Drink Your Cellar, Tip Your Tender

We’re going to try something, and we hope you’ll join us. While our friends in the bar, restaurant, and brewery world are navigating an extremely difficult time with many people in danger of losing significant income, we wanted to find a way to fill up some virtual tip jars while doing what we do best – drinking beer. We’re calling it Drink Your Cellar, Tip Your Tender.

Of course, many brewery and beer stores have set up curbside pickup or delivery, and that should be the first place to spend your money, if you can. But if you instead elect to dust off a beer from your personal reserves, enjoy that beer even more with a little pairing of generosity.

Drink Your Cellar, Tip Your Tender works like this: first, it’s a suggestion for all. Whenever you open a beer from your cellar, donate money to a local bar, restaurant, or brewery. There are many local Chicagoland businesses that have set up GoFundMe pages or virtual tip jars to help those that tend to our basic need for tasty beers. (See the links below in this post.) We’ll be donating $20 to a place we love every time we open a cellar beer.

Drink Your Cellar, Tip Your Tender also works like this: it’s a raffle to win beer. Twice a week, we will put up a post about a cellar beer we drank. Within the post, we’ll also be raffling off a cool beer. It likely won’t be the same one we drank from our cellar, but the post will contain details about the raffle beer. 

Raffle Details

With each social media post, we’ll be highlighting a specific bar/restaurant/brewery that we’ll be donating to with that cellar beer. To enter the raffle, you will need to donate to any local bar/restaurant/brewery from the greater Chicagoland area. (See links below.) We recommend donating to the business we’ll be highlighting with that post, but we want to spread the love around, so donating to any local bar/restaurant/brewery is totally fine.

Each donation of $10 equals one raffle entry to win the special beer. You can donate as much as you want (in increments of 10) to get more raffle entries. Then, you’ll need to send us proof (time-stamped within the raffle period) that you donated: a screenshot, an email receipt, etc. We’re trusting people to be honest with their donations, but we need some sort of visual proof that you’ve made your donation in order to get entry into the raffle. You can enter multiple times and donate to multiple businesses within the timeframe of the raffle – just share the proof with us! (And make sure it is time-stamped within the dates of the raffle’s beginning and end, or else it won’t qualify – sorry.)

Share your time-stamped proof of donation through an email (abvchicago@gmail.com) or a direct message on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and we’ll send you a confirmation that we’ve received it. 

Here are some links that gather virtual tip jars and other fundraising efforts from local bars, restaurants, and breweries:

• GuysDrinkingBeer – Virtual Tip Jar Roundup
• Chicago Service Relief (https://chicagoservicerelief.com/)
• Chicago Hospitality Employee Relief Guide (FaceBook)

Here’s a few other catches, due to the current crisis. This raffle will have to be for Chicagoland followers only. We want to get beer to people in a timely and cost-effective manner while maintaining safe levels of exposure to non-essential travel and post offices and such. So, there will be no beer mail with raffle prizes. We’ll be relying on delivery to get beer out to raffle winners. So we’re asking that entrants be within a reasonable distance (mostly Cook County) from the city or be able to meet up closer to the city to receive the beers. Of course, orders from the state or the federal government could delay this transaction significantly, so we reserve the right to hold on to the winning raffle prize until it is sensible and possible to complete the transaction. We also will be respectful of your comfort level, if you would rather wait to receive the prize until a later date. Rest assured, if you win the raffle, the prize will be yours and be held for you until we can get it to you. 

Whether you enter the raffle or not, we hope that you join us in knocking back some old dusty ones and helping out the people that keep us drinking great beer through thick and thin. 

Current Raffle:

View this post on Instagram

***CHARITABLE RAFFLE TIME*** So let’s help some people out. Whenever we open a cellar beer in the coming weeks, we will be donating to a bar, restaurant, or brewery that is in need of financial support during this crisis. We will also be picking another beer or beers from our cellar to raffle off to other locals willing to donate. ++++++++++++++++++ Our second cellar beer is @gooseisland 2013 Bourbon County Barleywine. Remember this one was aged in BCBS barrels, and age has been very kind to it. The flavor is full of luscious cherry, grenadine-spiked whiskey, sweet brown sugar, molasses, wispy smoke, and a dusting of cocoa. There was an odd amount of particulate matter left in the glass – more than I can ever remember seeing on a style like this. ++++++++++++ For opening this beer, we’re donating $20 to the good folks at @maplewoodbrew – who not only make some of the best beer in the city, but they’ve served us well many, many times at their excellent lounge. +++++++++++++ Our second raffle prize is a mixed 4-pack from Revolution including Deth’s Tar 2018 and VSOD 2019; Ryeway to Heaven 2018 and VSOR 2019. Regular olds meets Very Special Olds! +++++++++++++++ To enter the raffle, donate to any bar, restaurant, or brewery (like Maplewood!) and share visual, time-stamped proof with us via email or DM. The raffle is for Chicagoland entrants only and entries must be time-stamped between 3/23/20 and 3/26/20 at 7PM. The raffle ends Thursday at 7PM CT. +++++++++++++++++ Whether you enter the raffle or not, open up a cellar beer and your wallet to help out your local bars, restaurants, and breweries.

A post shared by ABV Chicago (@abvchicago) on Mar 23, 2020 at 8:56pm PDT

#drinkyourcellar #tipyourtender #dyctyt