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.

There are 18 festivals lined up for this coming weekend. Ludwig, who's sick to death of looking at snowpiles, made the Kona Brewers Festival his top pick. Rounding out his Top Three are the River City Brewers Festival in Memphis and the London Drinker Beer and Cider Festival in the British capital.

Starkbierzeit, Munich's annual Lenten celebration of strong beer, is also going strong. We had to mention this because Paul got quoted in a Wall Street Journal story about Starkbierzeit. WSJ correspondent William R. Snyder calls the celebration "an insider's alternative to Oktoberfest," and we agree whole-heartedly.

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.

We're off to a strong start in 2010, with over 50,000 unique visitors and more than 4 million hits. Last year, more than 200,000 visitors stopped by, and accounted for over 16 million hits.) We're also on track to break last year's all-time high 1,017 festivals.

tap. tap.

What's that, Ludwig?

And don't forget his blog, Ludwig Roars, which offers a light-hearted look at beer-related news, places, and events from around the world. We hope you'll stop by often. In fact, Ludwig insists.

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!