Happy New Year, and welcome to BeerFestivals.org, home of The Beer Festival Calendar!

This is THE place to get info about great places to drink beer around the world. It's brought to you by Ludwig, the beer drinking lion, and his hard-working staff, Maryanne Nasiatka and Paul Ruschmann.

This coming weekend brings us Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, and a (lucky) 13 festivals--plus the final days of San Francisco Beer Week. The festival lineup is headed by Celebrator Beer News's 22nd Anniversary Party in Berkeley, CA.

ahem

Oops! Sorry, Ludwig. We forgot your top three picks. (Opens envelope) They're the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild's Strong Beer Festival in Phoenix; Bock Fest in New Ulm, MN; and the Traverse City (MI) Winter Microbrew & Music Festival.

If you're organizing a festival, Ludwig and his staff would love to hear from you. Be to send us your info and a link so we can add it to the calendar. As always, many thanks to those organizers who have alerted us to upcoming events.

Last year was our most successful ever. We set a new record with 1,017 festivals, and attracted more than 200,000 visitors and recorded over 16 million hits. We also added a blog, called Ludwig Roars, a light-hearted look at beer-related news, places, and events from around the world. We hope you'll stop by often.

There's more...

In addition to the beer festival calendar, this site contains the following:

* The "Beer Traveller Series," a collection of more than 60 articles about beer-drinking destinations;

* "Good Beer Books," Paul's reviews of books that belong on your reference shelf; and

* "Worts of Wisdom."

Finally, a shameless plug for ourselves:

If you're in, or near, Michigan, please consider buying our book, Michigan Breweries. It's a comprehensive guidebook that we keep updated at a dedicated site. Find out why Michigan is The Great Beer State. It makes a great present for the beer lover in your life!

Cheers!