MILES CITY — A Miles City brewery is hosting a fundraiser this summer with the goal of raising money for local gardens.
The fundraiser, known as Brews For Blooms, is organized by Otium Brewery. They will donate one dollar from every pint sale of their Drowning Mountains IPA towards supporting a community garden.
“I mean if you live in concrete, it’s just… it’s not a great way to thrive,” said Otium co-owner Hannah Strong, explaining the inspiration behind the fundraiser. “To me, the green space side of it is really important.”
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Strong initially came up with the idea while brainstorming monthly themes for the brewery. “Every month, we do something called ‘True, Good and Beautiful’ and try to focus on one of those categories,” she explained.
Each of the three themes is celebrated differently, with lectures and artist features among them. When it came to the “good” aspect, Strong thought of ways to give back to the community.
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That’s when the idea to donate a portion of pint sales to local gardens was born. Otium Brewery will select a different garden to support each month during the summer, providing financial assistance for the garden’s needs.
“I really wanted to use that connection of hop growing, essentially a really big garden, with the small, more public gardens in town,” Strong elaborated.
July’s chosen garden is located at The Ruby, a local coffee kiosk that has been transformed from an empty dirt field into a colorful garden area with a playground set.
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The Ruby’s owner, Adrian Davis, expressed pride in the garden’s development, crediting the support of the Miles City community, including Otium Brewery, for making it possible.
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“It’s not just me,” Davis emphasized. “This is Miles City, this is our community. Grateful doesn’t contain how I feel about it, truly, because every little bit counts.”
For Strong and her husband, the brewery’s role in bringing the community together was a significant reason why they chose to establish Otium Brewery in Miles City. “We wanted to have something like that in Miles City that created a community and hosted events,” she shared.
