What’s The Point Of These Forums?

[GuingesRock]

I wrote something about this the other night after a few beers. I deleted it and here’s the re-write.

I have changed my perspective a bit lately, more towards what I think of as the “Chalmers principal” ….Chalmers stays up to 3 am writing his craft brewing blog for craft brewing (http://acbeerblog.ca/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). He has a friend who helps him with it. If you sign up to that blog you will receive their work every Friday in your email inbox and you won’t be disappointed. What Chris (Chalmers) said to me in a private message, was he does the things he does to help the brewers along. He has a soft spot for new brewers and organizes demonstrations, but he is also helping and promoting the commercial people who are working to make a go of it.

Initially, on these forums, I wanted to share the excitement of my new hobby (brewing), with like-minded people, and I also have a streak that wants to impress people and needs encouragement and support. Is that a bad thing? Any way, you can get that support here. I also had a hunger for knowledge and found much information here. The most valuable thing from a site like this, I think, is sharing experience.

I have been trying to help Mark get his new Canada wide brewing site going, to support brewers, new and old, who are not local and don’t have access to this site. He has funded that and set it up by himself …another good brewer with his heart in the right place. I know a lot of the top brewers on Twitter, as there is a strong BOTY community on there, but getting people to post on a beer site is like pulling hen’s teeth. A lot have had bad forum experiences and given up on that avenue. If you think it is a good idea and can duplicate your posts on there then maybe that might help. It isn’t competition to this site at all, no more than one of us writing a beer book would be. It’s about spreading information and advancing craft brewing in Canada.

I think I described the Brewnosers once as a huge ant hill with everyone working together to produce something great …one ant by himself doesn’t get very far, and I might as well say it again …I had a lot of help from Brewnosers with my brewing.

I left a few sites in my time, and it’s always the same kind of thing that pisses me off enough to leave, and it is always brewers running down other brewers to improve their own stance (that never works). It’s usually me who gets attacked as I’m an easy target, I don’t conform to common ideas and I’m not Canadian. I get fuming mad when I see another brewer being dissed or run down on a forum, because of my own bad experiences, and I’m not afraid of speaking up.

Never degrade or run down a fellow brewer to improve your stance. We're all in this together, and that's what craft brewing is, and should always be, about ...Ask Chalmers

Nothing is perfect, there’s people on forums, but what are everyone else’s experiences of forums, both good and bad???

[chalmers]

Geez, way to pull back the curtain, GRock! I was hoping people would think berley/Shawn (who is an equal/very often more than equal contributor to the blog) and I write it in 10 minutes, but felt like it was properly researched and edited.

I contribute to the blog and here to promote the great homebrew and commercial beers and brewers that I already enjoy, and to do my little part to improve the beer landscape here in AtlCan. I already spent plenty of time seeking out new beers and breweries for my own enjoyment, so when Cheesehead/Greg (the founder of ACBeerBlog) asked me to take it over, it was a no brainer.

When I joined the group ~8 years ago, I was definitely a beer newbie, and learned a lot from the group, and so try to give back as much as possible. We've all had bad homebrew (sometimes our own) and commercial beer (local and mega-corp), so I'm hoping that what I'm doing helps to improve both. In the end, it's a very selfish goal.

[GuingesRock]

Selfish bugger Chris

I forgot to mention the part you play in setting up competitions. Over the past year I have come to realize that beer competitions are an essential part of the craft beer movement. Competitions continually help to improve the standard of craft brewing in Canada, they help to preserve historic beers and also to advance newer styles. They encourage creativity and better brewing. Competing is another aspect of home brewing that can be a lot of fun, and fun is perhaps what it is primarily all about. There's a huge comradery (definition - comradery is the spirit of friendship and community in a group) among competitive brewers, and I think I mentioned, I think comradery is important.

It's the judges, competition organizers and helpers, breweries who put on competitions, and people who spearhead all this, such as Jeff Pinhey (Brewnoser), who devote their time to training judges.

There are many aspects to brewing that can be rewarding. I'm on a competition kick this year. Next year it will be something else. Maybe I'll train as a judge ...Who knows. Which ever direction I chose to go in, I can be sure that the brewing community and forums such as this will be there to help, and in turn, I'll be there trying to do my bit, even if it's just helping broaden the horizon, helping to get a new forum going, or teaching a new brewer, if I can get the opportunity to do that.