Uncasking Any Given Beer

ANYONE FOLLOWING me on Twitter will have seen mention in the past few days of working on a new blog. Granted, in the day job I do an awful lot of working on blogs for a lot of people, but I love getting to spend time on personal projects, in particular Any Given Food.

A few months ago, August to be precise, and during the Kilkenny Arts Festival no less, myself and Steve O’Rourke found ourselves chatting, as we do, about online projects. He’d been thinking about getting into food and drink blogging, I was looking at adding a beer string to the bow, we joked about starting Any Given Beer as a fierce rival / hot younger sister of Any Given Food.

Joking turned to serious discussion, Skype calls, constant whirring of Dropbox and next thing you know, we’ve got a blog in the making. Today, while Steve raises at Whitewater Belfast Ale and I sip away on an Eight Degrees’ Ochtober Fest brew, the covers are off and Any Given Beer is open for business.

Structurally, both it and AnyGivenFood.com are similar though obviously it’s the content that will differ. Between the two of us we’ll have a few posts a week on Irish and international craft beers, beer events, news and home brewing (something I’ve been dying to get stuck into since moving house last month – have space, will brew mentality here).

It is in its infancy stages but we couldn’t open the doors empty handed so we’ve posted reviews of some of our favourite Irish beers of the moment, plus one or two other tidbits into the mix as well.

If you want to have a chat about why we’re doing the site, if you would like to get involved, if you’re in the brewing game and have news to share then, just as I am with food, I’m all ears.

Myself and Steve have worked together before, most recently on De\Code magazine which came to a close at the end of the summer. The attentions for the two of us now turn to craft beer and brewing. This doesn’t and shouldn’t have any impact of course on Any Given Food and only serves to tie the two blogs even closer together. Granted, I may need to apply for permission to get a few extra hours in the week but what harm.

So I raise a glass to the new blog, urge you to check it out at AnyGivenBeer.com, find it on Facebook or indeed on Twitter and if you’ve got any queries or anything to share, give me a shout.

Back to work I go…