Beer Advocacy...

Hello BA, my name is Al, I'm 37 years old and still have not tried:
- Proprietors
- DB Damon
- BBVDL
- Grey Monday
- Others on my Wants

Let your beer advocacy show! Hahaha...

I've received some very generous extras in trades from partners who took time to "studied" my Wants list. I am most grateful for those extras, but I'm just grateful, regardless, of finding strangers who share the love for beer, have the trust, and willing to spend tons of time packing and shipping so others can enjoy as well. Over 90% of the beers I acquired are shared with my friends. Trust, time well-spent, share, enjoy, and expand horizon...that's what beer advocacy means to me.

 

Some of the upstanding BAs I have been trading with have been amazing in this realm in terms of the extras they send. It's phenomenal how generous some folks on here are and I'd like to tip a glass to all of you out there. I'm trying to get into that mindset myself!

 

I've always wanted to do a trade but yet to have. I know what my new years resolution is. Anyone wanna trade?
Seriously.

 

Normally I don't do this because there are too many awesome BA's out there that have blown me away with generosity that I would hate to leave anyone out or have them think I didn't appreciate something because I didn't mention them specifically but since this happened today...

Compton25 is a fantastic f'in BA. I first met Mark at a JK release party. I had never traded with him, spoke with him or even exchanged beer mails. Honestly, I barely recognized his user name. While at the release, another BA told me that Mark was looking for me and wanted to share some beers with me.

I thought to myself "huh, this is interesting" but I always look forward to meeting other BA's so I was excited myself. I eventually met Mark and to paraphrase he basically said "through everything you have posted, LIF's you've run, etc. you just seem like a great guy and I would love to share some beers with you".

I was blown away. Here's some complete stranger that ended up hammering me with generosity. He made sure I got a pour of everything he opened that day (and he opened some badass beers) and never let my glass run dry. I'm not talking about for an hour or two, this was all day. I felt horrible because I didn't bring enough beers to reciprocate so I told him I would "get him back".

Since I recently injured myself, I can barely pack a box on my own so I wasn't able to get him back as soon as I would have liked. Fast forward to today. Knock at the door, wife gets box and says "Mark Compton?". The mf'er sent me an unsolicited box of GREAT beers because he knew I was injured and thought I could use them. I've also figured out that I'm not the first person he has done this with.

This dude is the definition of a beer advocate and although I'll try, there will never be enough for me to repay him with. As shown above, this goes on quite a bit with other BA's (and kudos to all of you) but this guy really stuck out to me. Cheers Mark!

 

I just wanted to share a few words. I'm new to the craft beer scene as well (I would consider new anyone with <5years "experience") but I already met 2-3 great trading partners through BA on the other sides on the country...
I did my part on "converting" 3 of my friends to the right path. They never even knew they will one day drive 4 hours to have a Citra or spend NYE on beerhopping in San Diego. I'm proud of myself