Support Your Local Brewery on #PubJanuary!

It is January 2nd, and you have shaken off that New Year’s Eve hangover and find yourself surveying a gray winter landscape (under a permanent drizzle here in Oregon). Night falls at 4:30 pm, but now there are no more holidays to anticipate, just two more months of yuck.

This is the moment to get down to your local pub.

Do it for yourself: the winter blues are real, and after the holidays we’re more likely to find ourselves isolated. In recent decades, research has linked loneliness and social isolation to a host of negative health outcomes. As a scientific review published last year characterized it: “Robust evidence documents social connection factors as independent predictors of mental and physical health, with some of the strongest evidence on mortality.” Pubs, and especially brewery taprooms, have become very important gathering spaces for communities. If you haven’t noticed, your local taproom hosts scores of events across the year, all open to the public and nearly all free.

Do it for your local brewery: you don’t need me to tell you how much breweries are struggling right now, and January and February are their worst months. When times are tough, success or failure may depend on avoiding a bad month or two. Your dollars always help a brewery, but your January dollars are especially helpful to help with cash flow. If everyone visited a taproom one extra time in January, it would substantially help out. There is no easier or more pleasant way to help out.

Of course, you don’t have to drink. This is a month when people try to balance their relationship with alcohol, but practicing a dry January doesn’t mean you can’t have a non-alcoholic beer and a meal down at the pub. Breweries have been big supporters of non-drinkers, and many make their own NA beer, special dry-January mocktails, or hop water—and they all offer non-alcoholic choices of some kind.

Last year, as I helped promote #PubJanuary at Celebrate Oregon Beer, I discovered just how central breweries were to their local communities. At the top of the post, you can see one example, and the list goes on and on: candle painting, chess night, comedy shows, community fly tying, macrame workshop, magic shows, speed painting, yoga (with beer and without), drag shows, gaming nights of all kinds, records and comic swaps—all of this (which barely scratches the surface) in addition to the usual live music, trivia nights, and beer-related events.

I do have a special interest in promoting Oregon’s breweries, but everything I’ve written applies to breweries and pubs everywhere in the world (well, at least those places where January is a cold, dark month). You can help support your local pub by not just grabbing some friends and heading out for a pint, but tagging your experience on social media with #PubJanuary. That will show you having a good time and remind others to get out and have some pubby fun. If you’re in Oregon, tag Celebrate Oregon Beer on Instagram and we’ll repost your adventure.

Let’s be healthy and happy this January, and support our local breweries!