*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
Happy Birthday! My site just had it’s 1 year back in June. Good to see we all have come a long way in our short time.
[Reply]
Thank you kindly sir!
I can speak for both Mike and I when I say we’ve enjoyed getting to know you, Mike!
Happy birthday (belated) to you as well!
[Reply]
Thanks Mike. Who can dislike someone with my name? Happy b-day to you, too.
[Reply]
Happy Birthday to the best beer site on the internet!!!
[Reply]
Thanks! Who wouldn’t hope for that?
[Reply]
Here’s a B-Day toast to the two of you: (Mike and Nate’s wives!) Bless you for the endless support of putting up with two beer geeks. May you slap them should they cross the line of beer snob and may you someday reap the benefits of a successful brewery and a fat bank account. In the meantime, tell Mike and Nate to pick up all those bottles in the living room.
And to Mike and Nate. I hoist a Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter to you. Why that beer? Because it’s left over from last week’s “Sip with US Saturday.”
I do enjoy your site. Keep up the good work.
Scott
[Reply]
Thanks for toasting our wives. She is somewhat of a beer geek now. She is actually the silent partner of this site. Andrea proof-reads a lot of my stuff. She also writes and occasional post and lets me know what she thinks of the content. I know that Sandra deserves and toast, too.
We love that you love our site…I hope we grow together as sites.
[Reply]
Congrats on your first year. Gotta say I know how much work goes into this kind of stuff and you guys are MACHINES. You crank out a lot of material, but its GOOD material and I usually come away from every post a little smarter. Usually. (I took a big hit when I saw Nate in a denim unitard, but I’m slowly getting back to normal) Also, I thought this blog was a she?
Keep up the good work, and here’s to achieving your dreams! (I’m now raising a coffee to you in a styrofoam cup)
[Reply]
Good job, guys. Been fun contributing to the site. Look forward to more!
[Reply]
Happy birthday, boys! I am so excited for how far you have come, and I’m sure Sandra can say the same. Looking forward to the lifelong partnership of drinking good beer! : )
[Reply]
[...] Thank Heaven For Beer Turns One | Thank Heaven for Beer thankheavenforbeer.com/2009/08/27/thank-heaven-for-beer-turns-one – view page – cached 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 — From the page [...]
Congrats guy’s! Ihave enjoyed watching your progress. I was lucky enough to spend the better part of your first year sharing Mike’s excitement with him. Nate I look forward to meeting you sometime. Keep up the great work.
[Reply]
Thanks Dad! We’re proud of the progress and I’m happy that it was shared with you.
[Reply]
Wow, I’ve had this site in my Google RSS Reader for some time now and am just getting caught up. What a great site. Fantastic, in-depth content that is just hard to find nowadays. You guys are doing a great job here and I really hope it continues. Keep up the great work, congrats on the 1-year anniversary and thanks for the great stuff.
P.S: Get on Twitter! There’s a HUGE beer geek community out there, including most of the excellent breweries/brewers.
[Reply]
Thanks for the laudatory response. We always love praise as well as constructive criticism. We are actually on twitter. Our links ought to be on here before too long. My twitter account is heavenlybrew. People like you who enjoy our content are the exact reason we write. Seriously, it is really flattering to get home after a hard day of work and read something like this. I don’t know if you saw the toolbar at the bottom, but our articles have stumble, twitter, facebook and other icons. If there is something you really liked a stumble or something like that from you would also help get some traffic our way. Thanks again for the compliments.
[Reply]