Orange Hat Brewing Hosts Fourth Annual Homebrew Competition and Public Tasting

About twenty homebrewers squared off at Orange Hat Brewing Company’s Hardin Valley taproom on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, as the brewery opened its doors for a public tasting from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM to benefit the Brewing and Distilling Center Scholarship Fund. General Admission tickets were listed at $20.00 plus a $0.50 service fee on Orange Hat’s event listing, and each ticket included unlimited samples and a limited-edition collector’s glass.

The event took place at Orange Hat’s Hardin Valley address, 10246 Hardin Valley Rd, Knoxville, TN 37932, and organizers ran a program built around the event-page promise: “Unlimited Homebrew Tasting – Sip your way through creative, small-batch brews from passionate homebrewers.” Co-owner Rodney Ramin said the brewery’s commitment to education drove the fundraiser: “Part of Orange Hat’s pillars has always been education, and the co-owner and I started out as homebrewers.”

Orange Hat promoted brewer sign-ups and the Feb. 28 date on social media using the handle orangehatbrewingco, and the event page included brewer sign-up instructions in all caps: IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BREW FOR THE EVENT, PLEASE CONTACT: beckzach05@gmail.com. The event page also showed a standard ticketing display anomaly—a “Total $0.00” line—while explicitly listing the $20 + $0.50 price, a detail attendees and reporters should note when checking ticket confirmations.

The scholarship angle was front and center: Todd “Doc” White, president of the Brewing and Distilling Center, framed the fundraiser as a recruitment and access effort for the brewing trades, saying, “We help people change their careers and change their lives and so it’s for folks who may not have the means to get into this industry and this is to help folks do that.” White also described the center’s mission to educate people who want to turn a homebrew hobby into a trade.

The event plugged into a larger homebrewing surge: the American Homebrewing Association estimates about 1.1 million homebrewers in the United States, with nearly 40 percent having started within the last four years. Orange Hat’s co-founders, who began as homebrewers themselves, used the competition to highlight homebrewing as craft and a pipeline into the industry; Ramin added, “Brewing itself, if you really get into it, it’s culinary, it’s engineering, it’s art, it’s so many different things,” reinforcing the educational thrust behind the scholarship fundraiser.

One administrative note: Orange Hat’s event page contained an internal date inconsistency, with body copy once listing January 24 while the header, social posts, and event metadata listed Feb. 28. Multiple event materials showed the Feb. 28, 12:00 PM–4:00 PM schedule and the Hardin Valley location, and organizers encouraged brewers to reach out via beckzach05@gmail.com for future participation or questions.