Looking to balance commerce and community, Saint Arnold Brewing Co. is renaming one of its oldest beers in hope of jump-starting sales while supporting a pet project that has broad public appeal.

Beginning Monday, the Houston craft brewery will begin rolling out bottles and six-packs of its brown ale with a new name - Ale Wagger - and more colorful packaging with images of pooches on the labels and cartons.

As part of the rebranding, Saint Arnold will donate $1 from each case of Ale Wagger to the BARC animal shelter as it partners with the city-run organization to promote spay, neuter and adoption efforts.

"Hopefully, the animals will all be healthier and happier," said brewery founder/owner Brock Wagner, whose family has five rescue animals. "Three dogs and two cats at home. I can't take in any more."

Saint Arnold is one of several local breweries, and countless other companies of all types, to offer financial and other support to charities and public institutions. Buffalo Bayou Brewing, for example, made a beer called Figaro for the Houston Grand Opera in honor of its "Barber of Seville" production and 8th Wonder Brewery was active in last fall's effort to save the Astrodome.

More Information BARC by the numbers Annual budget: $12 million Animals taken in: 25,621 since Nov. 9, 2013 Live release rate: 60.5 per-cent for the period ended Sept. 9 Adoption fees: $75 for puppies, $50 for dogs, $35 for kittens and $20 for cats More info: facebook.com/BARCHouston

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Since December, Karbach Brewing Co. has hosted pub crawls and brewed a special beer called Station 68 to benefit the Robert Garner Firefighter Foundation, an aid society established in memory of a Houston firefighter killed while on duty.

Animals often are the beneficiaries of this corporate largesse. Southern Star Brewing in Conroe is hosting a golf tournament to benefit Friends of Texas Wildlife later this month and Katy's No Label Brewing is donating a portion of proceeds from a new beer called Mollie's Bock to the Houston SPCA.

Betsy Gelb, marketing professor at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business, said companies can gain from connecting with popular causes because people transfer their positive feelings about one organization to another.

"There's a lot of people with dogs," she said of the Saint Arnold-BARC effort. "If you get even a small fraction of that, you're doing well."

BARC director Greg Damianoff also understands the power of rebranding.

Five years ago, the city's Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care came under sustained fire for the high numbers of animals it put down. At the time, Damianoff said, just 5 to 6 percent of the animals brought into its shelter were adopted or otherwise released alive.

The organization, renamed BARC Animal Shelter & Adoptions, got that rate up to 60 percent over the past 12 months. It is preparing to open a new adoption center early next year.

Damianoff said he doesn't think Wagner would have supported the agency in such a public manner before it cleaned up its act.

"To me, that was a byproduct of him hearing good things about us," Damianoff said.

Wagner said his primary goal with Ale Wagger is to develop "a really good relationship with BARC," as it has with other charitable causes, from the MS150 to the Orange Show Foundation to Texas Children's Hospital. He noted that the brewery last year donated $14,000 to the 19th century tall ship Elissa in Galveston as part of an ongoing contribution from sales of its India pale ale of the same name.

But he readily acknowledged that Brown Ale was a brand in need of a makeover.

Saint Arnold has grown rapidly the past several years. Production is expected to surpass 60,000 barrels this year, more than six times what it was a decade ago.

Yet Brown Ale, christened 19 years ago at a time when consumers were far less familiar with craft beer styles, has languished behind other Saint Arnold brands even as it has racked up national and world beer awards.

Wagner said there have been discussions of changing the name for at least a decade. And for updating its color scheme.

"Calling it Brown Anything probably isn't the best," Wagner said. "UPS may be the exception to that particular rule."

As for the new name, Gelb, the UH marketing professor, was of two minds. She wasn't sure people would immediately get the ale/tail pun, she said, but she thinks the brewery could reinforce that connection with a "lose the T" campaign on social media.

That might have the added benefit, she said, of getting people to think about substituting beer for their next iced tea.