Facebook Anyone?

You may have noticed that there's a new sidebar widget below the Twitter feed that shows our *gasp* Facebook Page.

After numerous requests for us to create a Facebook page I broke down and created one this morning. It's still in it's infancy, but I've already populated the event page with our upcoming tastings and added a couple of photos.

So, if you're into the whole social-networking thing, why not become a "fan" of the shop and give yourself one more way to keep up to date on all the newest beer arrivals, tastings, and other special events.

Beer That Will Last Until 2030?

I generally don't write "personal posts" on this blog unless they're beer-related (which this is, at least tangentially), but it's not every day that your only sibling has their first child.

Congratulations to Lisa and Anthony DeMalia on the birth of Anthony Michael-John DeMalia, Jr.!


Now on to the beer. I will be visiting Lisa and Anthony at some point in the near future, and I want to present them with a gift for their son that they can all enjoy on his 21st birthday in 2030. Do I go with a lambic? Take a chance on a bottle of Full Sail Black Gold or Deschutes Abyss holding up that long?

Ideally I'd like to get something local in order to better reflect where I was in life on this joyous occasion, but I'm not opposed to something imported if anyone has any great ideas. The only caveat is that it should be something locally available whether it's an Oregon beer or an import because I probably won't have time to work out a trade before my visit.

Thoughts?

Breaking The Silence

It's been a long six weeks, and every day that I don't write something, it becomes harder to figure out what to say.

I was hoping that some of the other folks on staff would have the urge to post something in my absence (I would like to thank Angelo for throwing a couple posts up there), but they don't get paid to write so I certainly can't blame them for not posting anything.

I doubt that anyone really cares to hear all the reasons I've been MIA, so I'll distill it down to as few words as possible: Sudden, unexpected eviction from my home which resulted in the loss of home internet connectivity. Ratebeer.com (my primary source for researching new beers) hacked to oblivion. Writers block. General malaise, bordering on burn out. Contemplation as to the future of the blog. Add it all up and you have a recipe for lack of content.

Despite what the time stamps on many of my posts would lead you to believe, the vast majority of my blogging (or at least the research) happened at home, and the loss of home internet access greatly hampered my ability to post.

I've also spent a great deal of time contemplating where to go with the blog. When I started this thing (back in March 2006) there was almost nothing in the way of local beer news online. I saw the blog as a way to not only keep people informed of new beers, but to keep everyone abreast of all the other happenings in our region. It was also a great way to kill time on really slow days in the old location, where I was often the only person working, and the time between customers could often be measured in hours. There's only so much cleaning and stocking a person can do, and I get bored easily, so writing gave me a (semi-productive) way of passing the time.

Fast forward to fall 2008: Between buying and tracking the ever-increasing selection (now over 1100 beers), managing our wonderful staff, and the general increase in business that comes with the holidays, spare time at work is a precious commodity these days.

There's also been an explosion of locally-focused beer writing in the last two years. It now seems as though every brewery and pub in town has a Twitter feed, and for more verbose write-ups we've got John Foyston's Oregonian blog, Portlandbeer.org, Beervana, Guest on Tap, The BS Brewing collective (aka The Champagne of Blogs), Beer Around Town, and Brewpublic, most of which are written by much more accomplished wordsmiths than I.

In some cases these are professional writers who are getting paid to sit in front of the keyboard. In other cases it's people with the motivation (and transportation) to visit every brewery and beer bar in the state in order to keep us all informed. In almost every case it's people who have more time, energy, and writing skills than I do, so I've been feeling as though my posts about upcoming events and festivals aren't really needed in this suddenly crowded space.

What does that leave me with, content-wise? I don't receive the press releases or previews to festivals and events like John Foyston does, so there's a good chance that he (or Angelo, or Jeff, or...) will have written about said event before I've even heard about it. The front page of our website stays current as far as our tap list and impending events are concerned, and the Events page is updated with every new tasting as soon as it's scheduled, so it's kind of redundant to post those in yet another location. The only thing left that I can think of is to list the new beers that come in on Tuesday and Friday.

Is there anything I'm forgetting? Some theme or topic that the few remaining readers of this humble blog want me to expound upon? Let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can do. I received one of those high tech "smart phones" recently, so I might try my hand at some mobile blogging when I find myself in a bar with an interesting line-up, or perhaps even "live on the scene" updates from festivals and such. Of course, that depends on whether or not I can get blogger.com to work properly on the phone, so I'm not promising anything yet...

Stay tuned; in the interest of anal-retentive completeness I'll be posting a list of every new beer we've received since the last post on October 14th. Going forward I'll also try to post something every Tuesday and Friday (at the very least) to keep you all informed about the new arrivals in the store.

Cheers!

~Chris