Beers and Heroes: 3 Daughters Brewery Changing Lives admin January 4, 2017 Veteran Inspired 343 Many veterans leave the military and almost instantly feel a sense of shock. It’s tough going from a career where one literally suits up in armor and goes to train or face enemies for real to a career where you’re cleaning up after two year olds or watching the perimeter of a warehouse so the company can save a bit on their liability insurance. Jobs aren’t an easy thing to find already, and great jobs can seem almost impossible to achieve for many veterans. Fortunately, the owners of one brewery in St. Petersburg, FL, have an idea. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is in terms of helping veterans to find exciting and meaningful careers, but not just any old job. No, these brewers are hoping to start a fire in veterans for craft brewing. 3 Daughters and a Lot of Love Leigh Harting, one of the owners of 3 Daughters Brewery, along with her husband, are reaching out to spread their love of craft beer with veterans. This is an incredible opportunity for some lucky veterans to get a first-rate education in the world of brewing. It begins by 3 Daughters Brewery paying the expense for an online course about brewing. Then, once that is complete, the veteran can get hands-on experience for their resume at their actual brewery location in St. Petersburg. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to help people get into the craft brewing industry which is booming,” Harting said of the program. The first veteran to go through the program, Raymond Molinary, said, “the whole aspect of brewing excites me, I’ve always been a nerd so-to-speak when it comes to science and the process of fermentation.” Molinary is a Navy veteran of 16 years and now wants to be a craft brewer. Craft beer has grown considerably in the past few years. In 2015 alone, craft beer sales increased by 12.8 percent and exports to other countries rose by over 16 percent. This growing industry is the perfect mechanism through which to get veterans excited about new opportunities that they might have never considered before. It’s a great example of how some outside the box thinking can get a veteran started on an amazing new enterprise. My Hero Program This isn’t the only plan that 3 Daughters Brewery has put into place for veterans. They launched the program in 2015 and it puts heroes on their labels. The first can design for their “Tango Yankee” Wheat Ale is the grandfather patriarch of the family, Bruce Wells Harting’s service. Future cans will include various selections recommended by the general public. This is a wonderful way for an amazing small business to grow and show their support for veterans by both helping veterans develop essential brewing skills to own their own businesses as well as raising awareness about the everyday heroism that has come from our military. As a company that prizes relentless patriotism, we wanted to give a warm shout out and praise to 3 Daughters Brewery for making this possible and remembering our nation’s heroes. Beer and heroes — there’s nothing more American than that!
