My dad is involved with a Habitat for Humanity group up in MA, and is planning on donating a "high-end" craft beer variety pack to an auction they are having for a fundraiser. He obviously wants to fetch big bucks for charity, so he is going to be doing some driving throughout New England to hunt down cans your average Joe (or Sully in this case) can't get at the packie. My question is this: would it be bad form to emails breweries and ask for a bit of a cheat on when certain things would be released? Just so he could plan on making the trip and arriving in time? Certainly not interested in cheating any aficionados out of their share... but its for charity! Edit: I should ask also, if you even think we will get a positive response from brewers?
Ask them to donate. If they like the cause, they may give you free beer to auction. Unless it's somehow illegal where you are, of course.
It'd probably be easier just to call breweries and ask for beer donations or purchasing straight from them for purpose of charitable auction, breweries in the PNW do this all the time.
Yeah. check with the law. I think it may be best to just not get them involved, and do your own traveling/picking stuff up. Although, I am not even sure you can legally have donated items that should not be "available" in your said state be the donated items that become acceptable exchange for donation $$$. Poorly worded, I am sure. But I hope you get my point. Crossing state lines, for charity or not, may have some hurdles.
Many craft brewers will sponsor local charity events. Go onto the websites of some of your local ones and see which ones donate beer to events.
Breweries are asked daily for donations of beer. Most breweries will donate what they can when they can and have varying "policies" on the topic. Donation or even getting tipped off to new releases aside, our understanding from the Mass ABCC is that it is illegal to raffle off a package of beer as the person who is providing it (your dad) would need a state liquor license. Does it happen often? Of course. Is the ABCC going to come busting and an areat him? I seriously doubt it... but... even still, our understanding is that it is actually illegal (although I supposed we could be wrong). For that reason we often donate empty growlers and gift certificates so that anyone who wins the "gift basket" can come in and fill the growlers with whatever they want. Probably not as "sexy" of an idea as you're after and, again, i don't think there is a huge risk in going about it the way you're thinking but it's something to consider. Cheers.
