Sorry for the lack of posting on this here 'ol blog lately. My wife asked me the other day how I was managing to keep this updated and it hit me, I haven't been. Things have been quite busy in my life at the moment and trying to find the time to sit down and hammer away at posting something here has been challenging to say the least.
I have been out on the road a bit for my job with
TAPS. At the end of July and into the earlier days of August I loaded up the TAPS trailer and set off to visit a number of breweries in Ontario to kick-start a little initiative that the magazine is working on, hitting up places like
Grand River, Wellington, F&M, Cameron's, Flying Monkey's, Great Lakes, Steam Whistle, Muskoka Cottage Brewery, Lakes of Bays and the Black Creek Pioneer Village. It's always great to get out of the office and connect with individuals in the industry. It's a refreshing change of pace.
Lately I've been back in the office working on the 8th annual
Canadian Brewing Awards (CBAs). We took our old entry forms and style guidelines and made some significant changes with the hopes that we would be able to attract more breweries from around the country. We also had all the forms translated into French, something that should have been done years ago. So far the response has been nothing sort of tremendous. This year's edition of the CBAs will have over 70 breweries participating and the amount of beer to be judged has almost doubled in volume since 2008!
The judging takes place over two days in September and the awards show and gala will take place during the first ever
Toronto Beer Week (TBW September 20-26). Unfortunately the CBA gala is not open to the public, but TAPS will be holding a contest, in conjunction with TBW, to provide a number of tickets that can be won leading up to the event.
Speaking of TBW, that is the other thing that is eating up a lot of precious blogging time. I sit on the Executive Committee of TBW with
John Bowden, Cass Enright and Rob Symes, and we have been very busy working on getting this up and running. We have a passport put together that should be ready this week (you can get a glimpse of it on the TBW
website - working on making it more readable), which will be available at ALL participating establishments very soon (breweries and licensees). I'm doing the website as we go, something I've had to learn on the run.
We managed to sign up over 40 pubs/bars/restaurants, 3 brewpubs, 15 breweries and 5 Importers to participate. Not bad for year one.
The one question that keeps coming up is, "when are there going to be events posted?" Quick answer - we're working on it. We have to wait until the participants notify us with their event details, but the minute we get them they'll be posted on the website for all to see. We have some starting to trickle in, but please note that the ones being planned are going to be great!
And, on top of all of the above, we have a Fall Issue of TAPS to put together! So back to the start, yes I'm busy, but I'm loving every second of it. Thanks for continuing to visit the blog, even with the lack of fresh content.
