The Terrible Twos

September 5, 2012, by Crafty Pint

The Terrible Twos

Hey everyone – The Crafty Pint is two! Well, in all honesty, we turned two at the weekend, but Crafty Towers has been infiltrated by all manner of unpleasantries over the past ten days, with everything from hand, foot and mouth, flu, sinusitis, nausea, rashes and goodness knows what else taking their turn with various people. As such, the regular diet of stouts, pales and pilsners has been replaced with Panadeine, Tamiflu, olive leaf extract, copious Beroccas, antibiotics, lengths of aloe vera; much like a massive fight between your local GP and a Chinese medicine man, a fight in which nobody wins.

Still, we’re here and just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone who’s supported us this far: the readers that keep coming back, the brewers for brewing their beer, the venues, promoters and event organisers, the writers, filmmakers and bloggers who’ve contributed to the site and everyone else who is playing a role in the craft beer revolution.

Speaking of which, we used to get pulled up for having the phrase “craft beer revolution” on the front page of the site from the day we launched but, two years on, there can be little doubt that a major change is taking place in Australian beer culture. The seeds had been there for some time, it just seems that the industry located an accelerator pad in the past few years; now it just keeps on evolving and spreading into new territories, both in terms of audience, locations and beer styles.

Returning to the terrible twos, some might recall that we celebrated turning one with the Festival of the Frothy at Federation Square. You may also have noticed a total absence of noise surrounding celebrations for turning two. That’s because there won’t be any. The Festival of the Frothy has, to date, been run every two years and, combined with The Crafty Pint’s heavy involvement in running events for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival this year and the huge amount of work that went into the second Good Beer Week – not to mention launching The People’s Pint – we’re easing up on the event side of things for now, conserving energy for a fresh assault in 2013. That said, we’re thinking there should be some sort of Crafty Christmas Cracker…

We’re also lining up a few tweaks to the site and the introduction of some new regular features. Some are freshly conceived, others we’ve been meaning to kick start since day one but have been put on the back burner after we rather underestimated just what a high-octane, crazy ride The Crafty Pint would end up being. For the most part, the aim is to bring you closer to brewers and punters alike, which brought us to thinking we should ask you, the punters, what you’d like to see here. After all, some of you have been with us for two years now and must have thought: “If only Crafty would do this…”.

So, if you’ve got something in mind that we should be doing, speak up.

And here’s to the next two. Just imagine where craft beer is going to be by then… Cheers!

(We’re off to toast with some salty water and a fresh hit of codeine…)

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