It’s a staple of every brewery’s mission statement, but what does community mean? For people in the industry, it is an actual community of people with common interests and goals. For patrons, it is a public space that should feel welcoming and safe. The way a brewery (or other beer drinking establishment) interacts with other organizations can be an essential tool in its branding, and can positively augment its customer base. And breweries, more than many other businesses, actively contribute to their communities by creating jobs, supporting nonprofits and other local organizations, and by partnering with other businesses on collaborative adventures.

When Ninkasi was still tucked into a bay in the building that used to stand where its tasting room is, it doled out kegs and kegs to official and unofficial parties and concerts; I have fond memories of pouring red cups of Believer and listening to a Grateful Dead cover band at the Eugene Whiteaker Hostel during the Last Friday Art Walk; music events were particularly rife with black and teal. Now, nine years later, Ninkasi has its own recording studio; bands only pay for the recording engineer, James Book’s, time.

While the big breweries are relegated to grocery store shelves and distributor warehouses, local craft breweries and beer bars can use the social aspect of beer, arguably its most important contribution to civilization, to indirectly pay its customers back. This happens both economically and psychologically. The pub is where connections are made, where ideas form and mutate, where business deals are hashed out and relationships are negotiated (strike that; reverse it). Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? The pub or taproom may also be a place of solitude; one finds a nook out of sight to read a book, or even sits at the bar, turning pages and tilting glasses. The thrum of a busy but safe space without the stress of a shopping mall or bus station can be meditative, white noise.

My own experience has taught me not to expect any particular social situation. Meeting a friend for beer yesterday, we were joined by two more friends, then two more friends; pure happenstance. Our conversations expanded and contracted within the group, and pulsed with laughter. I absorbed the spirit and left happier than I arrived.

How does a business that relies on income and capital put money back in the pockets of its patrons? Many do so through work with nonprofits; the benefits are more than mutual. As an example, Oakshire Brewing gives 1% of sales of its Watershed IPA to the McKenzie River Trust. This helps not only to protect the brewery’s water source, but helps keep my wife in a job! That’s a pretty tight circle. In turn, employees and donors from a beneficiary nonprofit are likely to support the brewery.

On a broader scale, Hopworks and Patagonia Provisions partnered to make Long Root Ale, a beer using Kernza, a perennial grain that requires far less cultivation than annual grains like barley and wheat. While Kernza is unlikely to ever replace barley, the project emphasizes Hopworks’ interest in organic and sustainable business practices; a partnership with an arts organization may not have fit the brewery’s mission statement as well.

Though beer is not known as the best paying industry, it does provide tons of jobs; local jobs are naturally better for a local economy, and brewing and serving beer cannot be outsourced. Building a strong, regular customer base also adds opportunity for mutual support. Contractors (at least the ones I know) really like beer. They hang out at a spot long enough, chances are something’s going to break or need to be built; there’s that economic wheel spinning around again.

How do you fit into your community? How do I? It should be a mantra, a thing to reflect on periodically throughout the day, a subtitle to our lives. A part of our conversation over a beer.