Rebranding, Updates, and Returning from Hiatus

Hey Everyone,

It's been about 8 months since this blog had any new content. We are overdue for updates!

So, let's get caught up.

2016 has been an extremely busy year.  We had our second child in March, and I spent most of the summer trying to complete my graduate thesis.  The good news is, the baby is doing well and I finished my degree in August. I spent the last few months catching up on sleep and getting back into a normal routine.

You see, I had been taking night classes for the last 2 years, and lack of sleep has a horrid, cumulative effect.  Kids plus graduate courses is not recommended, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  Better sooner than later, after all.  I am very thankful for the support of my partner, and proud of my accomplishments. 

In the downtime from the blog, I have been co-moderating the Susubori Academy Makgeolli brewer's group on Facebook.  This was another great opportunity for me, and I've been able to connect with a lot of like-minded people from all walks of life.  We share our experiences in brewing, and offer advice to newcomers.  If you're looking for live Makgeolli brewing discussions, you should join; it's a great community! 

Now that I feel somewhat caught-up on life, I want to take the blog in a new direction.  It will be a challenge for me, because I had several things in the works previously and I hate leaving tasks unfinished.  Still, I think I have a better idea of how I want to use this medium, and I hope you will appreciate the new direction and find it more useful.  It will also be a challenge because I plan on adding a couple more dimensions to the blog's scope; things I haven't done before.  To be clear, I'm not scrapping everying and starting from scratch, and you will still be able to find all of the older content from cheotsool in the archives.

I'll be spending the next few weeks re-organizing and re-branding the site to accomplish what I have in mind.  I'm planning to trickle in new content during this process and tweak things as I go, so please pardon any changes that appear half-assed.  I'm just trying to find the format that works best.  As always, comments are welcome.

Ah, about comments...

All previous comments seem to have been lost because they were linked to my personal Google+ account, which I've uncoupled from the comments.  Sorry to anyone who lost info due to that change.  If you have the same question again, please just ask and I will respond.

Rebranding.

Previously, I had named the blog after a slightly-modified Korean phrase that translated to, "you can't have just one (sip)," which was intended to be a clever and funny.  The downside was, it wasn't easily decyphered and was only really clever and funny to me because I knew what it meant. 

I think the new name, Moon & Lion, is much easier to digest and it still represents things that are significant to me without being too much of a riddle for the everyday reader.  Plus, it is easily transferrable to both English and Korean. Score.

The plan is also to highlight more than just Makgeolli, hence Moon & Lion "Brewing" versus Moon & Lion "Makgeolli".  Honestly, the world of Korean traditional brewing is just too large and vibrant to focus on one type of wine.  Also, I don't want to conflate terminology by lumping everything into one category.  I'll get into this in more detail in future posts (it's too much for here).

Thank you for reading this far, and thank you to those who have stuck with me despite my infrequent updates and lack of a "social media presence".  The support I've received and the people I've met have been the most rewarding part of this blog thus far.  I hope to continue the trend and grow further.  Thanks!

Brian