I need to do this, I must do that, oh that must be done before that…. I have written this blog post so many times and never published it but finally…. here it is The Next Chapter – Tilt & Pour
From back in the day...
Rolling back to 2013, I started Belfast Beer Blog with the simple aim of understanding more about beer as I was working in an off sales, but it quickly evolved into trying to help bring together the developing beer community, through beer reviews, some insights as well as continuous promotion of local events to help showcase the local craft beer scene.
To date, Belfast Beer Blog has published around 63 blogposts (with loads more still in drafts), covering a lot of my own experiences as well as input from our readers and individuals involved within the industry.This was a great time to work with friends and develop this content, but you will see there was a considerable break in content and to be as transparent as possible I will give you an insight to it.
If you do a quick search on the WordPress blog from the blog post about Boundary (12/12/14) to Second Bite of the cherry?(10/10/17) there was almost 3 years between them - this was down to a variety of factors; I went on a self-imposed blogging hiatus due to finishing a degree, finding work, battling work/blog conflicts, lost the fun and in general ensuring it didn’t consume my personal life.
This hiatus was arguably a blessing for me, although at the time I wouldn’t know it.
It allowed me to seethe bigger picture across the industry as a whole and not just elements, identify opportunities & potential threats for our community, meet likeminded individuals and share experiences. This had revived my interest within the industry and brought back the fun concept for me which was important.
This time also allowed me to work with a few good friends in creating this brand and prepare for the next chapter but more on those legends later.
As with anything over the years, projects develop, take different directions & industry evolves; and that is exactly the case here for Belfast Beer Blog. Finally, I was able to bring a series of concepts and ideas from as early as 2013 forward and rebrand in November 2020 as Tilt & Pour.
Why the change?
The industry has gone through so many changes since the blog began in 2013. We’ve seen a real increase in the number of breweries appearing here, beer events, pubs embracing better beer, changes to consumer behaviour, never-mind the fact that we are still going through a pandemic, the continuous ramifications of Brexit and the changing of liquor legislation within NI.
The name change from Belfast Beer Blog has been bubbling away for a long time, as craft beer for years was always viewed as Belfast centric but that’s not the case anymore! There are huge pockets around NorthernIreland and local breweries are becoming more accessible to more outlets.
Tilt & Pour is the natural evolution of what BelfastBeer Blog started out as – an Open discussion platform about the industry, its inner workings, raising profiles and highlighting those who work within it.
All of this with the hope of bridging the gap between consumers & producers, as well as continuing to help build the local beer community.
I hope to look beyond beer reviews and try and bring alternative angles within our industry to light, through discussion pieces, collaboration as well as try and bring back some old concepts – personally, I would love to have a Beer Club up and running again!
As I mentioned earlier the hiatus allowed me to work with a few good friends in creating Tilt & Pour.
- The new, slick website was built by Ali Sisk – Siskmadethis
- All the lovely branding and illustrations were done by Warren Curry – check out more of his work here!
Alongside these heroes, a special shoutout to those who have endured my ramblings about the rebrand and helped drive me back into this project.
As you can see on the site, I have selected some blogs fromBelfast Beer Blog and kept them on the new site, the rest will not be archived but will be available on the Wordpress site. I will be moving most beer reviews to the Instagram account and leaving more detailed pieces for the website.
The addition of version 1 of the Craft Beer Map is live on the Breweries page, I started working on this last year and it has rapidly grown to include 30 operational breweries, 10 contract brands, 46 off sales, 60pubs. We have also started our The Great NI Craft Beer Hunt 2021 to try and make sure we highlight as many local businesses as possible who stock and sell our local breweries/craft beer! Make sure you get involved here to be in with a chance of winning some beery prizes!
Events will eventually be a downloadable calendar that will capture:
- Tours – Taste & Tour - Crafty Beer and Street Eats Tour
- Relevant bar events – Tap takeovers etc
- Beer Dinners
- Home Brew clubs – Anywhere in NI and not justBelfast!
- Taprooms – Bullhouse, Boundary, Mourne Mountains, Beer Hut, Lacada etc.
- And more - feel free to email me and I will update the events page if I am missing anything.
Right, that’s enough, time for a beer and start writing another blog…
Cheers
