An Introduction (And a Beer)

Well, where to begin. With a brief introduction I suppose, before I jump in and start waxing poetic about beer. My name is Bill and I'm a 24 year old living in New Jersey. From when I started drinking in college I'd like to think I was drawn to better beer. Sure we burned through more 30 racks of Coors Light than I care to remember, but whenever possible my compatriots and I preferred Guinness, Blue Moon, and various Sam Adams offerings. All that started to change for me when I hit my senior year of college. I was talking with a friend that fall, and he couldn't contain his excitement over that year's batch of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout had hit shelves. I was intrigued, I had never seen anyone show this kind of excitement over a particular beer. I started checking out Brooklyn's offerings, and quickly fell in love with them (especially the aforementioned stout). Brooklyn beers were a staple in our fridge for the rest of that year, along with anything else that looked interesting. We didn't really know what we were doing, just that what we were drinking was fantastic. I then spent a year in Boston for grad school that proved to be formative in my growing hobby/obsession. The Boston area is not only one of the best beer cities on the east coast, but ground zero for Beer Advocate. Beer Advocate is one of (if not the best) resources online for craft beer, and soon enough I was awash in pub crawls and festivals and other events. After my year at Boston College I moved back home, only now I had 150 or so bottles of beer sitting in my parents' cellar (yup, you can age beer just like wine) and a growing supply of homebrewing equipment.

Despite NJ being a relative wasteland compared to Boston as far as good beer goes, my enthusiasm for better beer hasn't been dampered at all, and this blog will serve as another outlet for that. I'll try to post at least once most days, touching on what beers I'm drinking, different beer adventures I've had (festivals, special bar events), homebrewing attempts, and whatever other random (beer related) thoughts pop into my head. I do review beers on Beer Advocate, but those tend to be relatively structured, formal exercises, and this will be my forum for more informal discussions about what I'm drinking. Also, you can expect photos to accompany most posts in the future, once I finish working out some technical issues (and by technical issues I mean me throwing out essential cables and wires). The title of this post promised a beer, but I've rambled on a bit, so I'll have a follow up post later tonight with my first beer discussion. Cheers!