Big Brew, Part 2 (We won!!!)

First and foremost: A shout out to fellow Jerseyans, WHALES, the Woodbridge Homebrewers Ale & Lager Enthusiast Society, for their second-place showing in the American Homebrewers Association’s YouTube video contest.

WHALES’ efforts on Big Brew 2008 (May 3rd) were chronicled by BobbyFromNJ (that's his YouTube handle), and claimed second place in the most-viewed category (more than 1,750 hits as of this writing).

It’s worth mentioning here that some WHALES members are first-round winners in the AHA’s national homebrew competition. Good luck, and we're behind you all the way.

And now for the big moment, for us anyway ...

We won first place in the YouTube contest in the category of "Best Represents AHA Big Brew."

Winning is fun, but we're not going to crow about this too much or let it go to our heads.

But we will say (and underscore) that we’re flattered, immensely so, and honored in an equal measure. And we can’t overlook the other 17 folks whose entries qualified for judging and made it a competition. It was a fun contest, capturing one of the things central to beer: It brings people together. And nothing does that like homebrewing.

Big Brew 2007 was among the first videos we shot and posted online. A year later, we were back at BeerCrafters, doing it again. So it goes without saying that we owe the the folks there in Turnersville a huge round of thanks for availing themselves for an interview, or for just letting us taste their brews.

But it’s not just BeerCrafters and the Gloucester County Home Brewers Club.

It’s everyone – most of the craft brewers in New Jersey, easily – who has put up with our camera over the past year (or longer in some cases, like Flying Fish).

We like to think that we’ve learned something each time out that we've shot in the news-gathering style we rely on, which has hopefully (and we hope, artfully) kept us out of the picture and put the emphasis on the beer and the people making it, celebrating or otherwise just enjoying it.

Because that’s what it’s all about, the beer.