Welcome one and all to Bru Haroo!

Welcome to Bru Haroo!

A new web community dedicated to a mutual appreciation and love of artisan and craft brews – be it a beer or cider or perhaps something in between – and I wouldn’t rule it out these days with some of the interesting brews being created!

It’s early days for Bru Haroo! with plenty of Tweeting and Facebook activity already underway – sharing information about great beers from British and international breweries – especially the US who have been pioneers with their amazingly delicious and hoppy craft beers which are the real driving force behind the renaissance that’s happen right now on both sides of the pond.

More and more people are becoming tired and bored of the mass produced, mass filtered and conditioned toilet filler that costs nothing to make with regards to money, ingredients, creativity, passion and sweat – where the master brewer probably wears a lab coat, hair net and has rats in cages testing the generic and tasteless “amber nectar” before it ends up in a characterless pub’s microwave meal deal for a fiver – and the final sting is even without the crap burger or curry you get little change out of a fiver for this squalid liquid. Phew and breath……

These days, everyone has to work that little harder for every penny – so people have really started to wake up and spend their money more wisely – buying delicious magnificent artisan brews created with love, passion, imagination and quality ingredients – where every sip tells a story and warms the heart. And where less is definitely more.

More and more people are starting to go local and find that it’s a journey that is so much more than just food and drink – it awakens the soul, offers healthier living and drives great conversation and friendships.

For me, getting into craft beer got me into so much more – meeting great people, discovering lovely locations and eating delicious artisan food – seeking out farmer markets and reputable family run butchers rather than using a supermarket all the time – it changes your life in so many positive ways.

If we eat and drink mass produced factory rubbish we just become another part of the process – and lose a little bit of our identity too – we become a factory fed generic human race.

Don’t get me wrong there is still a place for the big guys if they do the right thing for the right reasons – I fell in love with Pilsner Urquell after a trip to Prague 15 years ago – and this is still one of my all time favourite Pilsners and still a quality and pure product.

So this site is for anyone, like me, that when they tasted their first craft beer or oak barrelled vintage cider they immediately knew what they had been missing and that life would never be the same again – and with a grin as wide as the Cheshire cat (possibly assisted by the ABV) – the love affair with these brews was back for good and would never go away.

Beer and brewing has been around since day one and has helped build the great civilisations of the world – it offers more diversity and endless possibilities, more than any other drink – and we have to thank our American cousins for what’s happening right now – with pioneers from Boston (the Boston Beer Company), and for me personally when I had my first Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Smuttynose IPA – these are the beers that reignited the flame!

So please watch this space – I’ll be opening up the site to a community of like minded individuals – so we can share our love of the good life and wonderful brews.

In the meantime I’ll be scouring the net on a daily basis looking for interesting articles that talk about our favourite pastime! I’ll be checking out what festivals are coming up around the UK that give us the chance to sample some wonderful brews with like minded people – and will be posting information about these via this site, my Facebook Page and Twitter.

Finally what’s Haroo! all about I hear one of you maybe ask – well it’s an exclamation of excitement when something positive happens to someone in a community – so an expressive word that goes off in my head when the first sip tells me this guy knows how to brew! Some also say the expression comes from Ireland – and is a cry of Victory when the battle has been won! So there you go… And Bru – well that’s just basic bad spelling!

Please continue to checkout my tweets and Facebook page for more info – knowing the info is useful and interesting to even a couple of you helps inspire and motivate me. I hope to see you soon when I launch the community aspect of the site – you can preregister your interest using the the contact form here

Happy drinking, brewing and living

Paul Butler, founder and fellow brewer