As said above, I also think that if you give it a chance, the forum will meet your needs. Just for kicks, I took a look at the last 10 TT emails, and they can be summed up as follows:
50 posts about TT and the transition
17 announcements about competitions or requests for GABF tickets
51 beer related posts
That means, on average, about 5 beer related posts that I might be interested in. Unfortunately, a lot of those posts said the same thing because responders didn't necessarily know that the question had been answered until the next day.
Ironically, I probably wouldn't have signed up for the forum if there hadn't been such a firestorm on TT, but I'm glad I did.