Movembeer

This week each year is a special time for me. Not just because I live in Melbourne and get to be swept up in a completely indefinable sensation of happiness that seems to pervade this city on the first Tuesday in November as 24 horses spend three minutes running around the track at Flemington. I get a warm fuzzy feeling because it was on Cup Day eight years ago that the original Beer Blokes blog was born.

While the blog, like so many others, has been consigned to history, replaced (hopefully thankfully) by my regular musings here at Brews News, it allowed me to make many friends in the craft beer community and also to hone my writing skills. But there was one element that I am very proud of and would like to ask your indulgence here. Movembeer.

Movembeer was created in response to that rather more well known charitable cause, Movember, in which grown men grow facial hair to raise money for Men’s Health initiatives. It occurred to me after year two or three of Movember that some blokes just really should not, ever, under any circumstances, grow a Mo. Ever. I’m looking at you, dodgy looking bloke in the Carlton Draught Slo-Mo ad campaign. And you too, Hitler. And David Hassellhoff in your Knight Rider days.

Now, rather than lament the fact that I often had to fork out reasonable sums of my hard-earned to support mates in their highly admirable goal of making themselves look like serial killers or hobos or hobo serial killers, I decided to make a fundraising attempt of my own. I encouraged all my readers to join in Movembeer. I received a favourable response from both of them and together we set about changing the world one beer at a time.

Movembeer worked simply; drink beers that featured the letters ‘MO’ and then donate the amount spent to either Beyond Blue or another Men’s Health group or donate it to a mate doing Movember. You get to drink good beer and you get to do a good thing for your fellow man. More importantly, you get to use your imagination. You can probably all think of fairly easy candidates that slot neatly into the ‘MO’ criteria such as MOosehead, MOrnington Peninsula Brewery, MOuntain Goat, MOnteith’s or MOondog. Simple.

But, as I have discovered over the past five years, almost any beer you really want to drink can be squeezed into the Movembeer mold if you just squint your eyes and strain your brain hard enough. Id like to invite all Brews News readers to nominate their own Movembeers and post them below. I reckon I can even dig up a few of the remaining copies of the Critics’ Choice and Beer Lovers Guides as suitable incentives.

Get to it, and remember – Give that they may NOT have to grow. A Mo.