Meet the author

Nothing beer-wise happened last night, just softball and then went to B-dub in the hopes of getting the 6th bottle. Also went to friar tucks to see if they had the 6 pack (they didn't) so i picked up the "you could win tix" 12 pack of old style. yay. Had 3 Leinenkugel Summer Shandy's at B-dubs. That's one of the most refreshing brews out there. And that's it for beer last night.

So, who am I and why would you want to read a beer blog by me?

Last year a friend discovered the website 365 beer challenge so I thought, what the heck. Well, I started drinking beer (and keeping track) around Jan. 8. I had already been drinking different beers, but this really started me on a quest for new beer. (Meat, who works on the other side of the cubicle also started)

Along the way, several milestones happened. On Jan. 25 I had my 100th different beer of the year. 200 happened on March 6. 365 happened on April 1.

Then I took some time off and actually went a week without drinking any beer. Mostly just to prove to myself that I could.

Beer 1000 came on November 9. I finished the year with 1199. One beer short of averaging 100 unique beers a month. I average just over 3 beers a day. These weren't normally just samplers, it was real full 4-12-16-22 oz beers. I got pretty toasted several times.

After a while, meat and I found the beer advocate top 100 list. Since most of our research was done at work, we had to fight through websense; web filtering. Hence we went of the top 100 list from May of 2006.

Well, from that list we had 81 of the beers.

So we didn't just have a large quantity of beer, we also had some of the best beers in the world.

Our year was finished with a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias. (So we had some of the most expensive beer too).

So far this year I've had 183 beers that I didn't have last year. Originally I wasn't going to keep track, but I just sort of started.

So far this year, I've visited the following breweries/brewpubs.

Destihl
Shoreline
Mishawaka
Barley Island
Flossmoor Station
Alcatraz Indy
Barley's Smokehouse and Brewpub
Elevator
Harrison's Brew
Gordon Biersch Bollingbrook
Three Floyds

Next week we'll be going to either Michigan or Wisconsin to visit breweries. Last year went to Founders and Bell's, but we might be going back to those.

I love beer. (If you couldn't figure that out). It's currently my passion.

I say currently, because I probably have OCD; I've also probably got ADHD so I wind up doing things all out, and then find something new. (I used to have a large yo-yo collection; used to collect magic books/tricks; used to clean my house a lot; used to do some artwork; used to do a lot of things; now I do beer). I've got my wall o' beer, I've got a room that's full of empty bottles (because I have difficulty throwing things away), full bottles, and my brewing equipment. My bedroom used to be the bar/living room, but I moved into that, my headboard is a bar. Behind the bar is more of my beer collection/cellar.

I've got family in Georgia, so I look forward to travels there, not just to see my family, but also (if not more) to see what beers I can get there that I can't get here. We've got friends that we visit in Asheville, and I definitely love to go there for beer. My trips have lots to do with beer.

I recently got the Verizon LG EnV phone, and it comes with the Navigator, it has a brewpubs search function, which is awesome!

Last year I entered the Wynkoop Brewery Beer Drinker of the Year competition. I didn't make the finals, but was named the Rookie of the Year (I'm wearing the shirt in my pic). So that's my beer claim to fame now.

I guess that's enough "I" and "My" for the day. If you have any questions, let me know.

V