An independent Newcastle brewery is raffling off an evening at its taproom for the launch of its Ukrainian Pale Ale next month.
Full Circle Brew Co., based at Hoults Yard in Byker, will be selling raffle tickets until Sunday to raise money for the humanitarian emergency following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It is launching a Ukrainian Pale Ale developed in partnership with VarVar brewery, which is based just outside of Kyiv, but Full Circle wanted to do something to raise money immediately for the Red Cross appeal, which is where the raffle comes in.
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Graeme Dickson, who works in marketing and sales in the brewery, said: "The ale is not being brewed until the end of the month so it's going to take a little while, and we thought what can we do now to help?
"That's when we thought of this online raffle, similar to the one Cookhouse did, where all the proceeds would be going to the Red Cross Humanitarian Relief."
Graeme added: "We had already planned to do a Ukrainian Pale Ale (before the Russian invasion) with VarVar and our head brewer Alex has been working on the recipe for it with them.
"One of their members of staff is a UK national so he should hopefully be back here for the brew. It will be a good collaboration and we'd already intended for some of the proceeds from that to go to the Red Cross Humanitarian relief, but the situation has changed so we now have a bit of a different goal to what we had originally."
Both Graeme, and Full Circle's Packaging Supervisor, Josh Harfoot, have Ukrainian heritage, with members of Josh's family still in the country. His extended family is mainly in Lviv, just under 100km from the Polish border. Some have left into Poland, but all men are currently unable to leave and have been given arms to help defend the city and country.
Across the North East, there have been several fundraising efforts to raise money for Ukraine, with independent breweries across Northumberland working on an anti-imperial beetroot stout, an auction for tea with Vera author Ann Cleeves in Whitley Bay, and collections of essential items all across the region.
For Full Circle, its staff are hoping to raise as much money as they can. Graeme finished: "We didn't really go in with any sort of target, we were just hopeful that we could raise as much as possible. The more the better."
Anyone interested in the five prizes, to the value of £150, will have to be quick as the raffle ends on Sunday. There are three different price points people can enter at. £10 buys one entry to the raffle, £20 buys three and £30 gets you ten.
The prize is an evening with three guests at the Full Circle Taproom for the launch of the Ukrainian Pale with a special tutored tasting, food and drink for the evening.
For more information and to buy raffle tickets, click here.
