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Five years and counting
Our fifth anniversary at Hop Talk kinda snuck by us a couple of days ago.
Holy crap! Five years?!
I guess I have to believe it, because the calendar says so.
It’s been a bit of a rough year at Hop Talk HQ. Both Ron and I have been pulled in different directions because of other responsibilities and haven’t had as much time to devote to writing and ranting about beer-y topics.
On the other hand, we did add Matt to the team and started hosting HomeBrood.
We also started doing a podcast.
So it’s not like we’ve been doing nothing.
We’ve changed the look-and-feel of the site to celebrate the start of our sixth year. (Obviously you RSS subscribers won’t notice a difference.) We also hope to see more stuff in print from our Hop Talk Advisory Panel, because they add yet another great perspective on life and beer.
Anyway, thanks for coming along for the ride. Since we’re not out of things to say, it looks like we’ll keep going at least another year.
Cheers!
Al and Ron on the BeerSmith podcast
Ron and I recently got to participate in the nascent BeerSmith Blog podcast. While primarily a podcast (and blog) about homebrewing, we talked quite a bit about other beery topics including the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference and my 365 Beer project. It was a lot of fun to do and I hope to do it again.
Thanks again to Brad, our host.
Give a listen. You can download the MP3 file, or subscribe via iTunes or the RSS feed.
Beer or Baby
Day Job
Meet Matt
Matt is our first new addition to the Hop Talk “family”. He’s going to be posting a weekly version of the Beef ‘n Beer comic strip and perhaps some of his own prose musings on beer.
Matt is a married thirtysomething living in the San Francisco Bay area teaching High School English. No kids yet, but he aims to rectify that lack fairly soon.
Like us, he “grew up” with mass-produced American light lagers. As a poor college student, quantity definitely won out over quality, so discount brands were the order of the day. But not for long.
He now enjoys hoppy IPAs and ice-cold creamy stouts, but has a special fondness for brown ales.
Oh, and drawing. He does that sometimes too.
Happy Beeroversary
It was four years ago today that Ron kicked off Hop Talk by musing whether he was qualified to talk—or, rather, write—about beer. Along the way we’ve learned that when it comes to beer you can’t be wrong (though you can be misinformed), hosted The Session, and that having a beer every day is harder than you’d think. And more!
Here are some statistics (as of yesterday):
- 1,313 articles
- 1,552 comments and trackbacks
- 186,852 unique visitors
- 306,697 page views
- 7,300+ RSS subscribers
Thanks to everyone for coming along. Hop Talk wouldn’t be here without you.
Wherever you are this evening (or afternoon, or whatever) tip a glass with us to celebrate this milestone.
p.s., I re-upped hosting for another year, so we’ll be here well into 2011. We’ve also got some surprises coming up soon.
Hop Talk Football League
We still have some open slots for the Hop Talk Fantasy Football League. View the original article for details: Play fantasy football with the guys from Hop Talk
p.s. Draft Day is August 1.
One Thousand Articles
Wow!
Would you believe we’ve reached 1,000 articles here on Hop Talk? We hit the milestone with Beer-a-Day #179: Hoegaarden. It took us a little less than three years to get here from Ron’s first post back in July, 2006. (Qualified? Check.)
Did I expect to reach this milestone? I’m not sure. Frankly, I don’t think I was sure we’d get through the first year. I guess I’m just too stubborn to give up.
In any event, I’ve had a great time doing this and am looking forward to the next several thousand.
Play fantasy football with the guys from Hop Talk
There’s only one sport I really watch, and that’s professional football*. There’s less than two months until training camps open.
Nothing beats wiling away a Sunday afternoon (and evening) with some good beer and some good football. Toss in some bratwursts or some chili and it’s downright nigh perfection.
A few years ago I’d played fantasy football for a few years. It was fun, but I stopped because I was so busy with wife, kids, work, a blog, and all. When a message from NFL.com dropped in my inbox, however, I decided to give it another whirl.
To make it more interesting, I decided to create a private league exclusively for Hop Talk readers. Are you interested in joining us? There are twelve teams in a league, so the first ten people to send me an e-mail message to al [at] hop-talk [dot] com will get the password to join.
Smack talking is, of course, encouraged.
* American football, specifically the NFL, for you folks outside the U.S.
