Jordan St. John, beer enthusiast, and Spearhead Brewing Company president Josh Hayter have collaborated to create a beer to support a local charity. The charity they chose was Lunch by George, the food program that runs out of St. George’s Cathedral that his brother, Blake, helps run.

“I think it will have a really big impact. If we have 6,000 cans of beer out there saying, you know, ‘This is our story, this is what Lunch By George does,’ I think that will reach a really wide audience,” Blake St. John said.

“So I’m hoping that it (will inspire) more people to bring in not only donations of food but donations of warm, winter clothing, boots they don’t need anymore, that sort of thing.”

Jordan St. John came up with the aptly named Dragon Slayer, in honour of Saint George, who was said to have slayed a dragon.

“It’s got a great label,” he said. “They’ve designed it with a stained glass window behind Saint George fighting the dragon. It’s cool.”

Dragon Slayer is modelled after English beer Fullers ESB (extra special bitter), said St. John, who used to write a national beer column and is now the editor of “The Growler,” a magazine focused on Ontario’s craft beer industry.

“And we thought, if we made an English-style beer that’s actually kind of Fuller’s ESB-inspired, that would be not only a good beer for an Anglican cathedral, because a lot of those people are British expats, (while) the St. George’s connection allows you to call it Dragon Slayer,” St. John explained over the phone from Toronto, where he teaches at George Brown College.

This isnt’ the first time the brewery has come up with this idea. “Decoy” lager donates partial proceeds to Ducks Unilimited, while its “Queen of Wheat” beer directed $17,000 toward the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity last year.

Photo Credit: KAITLYN BARBOSA