The good news is that there will be an initiative this coming year that captures the spirit of the entire local craft beer industry and positively channels that spirit toward an important cause, once again, in ACEing Autism.

Longtime attendees, breweries and volunteers know that 2021 would have been a milestone 10th year of Queen City Brewers Festival. As awesome as it would be to see thousands of local beer fans turn out at the event’s traditional tasting sessions, that celebration will have to rest like a big, beautiful barrel-aged imperial stout.

This coming year, QCBF will be in the form of a collective beer for ACEing Autism initiative. Introducing: “Court Shoes Only“, a Double IPA recipe co-developed by Chad Henderson of NoDa Brewing and Chris “Tropes” Tropeano from Resident Culture. To keep with the theme of QCBF, we’re asking participating breweries to release their variant of Court Shoes Only the week of February 1st, ahead of Super Bowl weekend. Proceeds donated from sales of Court Shoes Only will benefit ACEing Autism Charlotte programs. 

Similar to national beer collaborations such as “Resilience“, “All Together” and most recently “Black is Beautiful“, the purpose of Court Shoes Only is to 1) sustain ACEing Autism programs in the Charlotte community, 2) raise the profile of the tremendous craft beer scene here in the Queen City and 3) encourage brewers to have a lot of fun creating their own interpretation of a well-designed beer recipe.

At this stage, all previous QCBF brewery participants, and those who will make their future debut, have been invited to build this special, one-time beer into their production schedule. We’re visualizing the tasting glasses we’ll pull from the cabinet for pours from Edge City, Divine Barrel, Pilot, The DreamChaser’s Brewery (2018 Best of Show winner), High Branch (2017 and 2020 Best of Show winners) and of course NoDa and Resident Culture to name a few.

Special thanks to Tropes and Chad for putting their hop-adoring heads together to create the recipe behind the beer.

QCBF social media channels and qcbrewfest.com is your source for all you need to know about variants of the Double IPA, beer release dates as well as a special commemorative item we’re working on to accompany sales at taproom and specialty retail locations. We’ll have you ready for the first week of February when court shoes will be the in style!