Na zdraví! // Holiday update from Brussels Beer City
This brief update is coming to you not from Brussels, but from a small campsite just outside of Central Prague. I'm on holidays! Getting ready to leave, and then actually trying to enjoy my time off, explains to some extent why there have been no new posts on the blog in the last month.
Add to that an uptick in activity at my proper job (the one which pays my wages), several paid commissions for other publications (more on that below), and some recurring issues with stress and anxiety over the last six months (try two years), and my commitment to an article every two weeks, subsequently watered down to every three, has now become one article a month. For now.
I say for now because I expect this to change again in the autumn. And this time for the better. As of September I will be going on seven months of parental leave, courtesy of the largesse of the Belgian social welfare system. Most of my newly freed-up time will, to be fair, spent discharging my parental duties. But it will also hopefully release some of the stress I put on myself to put this blog, other work, and sundry events I'm involved in, together.
Coming this autumn
And that means more frequent blog posts and several other exciting ideas that may see the light of day between now and the start of 2020 - a newsletter, more events (hire me for tours and tastings!), something I'm cooking up with Belgian Beer and Food Magazine, maybe even a podcast, and rumblings about a festival...
July 2019 also marks two years since the launch of this blog, so if you've gotten this far down, here's a highlights reel of some of my favourite articles by me published here and elsewhere over the last 12 months, in no particular order:
Nanobrasserie L’Ermitage – Brussels’ urban art brewers - a profile for Belgian Beer and Food Magazine on Anderlecht's newest brewery
“We always brew what we want” // A History of Brasserie de la Senne in 5 Beers - does what it says on the tin, for Brussels' epochal brewery
Nighthawks // Dekkera, or the making of a modern Brussels neighbourhood bar - one of my favourite new bars in Brussels
Drinking Banana Beer in Rwanda – An Inauthentic Search for Authenticity in Kigali - self-explanatory, for Pellicle
The heat is on // Climate change is coming for Brasserie Cantillon - checked in with these guys at Carnivale Brett last month, interesting results starting to leak out from the project
Damme, that’s good: the Irish brewer beating Belgium at its own game - the best Hiberno-Belgian brewery in West Flanders
A Creeping Dread // Writing about beer, and living with anxiety - explains the sometimes-long hiatuses between posts on the blog