Happy (Small-World) Birthday, Beau!

There are some interesting things you find out when you open a brewery. For example, there is a virtual army of breweriana collectors in Eastern Europe. Every week I get about 30 emails that read something like this:

hi,
my name is IVO and i am beer labels (and coasters & crown caps) collector from CROATIA ... i have a collection of 18000 different beer labels but i don`t have any from your brewery ...
please if you can help me and send me few of your brewery labels ... please send them
to my address :
IVO SPEC
MANDALINSKIH ZRTAVA 11B
22000 SIBENIK CROATIA
the smole things are very pleased to me!!!
thank you in advance .....
IVO

Or one of my personal favourites, which I have received at least once a week since we launched the website. It cracks me up, because; well, we don’t even have any labels.

I AM NAGY ZOLTÁN ,HUNGARIAN COLLECTOR. I'MINTERESTING ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTION AND,I WOULD LIKE TO SEND ME SAVE FROM THASE ADDRESS:

ALGYŐ FAZEKAS UTCA 60 6750 HUNGARY
THANK YOU YOUR FEVAR

The first week we were on the web, we were so blown away that our reach had made it all the way to Poland that we were actually responding to every single one, explaining that we weren’t in bottles yet, but if they were patient we’d send them one as soon as possible. After a couple hundred, we got the picture and now we make a quick joke and hit delete*.

*Note: there are a lot of legit breweriana collectors, and we’re careful to respond and always send out what we can if you send a SASE!

On the flip side, we’ve been making contacts with all sorts of Beaus, Beauchesnes and people who grew up in Vankleek Hill who are tickled pink that there is a Beau’s All Natural Brewing company out on the East siiide, yo. Here are a couple of examples:

Danielle and Jacques Beauchesne from St. Isidore were first to get in touch with us after hearing about our company.

Julie Beauchesne recently sent us an email to get in touch from North Carolina, US.

Kelly-Ann Benoit sent us an email telling us how, after trying our beer at the Priests Mill in Alexandria, she drove up to VKH to see the brewery. No one was there at the time…we hope to have regular hours soon, by the way.

And then there is the email we got from Judy Conway…She got in touch when she was out at the Earl of Sussex with her son, whose name is Beau. According to Judy, Beau was excited to hear that there was a beer that shared his first name, and thought the beer was pretty tasty to boot. Beau’s birthday was coming up, so Judy wanted to know if she could buy some Beau’s merch as a present.

So, here’s where things get funny… She explained that he was a bodybuilder from the same lineage as Canada’s famous strongman, Louis Cyr (see right), and sent in a picture of her Beau (see left).

Coincidentally, my grandmother’s maiden name is Cyr and I grew up being told that I was from the same lineage, too. I’ll let you be the judge…

So, happy birthday to my long-lost relative Beau, I’m glad you dig the beer and I hope you like your present, too.