Eli Cannon's Beer Gods Fest Nets $2,250 Donation to Oddfellows

The beer gods have smiled upon Middletown.

Eli Cannon Tap Room's third annual Beer Gods festival, while more than 500 years too late for Osiris and Dionysus to enjoy, nonetheless drew 32 local breweries to Middletown's North End Aug. 5 and more than 200 brew fans who sampled unlimited varieties in a fundraiser for the city's youth playhouse.

Larger breweries like Sierra Nevada and Harpoon shared space with local microbreweries Hooker, Olde Burnside, Willimantic Brewing Co Shebeen, Back East and Middletown-based Stubborn Beauty at the Remington Rand building.

Food trucks the Lucky Taco offered Mexican fare, the Whey Station its gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches and Middletown's own NoRA Cupcake Co. featured cupcakes of all flavors. The latter is owned by Carrie Carella, with Ouellette as a junior partner, and is located across the street from Eli's, part of the growing North of Rapallo Avenue enclave of restaurants and shops.

This third annual event which kicked off a weeklong Beer Gods Week at Eli's, was held outdoors in the lot behind Eli's off Kings Avenue and raised an impressive $2,250 for Oddfellows Playhouse of Middletown. It has offered theatrical classes, workshops and the summer Children's Circus for children and young adults ages 2-20 from throughout Middlesex County since 1975.

Festival proceeds totaled $1,750 and for the third year, Eli Cannon's co-owner Phil Ouellette "threw in" $500, he says. He's a huge advocate of Oddfellows, "because it gives kids a place to go and the whole process teaches kids valuable life lessons."

Ouellette says in today's employment market, young people have to really stand out from the crowd of people vying for the same job and public speaking and other social skills, such as "how you animate yourself," give them a leg up on the competition in addition to confidence.

Last year's Beer Gods netted $1,000, with Ouellette making a personal donation of $500.

Matt Pugliese, executive director of Oddfellows, says the funds will "cover nearly all the royalties for the year. Every play we do, we pay out a certain number of royalties, which allows us to do five plays."

Events such as Beer Gods, Pugliese says, is "mutually beneficial. None of us can exist without the other."

Ouellette is no stranger to philanthropy. Early this year, he purchased $300 of outdoor recreation gear for Macdonough Elementary students, who he discovered upon a visit to the school had a less-than-adequate amount of basketballs, footballs and soccer balls for recess.

Last week, when a fire in a third-floor apartment above Eli's displaced adults from two families, Ouellette said he gave everyone affected $60 and told them to go get something to eat and take it easy until he could get the building up to code, livable (and beer-indulging) again.

He keeps in touch with fans on Facebook, and posted a comment after the fire to report no injuries: "Although we love the fact that so many of you feel at home here, for some this is their actual home. We would love it if our sole priority was making sure we get beer and nachos to you all ASAP, that's not our reality. Our priority is to make our displaced tenants whole."

Cleanup from the fire closed Eli's for three days, after which Ouellette promptly opened for business to, in his words, "continue our mission of bringing happiness to the planet."

For the latest on this and all news from Middletown, subscribe to our newsletter, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.