Howdy from Oregon.
I went all out on brewing all grain 7 years ago without anyone nearby to give me much advice on what I was doing, brewed for a couple of years before life encroached, and I had to take a break from my plans to keep my beer drinking friends (and those I was converting to beer drinking) in personally crafted beers. Baking (that's right) filled the need to work with yeast on a semi-regular basis, while I got married to a woman that loves beer almost as much as I do, and experienced beer by supporting a local bottle-shop/tap-room/homebrew store, traveling around the NW for beer-cations, and over the past couple of years attending some Belgian beer tastings put on by a favorite brewpub (Block 15 yo!).
Today I sit typing just a month in to my new career (helping to run the aforementioned bottle/tap/homebrew shop) after leaving a job of 14 years, wondering how I missed the Brewing Network until recently! Thanks to the boredom that goes along with restocking coolers and mopping up spilled beer, I'm no longer one of the unwashed minions yet to be exposed to this cornucopia-o-fucking-outstanding-beer-talk! Now I'm getting the brewing system dusted off, cleaning out the garage/brewery, calculating the shared costs of a 1/2-1 barrel 'pro' system to add brew for our taps, and wondering which one of the shows will give me the best information for our upcoming visit to Belgium in November?!?
I'm looking forward to mining these forums for more information, including some beer reviews (I've already used an SS show to order stock for our shelves from the Bruery's distrubutor), and I've got the BN on the personal expense list for next month.
Best beer consumed recently? Cascade 2009 Kriek from Cascade Brewing
<edit - broken english>
