The Beer Wench and I sat down for a chit chat over email about my beer blogging, Should I Drink That, my own personal beer history from the first one I ever drank at age 16 (and still have the bottle) to why I does what I does now n’at. You’ll find out more about me that I haven’t said in interviews before and you can also check out the other fantastic beer bloggers she’s talked to.
Read the interview here!
Raise a pint and leave a comment here or there or everywhere 
cheers!
Contrary to what you may have read before on here I try to keep SIDT and everything else separate unless it’s really badass news but this is something I really feel requires serious attention.
That guy up there, that’s craft beer writer, acclaimed author and winner of the 2008 Michael Jackson (not the singer) Beer Journalism Award, Lew Bryson. If there is anything going on in craft beer you need to know about, he’s the guy to talk to. I’ve had the please of meeting him 3 times previously and last Saturday while he was in Pittsburgh we met up to talk about the Philly Beer Raids from (now) 3 weeks ago.
What happened in Philly goes beyond the annoyance of not being able to buy beer where ever you want in PA. This runs much deeper to the root of the problem, the PLCB. To get you caught up to speed, 3 establishments were raided because they served “unregistered” beer. In PA you have to pay $75 to register your beer with the PLCB. The problem? the records or “the list” is grossly outdated and contains many errors and typos. Beers that are registered were being confiscated because the list was wrong. In fact the state has said you cant go by what’s on the list anymore but still use it when raiding. oh yeah, this all happened because of ONE citizens complaint.
I ask that you download or listen to the show from the website and find out what is really going on with the state of craft beer in Pennsylvania. Along with the raids Lew also addresses the Johnstown Flood tax (did you know you’re still paying that 70+ years later?) and then we end with Hart from Sharp Edge breaking down how this could impact businesses all over PA. Then contact your legislator and let them know your thoughts on PA’s archaic laws. We need to rewrite the code!
You heard it yesterday but I’m saying it again, we’re giving away some really cool prizes.
- 1 Autographed copy of March 2010 issue of Pittsburgh Magazine by Should I Drink That
- 1 year subscription to Pittsburgh magazine
- 1 $50 gift card to Piper’s Pub on the South Side – (Support your local businesses and craft beer at the same time!)
One entry per person BUT if you forward us the email you sent to your legislator (Copy/paste it in the contact form) that will count as 5 entries. To enter go to the SIDT contest page. April 15th at 11:59:59 pm EST
cheers!
I love giving things away. LOVE LOVE LOVE! So here’s your chance to win some kickass things!
1) Exclusively for yinz readers comes 2 FREE Carnegie museum passes courtesy of the leader in used cars in Pittsburgh specializing in drivers with a budget of less than $10,000, Pittsburgh Budget Cars. How do you win this? Easy, shoot me a message in the contact form and tell me what you love most about the Carnegie Museum! The winner will be picked at random by super random number picker of power. Deadline for this is March 31st at 11:59:59 pm EST
2) Over on Should I Drink That we’re giving away
- 1 Autographed copy of March 2010 issue of Pittsburgh Magazine by Should I Drink That
- 1 year subscription to Pittsburgh magazine
- 1 $50 gift card to Piper’s Pub on the South Side – (Support your local businesses and craft beer at the same time!)
One entry per person BUT if you forward us the email you sent to your legislator (Copy/paste it in the contact form) that will count as 5 entries. To enter go to the SIDT contest page. April 15th at 11:59:59 pm EST
There you go! 4 killer gifts you can win FOR FREE!
Spoony loves ya baby!
There you have teaspoon from 2009 and today. hard to believe a year ago he was still in the NICU and all wired up and coming in around 4.5 pounds and now he’s a 22lb teething slobbering bundle of baby awesome.
Next year, he finds out what a parade is… heaven help us.
We’ll call this one a draw…
Since the Pittsburgh Magazine article came out I’ve had quite a few notifications of new followers. Most times I’ll follow back because I’m always up for a good conversation and try to keep up with everything going on through the day but lets be honest, you can’t follow all the time (just like it can’t rain all the time).
This morning I tweeted that I was psyched to see Anthony Bourdain was coming to Pittsburgh to talk. This is a must for me so I told Lushie we need to make plans for it. Shortly afterwards I had a reply from TwinmamaTeb saying “@douglasderda clearly you missed all my tweets about the presale and gettting 8th row seats. heh.”. That’s when I thought, how many conversations am I missing? Granted most tweets are people spewing random nonsense (I’m guilty myself) but what else have I missed out on? I decided it was time to checked my stats.
As of right now I have 1,250 followers, I’m following 987 back and I’m on 112 lists. Those 112 lists can be summed up in the following categories: beer, hockey, Pittsburgh. If I were to die right now that is how I could be summed up in 3 words. I love craft beer, I love hockey and I love Pittsburgh.
