Why the Beer Blog?

I’ve been keeping this blog for nearly two months now and so far I’ve gotten a pretty darn good response. It seems like every week the site gets more page loads and unique visitors. I’m still hoping to get a few more “followers” on the actual blog page (a less than subtle hint, I know), but that will come in time (it's simple folks, just click "follow").

So why am I going through the effort of researching and writing regular posts? Well, I have a dream. The dream of most every 20-something male; I want free beer! I was thinking about that a few months ago on my commute to do my on-air shift at WWHP in Central Illinois and heard a story on NPR about a travelogue writer. Much like an idea planted by Leonardo Decaprio in the movie Inception, I was consumed by my quest to write a travelogue about beer.

After running through many, many ideas on how I could work it all out I decided that I should go on an epic road trip around the United States and make stops at every brewery, brewpub, and beer bar I can get to and then write a book about it all. While on my trip I’ll be doing my best to get interviews with as many brewmasters, owners, and other people involved in the industry as possible. I’ll be writing about all these experiences and then spice it up with some history of beer, information on how it is brewed, and a little bit about the past of the breweries I visit.

The blog relates to all of that because as I said, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching beer. I thought that people might be interested in reading about some of the more exciting or intriguing stuff that I find. That has grown a little bit into me experimenting with making beer ice cream, beer popsicles (in the freezer now), and trying all kinds of new beers I’ve never even heard of before. I have a regular guest blogger in Ian Barker who writes articles about homebrewing. So, it has grown quite a bit over just the first couple of months.


Later, I plan on using it as a platform to keep people updated on my road trip while I’m on it. I will be posting information about where I am, who I am with, and the beer I’m drinking. I'll also be putting up pictures and even a couple of videos that I take from the road.

Then I’ll post about the process of writing a book about beer and way, way down the line I’ll have an occasional update about where the book is for sale and potentially information about a book tour (if I’m lucky enough to work that out of course, I’m counting a lot of eggs before they hatch).

No matter what I’ll continue with the posts about beer and beer related products and issues throughout the whole process. All in all, thanks everyone for your support. The more readers the blog has, the better the chance that the book gets picked up by a publisher. So make sure you forward the site to your friends, post about it on facebook, leave some comments, vote it up when you see my articles posted on reddit.com/r/beer, and become an official follower with your google account.

Thanks for reading everyone!