2025 started off with all eyes on LA, as the Greater Los Angeles Wildfires affected Los Angeles County. The fires, which were exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds and drought conditions, took place in January with the Eaton Fire resulting in 14,021 acres burned and the Palisades Fire seeing 23,448 acres burned, according to the Western First Chiefs Association website.

In the aftermath of these wildfires, many stepped up their philanthropic efforts to raise funds to help the communities affected, including those in the craft beer community.

Spearheaded by Firestone Walker, Common Space Brewery, and Creature Comforts, WE LOVE LA is an international fundraising collaboration comprised of more than 180 breweries from 25 states and four countries.

“After coming up with the idea of the WE LOVE LA project, the first thing we did was reach out to the Board of the Los Angeles Brewers Guild for their opinion or blessing, just to feel them out and see what they thought about it,” said Brent Knapp, founder of Common Space. “We received a resounding ‘yes’ so we launched the project. Carissa Knapp, Common Space’s incredible Creative Director, and Priscilla Witte, our dear friend and well-known muralist, worked together to create the artwork and the brand and in all honesty, from that point forward, the marketing took off pretty organically. As dozens of breweries signed up for WE LOVE LA and started promoting it on social media, it encouraged more and more breweries to sign up.”

Matt Stevens, senior director of community impact at Creature Comforts, also highlights how the craft brewing community has continuously been an example of a recovery support system during times of need.

“The craft brewing community has a history of spearheading international collaborations like WE LOVE LA,” Stevens said.  “Just looking over the past five years, you have Sierra Nevada taking the lead on Camp Fire relief efforts via its Resilience IPA, Maui Brewing’s similar work through the Kokua Project, and Other Half Brewing launching the All Together initiative at the height of the pandemic.

“These ‘call-to-action’ collaborations have become a turn-key opportunity for both breweries and beer lovers to synchronize their altruistic activities — coordination being a critical, but underappreciated, facet of recovery work,” he continued. “As such, initiatives like WE LOVE LA can serve as a sort of lightning rod: concentrating and channeling philanthropic resources in a common direction for a deep —rather than a diffused — impact.”

Firestone Walker Brewing Co. additionally put its creativity to work when it launched on March 17 its version of a West Coast Pilsner as part of WE LOVE LA.

“Community has always been at the core of everything we do,” said Hannah Barnett, brand director for Firestone Walker. “It’s in our nature as brewers to come together and help drive impact. Craft beer is inherently grained in community, we work alongside the people who drink our beer, we live where they live, what impacts us impacts them. This makes these initiatives that much more personal and important to us. Whenever we get the opportunity to come together as an industry and do some good, we do.”

As of press time, participating breweries have committed more than $325,000, according to welovelabeer.com.

“After some quick but thorough research from the Community Impact Department at Creature Comforts, the Wildfire Response Fund (WRF), located at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, emerged as the most robust and nimble way to direct the donations of participating breweries,” Common Space’s Knapp said.

Creature Comfort’s Stevens further detailed immediate relief programs and legacy presence among the reasons for selecting these programs to support recovery.

“The WRF was commissioned in the immediate aftermath of January’s wildfires to advance both short-term relief and long-term recovery programs across a vast network of LA County agencies,” he said. “United Way’s century-long presence in LA County, combined with its resourcing and reach, enables the WRF to address both emerging needs like housing, food access, and medical care, as well as to manage its assets for what will likely be the multi-year efforts of helping Los Angeles rebuild and rebound from this natural disaster.”

Further reflecting on the why these causes are so prevalent within the craft beer community, Stevens points to some of the history of the beer community in general.

“Part of this industry’s philanthropic disposition, I believe, is found in its roots,” he said. “Corporate citizenship was, by some accounts, born in a brewery. Stephen Mansfield’s wonderful book ‘The Search for God and Guinness’ traces the history of the ‘beer that changed the world’ by suggesting that it was indeed a brewery (i.e., Guinness) who was one of the first large companies on historical record that took seriously the call to serve as a business.

“It is, like much of history, an underappreciated story, but it’s there waiting to be revisited and reclaimed,” he continued. “And I contend that this long-standing ethos is part of what drives so many like-minded individuals into this industry — believing, as we do at Creature Comforts, that business can indeed be a force for good in the world.”

For today’s efforts, Stevens is happy to credit many of his craft beer comrades for continuing that legacy.

“More practically, and more recently, I think our industry has enjoyed its share of hero brands — the Allagashes and Bell's and Sierra Nevadas — who have set a high bar for more thoughtful community impact work,” he said. “They’ve succeeded and scaled as quality brands while maintaining their early commitments to their communities. And the rest of us have been paying attention. Good examples, in short, have a way of producing good pupils.”