100th Post: News From The Road

Welcome to the 100th post on this blog. Here is some news from the road…

1.) The bad news first: Some of you may already have heard that beer scribe and craft beer champion, Michael Jackson, died last week of Parkinson’s Disease. Google “Michael Jackson beer writer,” for more information on Michael and his remarkable career as everybody’s favorite beer writer. Here is one link: http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2161923,00.html

2.) The Pink Boots Society list of women brewers worldwide is growing every day. As of this post there are over 30 USA brewers and six international brewers listed. Please email any information you have about women brewers not listed here. Thanks!

3.) I’ve been collecting visitor statistics on this blog since August 13. The last full week I have statistics for is the week of August 27 – September 2. You might be interested to learn that during this period of time…

Unique visitor count was 856 during this one week of time!
Average time spent on this blog was 8 minutes 45 seconds per visitor.
Visitors are coming from the USA only at this time.
44% of visitors are typing in the URL directly.
30% are coming from search engines (mostly Google).
26% are coming from links on other websites.
63.2% are new visitors that have not visited the site before.

4.) Bust magazine (published out of New York) recently interviewed me and some other women brewers listed on my website for an article on… Women Brewers. The article will appear in their December-January issue. (Looking for a Christmas stocking-stuffer for yourself or a woman who loves beer?) The freelance author, Aimee Dowl, who interviewed me told me that the magazine is aimed at women who like to create and do things for themselves and who want to read about other strong women. She also interviewed some women homebrewers for this article, and there may be directions on homebrewing your first batch of beer.

5.) Aimee Dowl, who interviewed me for the Bust Magazine article above, asked me about my plans for after the Road Brewer trip ends. I thought you might be interested in my plans as well, so here they are:

a. My husband and I will be relocating to Portland, Oregon, so I will be looking for full-time employment as a brewer there.

b. While I am looking for a job, I will be fleshing out my blog into a book. The book will have additional information about the breweries and brewers that I visited, and it will have lots of maps, website URLs, and contact info for each of the breweries. If you know of a publisher that may be interested in publishing a beer adventure book, please drop me an email.

c. Also while I am looking for a job, I plan to continue to put on the pink boots and brew with brewers in Oregon and Washington. I hope to do this one day per week, so you can be assured that the Road Brewer’s adventures will continue. There are over 70 breweries in Oregon now (Steelhead was number 11 back in 1991), so I’ll have more than enough opportunity for adventure just in Oregon.

d. I hope to develop a radio show about beer, beer styles, and beer & food pairing.

e. Once I land my Portland brewing job, I plan to keep this Road Brewer blog going with whatever interesting brewing and beer adventures I can think up. Therefore, please stay tuned…

4.) In order to keep the dialog going with you, my dear readers, I want to begin an Email Newsletter. My plan is to send an email newsletter to the subscribers every 10th post on the blog, or quarterly, or whenever it is not too often nor a hassle to my subscribers.

The newsletters may include additional info not found on the blog, updates on the book and radio projects Pink Boots Society news, and other beer-related bits that I find interesting. Subscribers may unsubscribe at any time. Sign up box is at the top-right edge of this blog. Please sign up. Thanks!

Thank you to Southampton Publick House for letting me tap into their wireless network to update this blog.