On Goals and Achievements in 2013

I’m happy to say that I completed one my great blogging goal for the year. That would be the full run-down of the 3 tier system (start with my introduction). It was something I wanted to do for a few months but kept growing in scope. I finally decided to break it into five parts and bust it out in 2013. I’ve put far more work into that series than anything else on the blog, and I’m quite happy with the results I achieved, even if it hasn’t pulled in the most page views. Many thanks go out to everyone who sat down and shared a  beer with me to get that series done. I was going to pull up a bunch of my favorite posts for this year, but there are way too many to do that. So I’m going to pick two, and they both involve of my fellow local beer bloggers.

Cincinnati has been exploding with local breweries, almost all of which make an IPA. Back in August, the other Cincinnati bloggers and I got together for a big blind taste testing of all the local IPAs. It was a fantastic time hanging out with folks who have become good friends. If you missed out on that, go check it out here.

We all had so much fun doing that we decided to hang out again but to put our powers to good. Earlier this month we got together again for a bottle share and invited all of you. After all the bottles, we ended up raising almost $500 for Child’s Play Charity, hooking up sick kids at hospitals with video games! If you don’t follow Brew Professor, Beer Mumbo, Love Beer Love Food, Queen City Fresh, Hoperatives, or WCPO’s Jesse Folk you need to change that and start now! They’re all great bloggers, and I’m happy to have them as competition, and friends.

Well, that was this year, and it’s time to get on to the next one!

Having completed my blogging goal for 2013, I’m even more excited for my two goals of 2014. I know a tremendous amount about beer (though there will always be others who know more) but little about spirits and almost nothing about wine. Sure, wine is made from grapes, is either red or white and clocks around 18% ABV… other than that it uh… only comes in bottles? Or boxes?? So my first goal of 2014 is to learn a lot more about wine. To that end I took my Grandpa’s Christmas present of a Barnes & Noble gift card and turned into books on wine. Thank you Grandpa!!

If you have any tips on wine and wines to try, especially local ones, please let me know! If I feel I’ve successfully learned a decent bit about wine I’ll move on to spirituous liquors starting with the preferred barrel of beer brewers, bourbon.

What are your beer, brewing, or blogging related goals for 2014?