charity. The fun part of the project is it is, essentially, crowd-sourced as consumers decide both which beer will be brewed and which charity the money will go to.

Phillip’s has been doing this project for a few years, but decided in 2014 to run a parallel contest for the Alberta market. This year, the EALT beat out dozens of other entries to be the recipient of the benefit brew. Every entry selects a beer style that will be brewed, and the EALT picked an oatmeal brown ale.

At first it seemed odd to me that a small Edmonton non-profit would be partnering with a B.C. brewery for a charity brew. Why not pick a local brewery? That might be ideal, but no one locally is sponsoring a local contest like Phillip’s.Most are doing tons of other good work for local non-profits, but they don’t have this formalized contest. EALT just decided to toss their hat in the ring and they won. And who can blame them? Good for them!

As for the beer, it is a nice brown ale, doing what brown ales should do. Which is offer balance. Oats are common in stouts and porters, but rarer in brown ales. The oats give it a silkiness in the body which I appreciate. It is an earthy, pleasant beer which seems to fit well with the goals of the EALT.

So, go grab one of the lmiited 650-ml bottles and feel good about supporting a local non-profit trying to make our environment better.