A Brief Introduction

Friday was my birthday, starting out Year 24. While it's cliche to say "you're just a day older than yesterday," that's all it is, in the long run. When you take a minute to look back, however, you realize that quite a lot happened during the last year. It's important to take a minute to see where you've been, how you've grown, and what has changed over the last year since you last celebrated you life. At that mile-marker, it's an easy reflection point, and a chance to put another collection of memories, events, happenings, and discoveries on the shelf of life.

During those reflections in the week leading up to my birthday, I started thinking about one of my favorite subjects: beer. Over the past several years, I've really developed a love for the craft. It started with a simple "if I'm going to drink beer, at least let it taste good" and developed into "how much better can this get" (still don't have an answer for that one)? People often ask me what is it about beer that I enjoy so much, and I have often found it hard to encapsulate what it is exactly that I love about beer. In a weird way, that inability to explain it is exactly what I love about it: there is no one aspect of it that makes it enjoyable. It is both ancient and on the cutting edge of modernity; it is so simple, yet incredibly complex; there are so few ingredients, yet so varied in sensory appeal.

Beer is the drink of the masses. People have drank it for thousands of years, and is the second most consumed beverage in the world (behind tea). Unlike wine, it is infinitely repeatable, as the ingredients (while varying slightly) are usually able to be recreated. Wine, with its fickle grapes, cannot. Spirits are usually too high in alcohol to be enjoyed in volume, or difficult to pair with food. The Craft Beer Movement embodies a great many things I admire: a push for more flavor, more variety, more flavor, and less crap. Beer brings people together, including the people who brew it, bringing out a wonderful air of collaboration and a desire to mutually improve the craft they love.

Those of you who know me know that brevity is not my strong suit, and beer may be my least brief subject to discuss. In short, this blog is about celebrating all things beer related. In long, this blog is about celebrating all things beer related in great depth. Everything from notes I pick up in my discussions with fellow beer lovers, brewers, uninitiated family, to people who have never had a beer in their lives. From my random beer research and readings to "wow, I never knew that"s. But more than anything else, this blog is about why, exactly, beer is, simply put, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

This blog will include tasting notes from me, anecdotes about my beer mis-adventures, recommendations about beers I've had, want to have, and may never have, and as a chance to share tidbits that I find particularly rewarding or interesting. I hope that somewhere in the midst of all of it, you find something you enjoy even half as much as I enjoy writing it.

If you want to know more than that, let's have a pint. I'll be happy to elaborate.