Beer sites…

*sigh*

…they grow up so fast!

It’s hard to believe that it has been a whole year since our love for beer and feeble technological understanding came together in a most holy union and conceived of a child, ThankHeavenForBeer.com!  In fact we remember his first shaky, but irresistibly cute first and second steps in this crazy yet beautiful malt world as if it were yesterday.  In the year since then, we have observed a noticeable growth (over a hundred subscribers!) and subtle maturity, and we hope to celebrate His birthday with you, our readers.

Our readers, though few in comparison to many other notable beer sites, have become quite important to us.  While some readers are authors of other fine beer sites, some are aspiring breweres, some parents, others rock stars, and some high powered executives, all are beer geeks.  We are extremely grateful for humoring us, interacting with us, affirming us, correcting us, and enjoying beer with us.

We have grown from 12 hits a day, to topping over two thousand.  We have published 412 articles, managed nearly 1400 comments, and blocked about 2 million filthy spammers, give or take a few hundred thousand.  We have tasted countless beers, brewed over a hundred gallons of beer, forced our wives to listen endlessly to our beer centric raving, and fostered an even deeper commitment to opening a brewery within the next five years.

When we first began work on this project, Nate was unemployed (and thus mostly dreaming about beer) and Mike was planning a future move to California.  Now Nate is employed, and Mike works in a brewery in California.  As cliche as it sounds, we are looking forward to what this year brings both in our lives, your lives, and in this site.

The spirit of beer is one of giving.  The monks brewed free beer for weary travelers, you sneak free beer into your beer trades, and we have spent roughly 1200 collective hours working on this site in the past year (and we hope this is a gift folks actually want).  We would hope that as you celebrate our ThankHeavenForBeer.com ‘s first birthday, you consider a simple gift of telling some friends about our humble site.  Maybe an email to your buddy who loves beer, putting a couple of articles up on your Facebook, or renting and electronic billboard overlooking Times Square, hailing ThankHeavenForBeer.com as one heck of a great site.

We simply can’t say enough.  Our readers have made this an enjoyable and hopeful adventure.

Either way, we are here to stay, and hope you are too!

Cheers!

Nate and Mike