Fully Updated And Moving Forward

I know I posted last week that I had fully back posted and brought everything up to scratch with my beer blog for 2011. Unfortunately that was not entire true, as I had a few reviews on my netbook that was not in possession at the time. Additionally, I had a few beers to double check the names of, etcetera, etcetera. Anyway, those are all now fully completed and the final tally of 2011 is 74-76 beers (74 are listed either in reviews or here).

That said, the main reason I wanted to write this post is to mention some exciting new things going forward. First of all, this blog will be changing it's focus specifically from beer reviews to beer-related things in general. I started this blog a little over a year ago to teach myself how to think about beer and I've had a blast, but that has also become a bit dry (no pun intended) for me. In the last few days of 2011, I wrote one post about buying/drinking beer and I had a blast writing that, and so I think that is a direction I will be trying to explore more in the coming months.

Additionally, I am well aware of how boring straight text is and I was planning on having photographs to accompany my beer reviews for the past few months. The worst part is that I even took that photographs, just due to technical difficulties (okay, I'll come clean, laziness) I never posted them. Then, when I finally got together enough gumption to do it, my pro flickr account (where I host my photos) was suspended because I forgot to pay my bill. Anyway, henceforth, there will be photos to accompany all my posts, which will hopefully add some spice to my otherwise, kind of staid blog.

Finally, I will be trying to get my site more out there on the intarwebs. As such, I will now be posting new entries to my tumblr and maybe rolling out some other stuff soon too. I won't be, however, doing "Adsense" or any monetization at the moment, so don't worry about that.

p.s.

thanks for reading,
Danley

How did I do?

Well, It is January 1st again, one year on since I started this blog. My big resolution for this year was to blog more and I majorly whimped out on the entire thing. I was going to start and maintain an art blog, resume my food blog, and review a beer every week for this entire year on this blog.

Unfortunately none of this really materialised. The art blog stagnated, the food blog hasn't been touched since Dec. 2009, and while I did review some beers this year, I did them all long hand and so they were mostly back-posted and so this blog, for all intensive purposes, also kind sucked.

That said, before I get any more self-depreciating, let's see how I matched up with my goals:

Over the course of 2011: 25 beer reviews were posted (but some still need to be transcribed)

in addition: I drank at least 37 other beers

total: I drank 62 different varieties of beer (give or take 5, I think)

So yeah, I didn't make it, but I think as someone who has never tried one of these do "X" number of things in one year things, I did pretty decently. I got about halfway to my goal, something that, given my blogging track record is not something to scoff at.

But what does this mean for next year, you say?

Well, I guess I am just going to have to try harder. A beer a week is pretty ambitious I think, so maybe one every other week, (for a total of 26 over the year) is more realistic, so that is what I will aim for in 2012. Especially given the fact that I will probably be moving in the next few months 2012 will be a big year for me, but if there is one thing I've learned from this past year is that if shit gets rough, you can always crack a beer and relax.

Anyway, looks like I get another 365 more days ahead of and 26 reviews to crank out. Here's looking at you, 2012, or as the Dutch say:

"Proost"

Formatting Change

After these first few months, in which I have been drinking a lot but not reviewing enough, I have decided to change my strategy. Based on the fact that the style of reviews I was doing before required a lot of research and writing (two things that I scamper from when I get busy) I will be changing to a more information-bulletin-point-style format.

This, I hope will mean that I am able to review more beers than I have thus far.

Here it goes again!

Birth of a Blog

So this is it. I'm starting a beer blog.

Basically the reason is that I have spent so much time trying to defend the right of the beer connoisseur to be as snobby as a wine drinker, in theory, but I feel the next logical step is for me to then actually do it.

So here it begins. With some experience "drinking" wine as an "enthusiast" (thank you, living in Europe) but none at all drinking beer than way, I will attempt to review one beer a week (that is 52 beers total) over the next 365 days and post their reviews here.

Well, wish me luck, and here goes nothing...