Thursday, July 10, 2008

Dear Mr BeerCrusade,

I realize that many of you leave comments that I rarely respond to or do so several posts later so the answers may not get seen by everybody, therefore I've posted these comments and my responses below:

Mike said: “I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. Beer Crusade and European beers don't have a good relationship.”

BC: Interesting thought, are you basing this on the fact I dislike Belgian Ales? Europe is bigger than just Belgium; I don’t think you need to be in Mensa to know that. What about the fact that IPA, a British style ale, is my favorite style of beer? I think you are wrong about my anti-European stance, but this is something we can watch out for.


Jay said: “so how does one one get on the board of directors?”

BC: To be honest the qualifications are still being determined. Reading the blog and commenting is a good start. This will have to be thought out more carefully and will require a more through posting. The idea of a Board of Directors really stemmed from an email from a friend asking if I was at the Harpoon Brewery in the middle of a work day for a work outing to which I wittily responded “I’m at a Beer Crusade Board of Directors” meeting, since there were several people on the email, the idea really snowballed from there.

Bill said: “I heard at Bukowski's if you drink x number of beers you get a mug in your honor that hangs behind the bar. Sounds like something this group would have no interest in but I thought I'd mention it anyway.”

BC: I’ve heard that if you drink all the beers on the menu, you get your own mug inscribed with your favorite writer. This would pose some issues for myself, apparently I hate European beers, thus could never get through all the beers, also who would I choose for my favorite writer? I mean I’ve found bits of Jeff Foxworthy’s biography downright hilarious, or would I go high brow and choose someone like Virgil? Who would your author be?

Myownworstcritic said: “Apropos of everything, you need to add an RSS feed to your blog so I don't have to visit everyday--and can see your posts in my email. There should be an option for RSS feeds within the admin section of Blogger.”

BC: you can subscribe by clicking on the Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) link at the bottom of the blog page. Also would it kill you just to keep www.beercrusade.com as your homepage?

Jeven said: “I love the blog. It's maybe the best blog I've ever read. Can't wait to read your backlog of reviews. This is going to sound very business school, but what about depicting the reviews in "Beer Matrix" with beer type along one axis, and rating along the other? It could be a PDF, printable companion guide to beers that all Crusaders could take with them to the bar.”

BC: I’ve done what I can with the axis on the right so you can choose beer style or rating, however providing a PDF carry around copy may be impossible. Basically, what you need to invest in is a Blackberry or IPHONE so you can access www.beercrusade.com from just about anywhere. Coincidentally, I created the blog so I could go into the liquor store and have an idea of what beers I’ve tried as well as what I wanted to try just by searching on my Blackberry. By the way, starting off your comments like Jeven did above definitely gets you a leg up in the Board of Directors race.

Thanks for reading and taking the time to write.

1 comment:

Tom said...

Love beer, love the blog. I'm wondering if you've got it in you to write a "lowest common denominator" post, i.e. a quick post in which you state your opinion of the ten or so best-selling, widely-available domestic and foreign beers, so that we, the readers, have some sort of baseline for reading the rest of your reviews.

In my own case, I see you love the IPAs. Me, personally, I hate the IPAs, so I've got to take your bias into account whenever I read a post that say something like "This has many of the same qualities as Harpoon IPA." and you mean it as a good thing.

I'd suggest something like Sam Admas/Bud/Miller/Coors/Heineken/Guiness/Harpoon IPA/some representative Belgian White/Stella

A taste matrix. Where do you fall?

Keep up the good work!

-t