At a crucial time for craft breweries in Ontario, The Growler is welcoming two familiar faces to our leadership team.
Our first editor, David Ort, is leaving The Growler to pursue new opportunities. David started as the editor in early 2018 when The Growler was getting ready to launch in Ontario. He took us through our first year when we greatly expanded coverage for our brewery directory. That meant going from the GTA and Golden Horseshoe in the first issue to include the whole province by issue number four.
Through his second year, The Growler continued to reach more readers with coverage of what’s important to Ontario beer drinkers and the breweries we love.
Our contributing editor, Crystal Luxmore, took over as Editor on April 1st. Crystal has written a column in all eight issues of The Growler—on topics ranging from a guide to the northern breweries in Ontario to looking into how Ontario breweries are adapting to make it easier for their employees to balance work and family life.
Crystal, an Advanced Cicerone®, has won several awards for her writing, including a gold at the 2019 North Guild of Beer Beer Writers Awards for her Growler story “Brutal Honesty: A brewery owner shares his survival guide after losing $800K to DME.”
Certified Cicerone®, beer writer and Certified Beer Judge, Tara Luxmore, will be coming on our new Contributing Editor and Social Media Manager. Tara won an NAGBW award for Best Beer & Food Writing in LCBO’s Food & Drink Magazine, to which she is a frequent contributor and recipe developer.
Crystal and Tara—also known as The Beer Sisters—have been fixtures in the Ontario craft beer scene. As well as writing about beer, they teach sensory classes for the Cicerone Certification Program, lead tutored tastings for corporate groups, program beer menus for major venues, and have raised over $50,000 through the Beer Sisters Annual Charity Hopspiel.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 crisis, The Growler Ontario and B.C. staff have been laid off, and the summer issue has been postponed. The Growler Ontario blog will publish less frequently during this time. However, please keep in touch with Crystal and Tara: crystal@thegrowler.ca or taral@the growler.ca with any story ideas or news items, and reach out to them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.