You know what I’ve been thinking about? Beer.

| April 10th, 2011 | No comments

As I mentioned previously, no promises on how long this blog will last. Also as I had previously mentioned, school has kept me too busy to spend time here.
That said, I plan to continue this, but with a new focus:

Beer

I know, I know, this site already is a beer site. Here’s the difference though: this has been unintentional. I have been posting the things that I have been finding interesting. Unintentionally, this has been about beer. I am now intentionally planning on solely writing about beer.

The next obvious question, is why?

I like beer. Specifically craft beer. The stuff that consists of multiple types of grain and hops and the beers that actually taste like it came from plants. In my opinion, beer has a far wider span of taste qualities than any other alcohol. Yes even wine.

But more than that, I like drinking beer with friends and family. This is the way alcohol is meant to be enjoyed. It is meant to bring people together, to laugh and enjoy each others company. Yes, alcohol can be easily abused and can tear people apart. But when used in responsible moderation, it brings people together.

The craft beer community specifically is about bringing people together. Craft beer consists of only 5% of all beer sales. The other 95% go to only 2 companies: Anheuser-Bush InBev and SABMiller-Molson Coors (Yes only 2 companies and those are the actual company names after all the merging). Beer, one of the most quintessential American past times, is dominated in America by companies that are not even American (anymore). Because of this domination, craft beer companies solely focus on actual people, as opposed to advertising and money. Attend any beer festival or visit a brewery and you will see exactly what I mean. Having visited the Stone brewery this past week, I saw employees share their passion for the company in their tours and beer descriptions. I saw employees on their lunch break sharing a beers together in the Stone restaurant.

To that end, I want to people to come together and support real American companies. Companies that create art out of their passion as opposed to creating a product as cheap as possible to improve profit margins. When I had my beer tasting party last month, I loved seeing such a large group of people, gathered around 30+ beers and sharing them back and forth, recommending to each other their favorites, laughing and having fun together.

So what does this all mean for this site?

Living in Las Vegas I will primarily focus on craft beer that is distributed to Las Vegas. I will continue my reviews but add recommendations on where to find it for sale in town. When I go to a bar and restaurant in town, I will write about what their beer list looks like and recommend what to order. As I visit some of the local breweries, I will add posts about their beers. On a larger scale, I will write about the beers and breweries that I admire and recommend (did I mention that I visited Stone? I’m still excited about that). I will write about current events in the beer world and how it affects consumers. I often try to find ways to use beer as an ingredient in my cooking so I will add those recipes here too.

On top of all that, I have been planning to start brewing beer and will likely start in the next few months. There will definitely be quite a bit to write about once I start with that.

Eventually, I will change the domain name to something that makes a bit more sense. In the meantime, please give me your thoughts on what you like and don’t like. I don’t want to keep this up just for myself.