I may have CRABS . . .

Well, we are trying to organize. The beer establishment has got us down and we want our voices heard! We want quality beer, decent prices, good advice, and good wages . . . well, who does not want good wages. So, it is time to organize a local homebrewing club.

My friend Jamey and I have been talking about starting a homebrewing club in the Charlottesville area for a while now. The last time I went digging for one, I found some references to a club called "The Back Door Brewers" on several homebrewing sites. I sent an email to the address listed and got a quick response back saying the club was no longer meeting. Basically, they wished they had not been listed on the brewing sites because the organizer still gets emails about it years after the club disbanded.

This gives me hope . . . as there may be other people interested in homebrewing in Charlottesville and we just have to find them. I am hopeful that with a simple website and some meetings at local pubs, we might find a cool group of people that like to make beer, have fun, and exchange ideas. Thus, the Charlottesville Radical Ale Brewing Society (CRABS) will soon be born.

So, I fired the idea off to my art-talented brother, who, while pursuing a career in engineering, is still an awesome artist. I was expecting some general ideas, but he sent back several draft designs within an hour. I have included a couple of them here. I thought he just modified some things he found on the web, but no, he just free-hand designed them using Illustrator. Simply amazing!

The overall winner of the logos was this one. It is my favorite and is based off of one of my brother's hobbies, geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/). He had a travel bug called Steamey the Crab and liked how it looked. Thus, the CRABS mascot will be "Steamey" as well. He even drew an anchor tattoo on Steamey's claw. Simply great.

I hope to have more information about CRABS soon, as several of us are meeting next week to start the group off. What better way to do it than meeting at a local brewpub to sample cask-conditioned ales . . . Yum!