The Man Cave Book.

A little over a year ago, I got an email from a guy named Jeff Wilser who was writing a book about "man caves". He wanted to interview me about my beer cave, and asked for a few photos to use in the book. I answered a round of questions, and several follow-ups, submitted photos, took and submitted additional photos by request, and then ultimately forgot all about it until today.

I vaguely recalled the planned release date to be sometime this month, so I looked into it, and sure enough, it's set to be released April 19th. I have no idea what, if anything, from the interviews and submissions of mine made it past the editors for inclusion into the final print version, but it would be neat to see it immortalized in a book.

Anyway, for anyone who might be interested in seeing the lengths that some men go to create a comfortable place to retreat to with their buddies, this book should be pretty sweet. I know I take pride in the time I put into my place, and all the great old beer stuff I've collected, but it's amateur hour at my house compared to some of the stuff I've seen from my more financially-fortunate brother "cave men".

Currently, the book is available for about 50% off if you pre-order it on Amazon.

(Here's a photo of the cave I built.)

Sadly, there's another part of this story. Circumstances have brought an end to the tenancy of my beer collection in the garage in which it currently resides. Over the next few days, everything is getting boxed up, and I'll be on the hunt for a new place to set up shop. It's the end of an era, but like the phoenix, I have faith that it will rise from the ashes bigger and better than ever before.

EDIT: Jeff Wilser saw a tweet I made about this post, and retweeted it saying "Yep, your garage made it. Congrats." So there you have it!

EDIT 2: Just received this:

lots of new signs!

Over the past couple of days, I picked up a lot of great new signs for the beer cave - sixteen total. Yesterday, I thought I hit the jackpot in the thrift stores around town, rescuing ten nice signs and mirrors out of piles of junk for cheap, but I think this morning's haul ended up being the highlight. I found an old timer through craigslist who built his own home bar about 30 years ago, and was finally ready to let his collection go. The best part was that he was letting everything go from $5 - $8 per item. $5 for regular signs, and $8 for the light-up ones. The big score was the long rainier sign on the right. I was in a big hurry to get to work on time, so I didn't get to look it over for a manufacturing date, but it's really heavy steel, with painted glass front and wood trim; like they haven't made beer signs in a long time. I can't wait to date it. The newest sign must have been a late addition to his bar - a 1980's spuds mckenie back-lit sign. I'm a sucker for brewery mascots. I also got a 1960's coors light-up sign, and three probably late 1970's signs: two rainier's from the same series, one with a sheep and one with a skier, and a neat schlitz sign that says "gusto hour" and has a spinning hour glass timer mounted on the front. Pretty cool!

*EDIT: It's a shaggy looking cow, not a sheep. The bottom says "CATTLE ...A LEADING NORTHWEST INDUSTRY." The Skier one is another from the "leading northwest industry" series, but it represents recreation. I'm not sure how many others there are, but with a little googling, I found that at the very least, there is a forestry one out there to collect.

a new blog is born.

this is the first post of the beer cave blog. I've created this blog to chronicle my adventures with beer. so much has already happened that I haven't kept track of, but it wont happen any more! I'm going to try to get this blog up to date with events that have happened recently before my memory starts to fail me, and I hope to keep up date from here on out. To start things out, here are a couple pictures that I found on my phone:

(my first rodenbach grand cru, before they regained distribution in the US. Horse's Tavern, Paris France.)

(my first beverage from boundry bay. stopped by bellingham on my way back from canada to check them out. This is the imperial oatmeal stout. Delicious. So much so that I bought an additional growler of it to go!)

(here I am holding up a sample of mikeller beer geek brunch weasel at the portland international beerfest this year. The only beer I've ever had that was partially made with cat droppings!)