Blood for Beer Trade Nixed By New York Blood Center

Brooklyn-based Kelso brewery is pushing ahead with a promotional intended to encourage blood donations, despite cold feet from the New York Blood Center, which asked not to be associated with the blood drive.

Kelso's "Pint for Pint" drive promises a free pint of beer to anyone presenting a recent receipt from donating blood. But Kelso brewmaster Kelly Taylor tells Brooklyn Paper the New York Blood Center has asked that its name be removed from the promotional: "They said we degraded the process of giving blood... It was like, ‘We don’t want to encourage people to give blood and drink beer.’ Well, why not? These are adults. And what’s wrong with beer, anyway? The families that need blood don’t care how we get the blood. They just want the blood." Nevertheless, Kelso complied with the Blood Center's request, and the brewery's website now encourages donors to give at the "blood donation location" of their choice.

In the meantime, a number of Brooklyn bars have joined the promotion, so once you've emptied your veins of all that useless, non-alcoholic blood, you can replenish with life-sustaining suds at places like D.B.A., Spuyten Duyvil, and Bierkraft, to name a few. (Details.)