Well it’s been an interesting week thus far. Earlier in the week a co-worker brought up the fact that I hadn’t updated my blog in a while. I thought to myself what blog because aside from this post there are only three other active posts. Then there is one I deleted and another I never finished (one day I will share my love of BeWitched Deli with the world). So the bottom line is I haven’t spent a lot of time adding to this blog! In our conversation about beer my co-worker noted that I should write about craft beers, adding a post each time I have an impressive new beer. He said it would give him information to assist with buying new beers. I always think to myself there are too many blogs about beer so if I do one it needs to be different. Plus I already tend to tweet every time I have a good beer, which might be overkill!

Later in the week I got frustrated by the fact that there were two beer festivals in the area on the same day, of which I wanted to attend both of them. I thought to myself why didn’t they plan better and well I started stirring the pot! I expressed this in a few tweets but I wasn’t really thinking about the big picture. At this point I decided I was going to write a blog post, not this one and honestly the post I was going to write will never be written for good reason but it has prompted some great ideas.

In preparation I started contacting people from various breweries as well as the founders of some of our local beer festivals. First I wrote an e-mail to Omar Ansari the founder of Surly Brewing Company and the current President of the MN Craft Brewer’s Guild. I reached out to Matt Kenevan the founder of the Beer Dabbler and the Growler. I followed up with David Berg head brewer at August Schell Brewing Company and last but not least  Mark Opdahl from the St. Paul Summer Beer Fest. My thought was they would each write me back if and when they had time and then I would come up with my post based on some questions I had asked in my e-mails.

Within 30 minutes I got a call from Surly Brewing Company, not realizing at first that it was Omar on the other end of the line. He said he was on his way to Duluth for All Pints North and had 20 to 30 minutes to talk if I had time. Did I have time, of course I had time but I will elaborate on that conversation in a future post. I received an e-mail from David Berg within an hour and a response from Mark Opdahl in under two hours. Later in the evening when I was on a Brews Cruise  I picked up a voice mail from Matt Kenevan. The overall message from each of these people was that Craft Beer should be a positive experience. They all support each other in their various endeavors, which is really refreshing especially since at times they are competing for customers. I also decided from at least one of these correspondences that stirring the pot wasn’t productive (not sure why I didn’t come to that conclusion sooner).

Talking and writing about Craft Beer should be positive because really the point of this movement, if you want to call it a movement, is to get people to try new beers and educate them on what is out there. Too often beer sites, blogs and Twitter are not positive, people constantly stir the pot. So based on these e-mails, calls and a discussion with my wife my plan is to write a positive blog about Craft Beer. Due to my track record of not updating my blog I will set my goal at one post a week and if there are more it’s a bonus. The blog may reside here or I might use one of the various beer related URL’s I own to host it. Again the overall message will be about the positives in the Craft Beer Community. That’s not to say I won’t review a beer and give my feedback but a wise friend once told me that for every beer you might not like there are plenty of people out there that will. Again thanks to Omar, Matt, David and Mark for your feedback.

Cheers!
-Tucker