As the cold tendrils of Winter close around us and fill us with the desire to spend the next three months hibernating on our couch with our favourite imperial stout, all we can do is look forward longingly to the next festival season where we can again venture out and enjoy the world outside our living rooms. For Sydney beer lovers, the announcement of Sydney Craft Beer Week 2012 in October was just the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel we were looking for.

Last year’s inaugural Sydney Craft Beer Week was in many ways a fledgling affair, with a modest handful of craft beer events at select venues around the city, some minor online media coverage, as well as some inevitable teething problems that didn’t serve to dampen the mood at the events.

In short, it was just the beginning, with good beer and good cheer enjoyed by all who managed to attend the festivities.

2012 Sydney Craft Beer Week promises to build on the popularity and promise of last year, with an ever-increasing army of appreciative punters lining up for a craftier brew and a growing number of venues in the harbour city getting the message that craft beer is here to stay.

Again Todd Venning and the boys from Beermen.tv are at the helm of the week-long festival. This time they have mustered the help of Umbrella, a professional events and artist management company to help spread the word.

Craft Beer Week in 2012 forms part of Sydney’s month-long Crave International Food Festival, and one of the key objectives of Craft Beer Week 2012 is to emphasise the strong relationship between craft beer and good food, something that more and more people and venues are discovering.

The call is now out for local breweries, restaurants and bars to register their events. Taking part in Sydney Craft Beer Week is not only a great marketing opportunity but also to be at the front line of a craft beer movement on the brink of bursting into a fully-fledged revolution.

The Beermen’s official press release emphasises the desire to engage with a broad spectrum of people; pairing beer with food and other entertainments to convert any remaining sceptics that the beer scene is nothing to fear or – worse – look down upon. In this vein, venues are encouraged to get inspired and come up with fun and creative events to entice everybody –not just the craft beer converts –to come down and have a taste.

While most of the marketing and legwork will be performed by the Beermen and Umbrella, the cogs of the Sydney Craft Beer Week will be the events themselves; I for one can’t wait to see what Sydney’s elite restaurateurs and hoteliers can come up with.

Event registration is open now until June 29.

More information is available at sydneycraftbeerweek.com or by contacting scbw@beermen.tv for more details.