By way of introduction...

...and perhaps a bit of explaination...

I started this site back in August, then promptly began to neglect it. An all-too-frequent tale in the blogosphere.

I do, however, have a pretty good excuse. For the past few months, I have been working like a madman to finish my PhD at The University of Arizona. My dissertation is entitled "Nicotinic modulation of cerebral microvascular permeability", and I defended it on Novemeber 12.

What does this have to do with beer?

Absolutely nothing. And that's the point.

I've been a devoted consumer of God's gift for more than a few years. I had the good fortune of coming of age around the same time that the microbrewery revolution really started to take hold in my my home town. And I've been homebrewing since a bunch of my friends got together and bought me a starter kit for my 21st birthday.

In other words, I love beer. I love to drink it, make it, talk about it, and drink it. I love the history of it, the art of it, the culture of it...but mostly, I consider having a pint or two of the good stuff with friends at the end of the day to be one of the most simple and sublime pleasures life has to offer.

I also enjoy writing, and have been doing the blog thing for a while now. So, I thought that starting a beer blog would be the natural marriage of these interests. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping for this to become an open, informal forum in the spirit of the blogosphere for all things beer-related. I'm especially interested in American microbrews and homebrewing, but posts and comments need not be limited to that.

I have a co-blogger, but I will let him introduce himself. I am also open to others joining the team, if you feel you have a contribution to make. As this is a side project to a side project, I could probably use some help keeping content flowing. Not to mention in site design, which at the moment is less than I would like it to be.

That's enough for now. Stay tuned.

Cheers!