The most popular question I get from people obsessed with Facebook is “Why do you tweet?” I gave it some though and here’s the deal on how/why I use Twitter. I’m connected to every user. Because of tags such as “craftbeer” I have been introduced to a community of people that I may have never had the chance to meet besides the degrees of separation on FB. I use Twitter because it’s about the conversation. Over the past day I finally started watching the #craftbeer tag on Twitter with TweetDeck and have met some incredible bloggers, fans from all over the world and a few brewers. I’m able to buy and sell hockey tickets and chat with other Pens fans during games. I have been invited to events I may not have known about before and helped plan a few of my own. All in under 140 characters. I can ask questions and people, while sometimes smartasses, answer. I can get traffic updates from not just the networks but from people out on the roads.
From the 1250 I’m not following 263. Odds have it you’re selling me a service I don’t want, you’re a spammer or I really have no clue what your deal is. Now there is the margin of error since Twitter is notorious from un-following people without warning and if you’re one of those let me know.
So now I’m reaching out to you. If you’re in the rest of the 987 and read this blog (which hopefully you do because you follow me on twitter and obviously wanna get to know me ) leave me a comment. I can say that I know MAYBE 2/5 of you personally from beer events or social media but if we’ve never met before I want you to say hi. If you wanna keep it personal then shoot me a message on my contact form. Spoon wants know who you are! If you’re in the Pittsburgh area and want to meet others check out Pittsburgh tweetup!
I should probably tweet this…
You’re seeing that correctly. In what could be labeled as our worst kept secret ever, we grace the pages of the March 2010 issue of Pittsburgh Magazine. I was flattered when I first learned that Jonathan Wander wanted to talk to me about the show and since it was around Podcamp Pittsburgh time I figured he was a curious fan. That’s when I found out about his intentions to write the article which left me stunned. We’re talkin USA scores with 26 seconds left in regulation of gold medal game Canadian stunned. I’ve done many interviews with beer trade magazines but never with anyone outside that realm and I honestly didn’t know how their readers would take to us. We do carry an explicit tag but also we’re genuine on there and not some corporate bullshit. People tell me they dig that so that has to put some odds in our favor. This past January Jonathan and I talked over the phone for a solid 2 hours about the show, my life, growing up in Erie and followed it with a photo shoot at Bocktown on a Sunday afternoon. The rest was up to his creative hands.
The article is incredible and I admit, when I first saw it in print at Giant Eagle, I blushed. Oh hell I was glowing. Only a few select people know how much work I really put into this show behind the scenes and to see it on a stage like Pittsburgh Magazine just blows my mind, even more than when we appeared in national publication DRAFT. In a way it seems like the show was validated. When you hit local there’s something even more meaningful about it. Now if someone back in my hometown of Erie calls, oh lord I’ll never shut up.
The magazine will be seen by over 250,000 readers in 10 counties (Erie included). If you can’t find it at your local Giant Eagle, Borders or Barnes & Noble you can read the online version here
Thankfully with the show I have been able to develop skills that I never thought twice about and it turned into getting my butt employed. Should I Drink That has treated me well and with the plans that I have in mind for this year, should make the experience even more amazing.
Creatively I know where I want this to go and how the whole process should flow. Does it happen that way? Hell no. In fact getting an episode of SIDT together is a huge pain in the ass but one I like to have. When we started it was “lets go to the store and see what we can buy” and now there is a dry erase board that I plan out the next few shows on. Multicolored markers too cause I’m spiffy like that. I think once Studio B is purchased and wired I’ll have a better understanding of what it is I want but until then we’re going with what’s worked.
I want to thank everyone who has supported the show. When I was starting college I wanted to get into radio and that dream was quickly shot down by my fam. Then again they also said I would never make a living in computers and look how that turned out Without you, my kickass friends, I would never have moved forward with long lost dream and this thing would have been over with years ago.
Thanks everyone!
cheers!
15 years ago was my first formal dance in college and what would turn out to be the last at this venue. It was on this night that UPT will be slapped with a lifetime banishment from any future events and can only be describes as “Semi-formal 1995 – We Destroyed the Holiday inn Oil City”.
I can’t recall much from this night besides a few details that I get to relive in photographs so if any of you have pics from that night let me know. There wasn’t much to Oil City and quite frankly the Holiday Inn was about as nice as we were going to get.
I went with my friend Stacy from Erie and had a corner room double bed. Why? Her boyfriend was bringing my girlfriend Michele down from Eire. Make sense? Yeah I dont really remember why either. The dance and dinner wasn’t bad but no one cared since the 4 of us spent most of the night in the room playing drinking games along with Drew whom joined us with a bottle of Citron.
At some point the state police showed up and stood guard outside our room with guns drawn. They were searching rooms (apparently someone tried jumping into the pool from the 3rd floor) and when they arrived at ours everyone hid in the bathroom except for me and Chele (we acted like we were sleeping). Being the clean freak that Drew was our place was spotless so that helped in our alibi.
I did post these on Facebook along with a few others and stories are starting to trickle in. Like the reason why our room was suspect would be due to the 2 cases of empties the guys next door planted.
Now I was hoping to share all of these great pics with you but a few parties involved are now professionals so out of respect I wont put them on here but I will share this one. I give you me and Stacy on that fateful night.
In case you’re scratching your head, grain alcohol was still available then and was indeed involved that night. We may have been a prime example why it was banned in PA. Probably a good thing, kids today wouldn’t be able to handle it.
