Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Almanac Beer and "I Could Use Your Help"

I suppose it's rather ridiculous that here in The Brew Lounge I've never really made as big a deal as I should of the column I write in the Communities section of The Washington Times. After all, it's called After Hours at The Brew Lounge and was originally intended to be some sort of an extension of this thing here.

Been doing it for over a year now. Haven't even put up a handy link over there on the right side of this page. Come to think of it, I write and assemble....assemble and write. I've only truly been embracing the social media stuff more fully in the past several months. As for the maintenance and administrative upkeep around here, I come up rather short. Though, it really should be mostly about the content, anyway, right? But, that's a bit of a different story, I suppose.

I bring this up because the traffic to my column is decent at TWT, but not great. Anyone with half a kernel of sense in my shoes would write the column, do all the social media linking and whatnot, and then come back here and post a link notification that I wrote something that I'd like you to read. Sometimes I forget that the Venn Diagram of all my web instances is not a bunch of overlapping circles.

I did a beer review the other day -- something I attempt to publish each Sunday -- and within in an hour, thanks to StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, it went straight to the number one read position and since fallen back drifting between three and four.

Almanac Brewery is new to the San Francisco Bay Area and is about to embark on their second beer brewed in accordance with the seasons of the year and emphasizing northern California farming and brewing. I reviewed their first beer, a blackberry ale, and their second beer, a plum ale, is being released in November 2011.

The only other tasting notes column that went to number one was that of Saison Dupont.

So, here's what I'm going to ask that you help me with -- and not so casually.

Every time I write something over there at TWT, I'm going to post a link here to it. Please click the link (similar to the one below -- matter of fact, why don't you go and do that now before you forget?).

Use the Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, E-mail, and Google+ sharing links if you like the article and are so inclined to tell others.

By clicking and sharing the article and links, you'll be helping create page views which are aggregated and tracked very closely. This, in turn, helps me. Who knows, you might even create a few more nickels in my take-home pay and, in the process, you'll be showing TWT that you enjoy reading about beer.

Because, really, if it wasn't for food, beverage, and travel writing at TWT, we'd be left with a whole bunch of political writing and posturing. And, there really should be a limit on that, shouldn't there? ;-)

Link to a Review of Almanac's Summer 2010 Blackberry Ale, Sun. 10/23/11


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