Fluctuations in Time and Space…

I was a non-registered lurker for years looking at the top 250 and mostly chasing down what I could in my local area. I signed up around the time I secured a reliable Pliny the Elder source at my local Whole Foods and started trading for Heady Topper and BCBS. These days I trade once in a blue moon, mostly opportunistic stuff. I don't have the energy to go chase down coveted beers to parlay into other coveted beers anymore.

These days I use the site primarily as a resource for my travels and a place to keep a general pulse on what's going on in beer. I travel 35-45 weeks a year for work and I'm often going to new places, so I rely very heavily on the places feature, as well as the various locals threads in the sub-forums to know what's worth my time in a given place. I try to contribute back to these knowledge banks whenever I can.

 

IIRC, I joined to enter the Beer Palace in Chicago. It has been closed for many years now, and I don't see the entry on BA anymore. They had this thing called the viking raid which was essentially drinking six pints of increasingly stronger beers. If you drank them all, you got a plastic viking helmet. Good times. They had really good pretzels and mustard. Pretty sure I had already been lurking on the site for a couple of years, using as a resource to learn about beers.

When WBAYDN initially kicked-off, I was very active. This was when you got points for likes (38,000+). I was in the top 10 for a year or so.

Edit: i guess they were half pints
https://chibarproject.com/reviews/great-beer/

 

Thought this was about a beer called
Fluctuations in Time and Space

Enjoy

 

BA has been a very important place for me. I joined just after going sober and starting to explore NA. Needed a bit of rebel thinking in the beginning. Many years since I last saw the comment "NA beer?" This hasn't been uphill though, on the contrary.

Even if I like the big arena, being a bit special/outlier in both country and drinking habits and getting older takes its toll though. Set for a quiet life. Like many of you have the regional or appreciation threads, I may go deeper into the works of the emerging NA community. Thanks to you all for these years, and may there be a lot more!

 

I think I joined in 2006 to look up reviews for Sierra Nevada Celebration (did one have to be a member then to get access to reviews?) Either way, I unfortunately kept dormant until 2012 - which was during the birth of WBAYDN? All the out of state stuff that I couldn’t get fascinated me. And during my first year, I traded as much as possible. Oh, and my reviews? Well, one does not ask a star how it sparkles, do they?

 

I had a beer at a local restaurant, O'Dell Mountain Standard. Internet searches revealed it was a craft beer, so I checked local craft stores and they didn't have it. I then started looking for beers I had on travel, Orkney Skullsplitter and Dixie Blackened Voodoo, and couldn't find them either.

On BA I learned that seasonal beers and distribution limitations were the reason I couldn't find those beers. By then I was in it too deep to give up. I knew I preferred 'some dark beers', so I tried some, figuring out I preferred stouts. When I tried a BBA stout, Dragon's Milk, I drank it cold, from the bottle, and immediately swore off BBA beers. BA's advised me to drink all beer from a glass and let dark beers warm. Now BBA/RBA stouts are my favorite.

BA led me on a quest to review all styles, which I've achieved twice because BA added styles. Now I'm one short again. If I encountered any styles I didn't like, I made it a point to keep trying them, so I now like sours and IPAs. I'm also going for all-states. I know trading would get me there, and I've traded, but to me the shipping part is nerve-wracking, worrying about freezing, breakage, or carrier discovery.

Now I'm primarily into reviewing new-to-me singles. BTW, now that I can get Mountain Standard, I don't like it.

 

Could you explode WBAYDN?

 

This place is nuts for abbreviations so all you gotta' do is ask.
What beer are you drinking now. And a new thread every day to boot!
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/what-beer-are-you-drinking-now-4176.676700/

 

@Shanex , below is my 'origin story' from 2005:

I was traveling home from work and on my commute, I pass through Conshohocken, PA. I decided this evening (a Wednesday?) to stop off for a couple of beers at The Boathouse. Now, this was a long time ago before I was into the social media aspects of beer. That evening I had both a glass of Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder not really knowing what I was drinking at that time. There was no long line there. While I was there drinking my beers a fellow struck up a conversation with me. He was in town on business and was absolutely giddy that he was lucky enough to be there when these beers were on tap. He mentioned to me that he found out about this release from BeerAdvocate (this was the first time I heard about BA). He educated me on the brewery of Russian River and the two Pliny beers. I recall that I enjoyed drinking both of those beers but I also remember thinking to myself that this guy is so weird in that he follows beer on the internet and was so exuberant and happy to be simply drinking some beers.

Well, shortly after my 2005 visit to the Boathouse I visited the BA website and not too long after I joined up.

My use of BA has not changed too much over the years but a 'highlight' is that I started regularly participating in the NBS (New Beer Sunday) thread which later became the NBW (New Beer Weekend) thread. I am a bit ashamed to admit that I don't recall exactly what motivated me to be a regular NBS person but my guess would be that Maria (BA utopiajane) reached out to me to encourage that I participate. I was a great fan of the NBS community and I miss several BAs that decided to no longer participate when it was changed to NBW. I sent many beermails (Personal Messages) to folks to get them to reconsider but I had no luck here.

Cheers!

 

Yes, she has her own channel which in the past I would visit. You 'reminded' me that I should do a re-visit. She has an excellent vocabulary for detailing the beers she reviews.

Cheers to Maria!

 

I've come and gone as a member on BA since 2010, but lurked even longer (throughout the 2000's) before joining. I joined, left, came back, left, and finally joined again. As you can see, I was indecisive on whether I stayed or not. Each time I left I deleted my account, so when I would came back would have to start all over. Was a BA magazine subscriber at one point also. I've always found BA to be the best beer centric community out there, information wise, and for the most part, people wise. Here's who I've been as a member. And as you can see, I've been way more active in the community these past 3 years than over my first 2 go arounds.

 

I had been drinking local “microbrews”/“craft” beer since the early 1990s after moving from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest after college—never really gave it much thought. Then at some point about 14 or 15 years ago, IIRC, I tasted my first Saison Dupont with dinner at a fancy prix fixe restaurant over in Woodinville, Washington—the Herbfarm. Something about that beer, on that night, opened my eyes to what I had been missing, and I started exploring the world of beer beyond the local stuff I’d been drinking—I started out with mostly Belgian and German imports and gradually educated myself on other styles, breweries, traditions. Joining BA was instrumental in that process. I’m a list maker so I wanted to try the “best” beers in the world, so I set out to find as many of those as I could. Started reviewing most new beers I tried, the count is now up to 1,267. Did a little trading early on to get my hands on some beers I couldn’t access locally, but soon lost interest in that. But I’ve hung around here, on and off, since starting my account in 2010. The people are what make this site great—I think most beer people have a certain attitude and sense of humor that makes them fun to be around, whether in person or virtually. I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed the journey.

 

I started lurking on BA without signing up for over a year, mostly just looking up different beers to try. I wasn't super active when I first signed up but eventually I started reviewing more but still just lurked in the forums. It was probably around the start of covid that I actually started participating in the forums. It took me a while to start trading and participating in BIFs but that was like a whole new side of BA for me. These days I've unfortunately been on the forums and the site in general less and less, but fortunately BA has a grip on me so I'm not going anywhere haha

 

I came here looking for information on Fresh Squeezed, which I sampled at a tasting at the grocery store. I joined shortly thereafter. I lurked for a bit, then discovered WBAYDN? Thus began my downward spiral into hophead depravity. Then came the glassware nutsery, the style quests, the ticking, the 12 Days of Christmas tradition, and all the rest. I've enjoyed every minute of it, as far as I can remember. (After all those lobotomies, my memory ain't what it used to be...)