One of the results of my unintended hiatus from blogging during August through October was that my inbox filled up with assorted blurbs and announcements that I might’ve posted about, had I had the time.
It’s obviously too late to do much with the more time-sensitive stuff, but while doing some email clean-up and sorting today, I came across a few things that are still worth mentioning:
- I expect that most of you will have already heard about this, as it’s been all over the beer blogs and magazines for months now, but in case you’ve somehow missed it: One of North America’s top drink writers, Rick Lyke, was successfully treated for prostate cancer early this year. Following his recovery, he launched Pints For Prostates, a campaign to raise awareness of PSA testing, one of the best ways for prostate cancer to be detected before it’s too late. Since my day job is with Cancer Care Ontario, I know how many men are affected by prostate cancer, and important it is to get tested, so I’m more than happy to support the cause.
- Joe Redner at Cigar City Brewing, a soon-to-open microbrewery down in Tampa, emailed a while back to let me about their blog where they’ve been documenting the entire process of getting the brewery together. I finally spent some time poking through the blog this weekend, and it’s a pretty fascinating journey they’ve been on. Hope I’ll be able to get my hands on some of their brews when they open (which should be before the end of the year by the looks of things).
- Ed Westin wants me to mention California Beerzine, an online magazine that fittingly covers beers in California. I’m a bit confused by the site, as the top banner says “FIRST ISSUE” even though they launched in July and are supposed to be publishing monthly. It looks like there have been a couple of things posted in the past few months, but perhaps things aren’t going as smoothly as they had hoped? Whatever the case, the content that’s up there worth a peek.
- They tell me that the kids today are into something called “social networking”. Which I guess explains the existance of sites like Kegerator Social Network (launched in September) and Democracy’s Drink (which recently passed the 500 member mark).
- Joel Mayer wrote me a nice note saying that he enjoyed BBB, and inviting me to check out his blog, The Alemonger. So I did, and while he posts even less frequently than I do (I didn’t think that was possible!), what’s there is good stuff. Write more, Joel!
- And jeez, I just realised that I never got around to mentioning CASK!, a group that came together in the summer to raise the awareness of cask ale in Toronto and surrounding area. The four founders of the group – Mirella Amato, Maz Brereton, Robert Hughey and Nick Pashley – decided that they wanted a fifth member in the core group, and I was very flattered to be asked to fill the position. Busy schedules for all of us mean that we’re still in a bit of a “getting shit together” phase, and one of our first projects – a bus festival to the upcoming Buffalo Cask Festival – had to be cancelled due to lack of interest. We did, however, pull off a successful “cask vs. keg” event at C’est What last week (although I sadly had to miss it due to a scheduling conflict), and plans are afoot for several things in the new year. Stay tuned…
