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LIBATION NATION: Sanctuary committed to beer, people and animals

Lisa McDonald poses with her two of her favorite things — a Sanctuary beer and an adoptable puppy.

By Bill Moss, Published: July 19, 2016

Some businesses run a charity on the side.

Sanctuary Brewing Co. at times looks like a storefront charity with a business on the side. It held a vigil for the victims of the Orlando nightclub attack. Saturday a crowd enjoyed the kickoff of Ales for ALS, the same day Sanctuary became one of the only breweries in the area to stock the anti-HB2 brew, Don’t Be Mean to People. A few hours before that, kittens crawled on exercisers during the Saturday morning Yoga with Cats.
It’s a major turnaround from just two years ago, when Lisa McDonald was commuting from Hendersonville to Los Angeles as a consultant to the legal shops of Fortune 50 companies. She’s not a lawyer; she has a two-year degree in journalism from Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale. But her personality, social skills and affinity for organization had brought her success in the corporate law suites in fancy high-rises.
“I didn’t know how to write the brief,” she says. “I knew how to tell lawyers what to do with it.”
Still, her heart was in rescuing dogs and cats and living the vegan life in her adopted home in Flat Rock.
“One side of my life was being altruistic and the other side was making rich corporations a lot of money and I just couldn’t find a good balance in it,” she says.
A conflict with a client who tried to sink her career was the shove she needed to leave her corporate id behind.

Head brewer Joe Dinan checks the color of a beer.Joe Dinan, Lisa’s partner in life and partner in fostering kittens and puppies on their three-acre farm on Rutledge Drive, was working his way up in the brewery business at the same time Lisa flipped off her corporate job. An accomplished home brewer, he completed Oskar Blues-Blue Ridge Community College training and then hired by Wicked Weed Brewing in Asheville.
The couple were taking their time writing a business plan for their Hendersonville brewery when an agent showed them a double storefront on First Avenue East that had housed a small indoor zoo that local people called Dr. Doolittle’s.
“We both were like, this is terrifying and we’re probably not ready but let’s do it anyway, and we did,” Lisa says.
The couple had been hanging out at Southern Appalachian Brewery since they moved to North Carolina and were friends with SAB owners Kelly and Andy Cubbin, another pair of dreamers who had used hard work, grit and a gift for brewing to build Hendersonville’s first microbrewery.
“We went in and we told them before we told another living soul because we adored Kelly and Andy and we didn’t want to seem like it was going to be competitive or that we were undermining them,” Lisa says. “We wanted them to know that we wanted to support them and work together. And they have been awesome ever since. They were, ‘Cool, let’s go ahead, how can we help?’ That really bonded us.”

Pint of beer, cup of kindness

From the giants like Sierra Nevada to the little mom and pops, craft breweries have a reputation for corporate citizenship and community involvement. Nowhere is the characteristic more out front than at Sanctuary.
“There are so many ways you can help people and animals and all living beings just by having a storefront and an identity, a community center and some funds,” Lisa says.
Last month she posted on social media a year-to-date balance sheet of their achievements for good. Wednesday adoption night, Saturday Yoga with Cats and other events have led to the adoption of more than 100 dogs and cats. They’ve raised $3,000 for “groups we love,” including Team ECCO Ocean Center, Blue Ridge Humane Society, Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, the Turtle Hospital and more. Their Orlando vigil raised money for the victims of the gay nightclub shooting. Through their “kindness wall” they’ve given away hundreds of winter coats, scarfs and gloves. They’ve fed dozens during “free meal Sundays.”
“I found out after the fact that it was a thing,” Lisa says of the kindness wall, a line of hooks outside. “It’s a thing in a lot of Third World countries, which I didn’t even know. We were just looking for a place to hang coats for people so they don’t have to go into a place and say, ‘I’m hard on my luck, I need coats.’ Let’s just put something outside.”
Once they promoted it on social media, the kindness wall took off.
“You leave whatever you can and you take whatever you need, no questions asked,” Lisa says. For free meal Sundays, she makes enough food to feed 30 to 60 people. They did it for the first time on Easter Sunday. “People said, ‘that’s awesome.’ So I said I’ll make food for people every week.” She admits she has no idea if the diners are needy or not. “It’s kind of an honors system.”
On Taco Tuesday she sells tacos with all fresh vegan ingredients. She worked out a deal where West First Wood Fired Pizza made up a custom vegan menu that Sanctuary patrons can order from.
“I don’t try to conk people over the head with it,” she says. “People are still allowed to bring their food here. I wish they didn’t but they do.”

Critic 'just likes Joe's beer'

As for the core product, Lisa says Joe’s beers have won wide praise.
“We get great press from Beer City Press, we get great press from (Asheville Citizen-Times beer critic) Tony Kiss a lot,” she says. “He just likes Joe’s beers. And that’s high praise from somebody who’s got pretty much every beer in this area.”
Joe issues a steady menu of new creations, 105 gallons at a time.
“We always want to have a couple of new things on draft, at least one or two,” he says. “I’d say 80 percent of our business is local. If I’m a regular and I’m repeating business at a place (I’d say) — ‘What do you got that’s new?’ That’s why restaurants change things up, to keep people coming back.”
The first downtown brewery, Sanctuary has seen big numbers already from the festivals.
“The biggest day we had was when we premiered all the beers,” Lisa says. “The second biggest day was Garden Jubilee, the third biggest day was Garden Jubilee. My guess is the Apple Festival is going to be insane.”