It's the End of the Year As We Know It........

Well the end of 2014 is just a few hours away and we're feeling pretty good following a nice meal with the kids, (and a couple of beers)....so we decided its time to take a look back at freshpints.com and 2014. 

Us on the New Belgium Tour. Up in the brewhouse in front of the private bar

2014 has been a great year for us and freshpints.com. It seems like this year we really caught on with the beer community and we thank all the beer folks out in the world that have taken a look at freshpints.com.

The year of 2014 for freshpints.com was the year of travel both local and afar. First up, this year we traveled to Sonoma County in California to check out the great breweries....and yes some wineries as well! Sonoma County is literally flowing with great beer and wine, so our high expectations were met. The highlight of the trip  was stopping in at the famous Russian River brewing and enjoying one of the best sample trays we have ever seem.....and yes we went home with a bunch of sours and Blind Pig & Pliny the Elder, which we shared with some fortunate friends back home.

Russian River Tray

Next up on our travel schedule was San Diego for Beer Bloggers Conference 2014.

We love the San Diego palm trees!

 It's hard to summarize just how awesome the trip was but just imagine a huge room full of people (and at times a very cheerful busload of  people!) just like you.....beer nerds! We met so many awesome people from all over the U.S. who love beer enough to spend their own money to come together and meet up and learn all sorts of great beer stuff. Highlights from the BBC #14 were the pre-conference tour in Los Angeles, where we toured Golden Road Brewing, Angel City Brewing, Smog City Brewing, Monkish Brewing and The Bruery. One of the high points of 2014 for freshpints.com was going to The Bruery's barrel warehouse and just seeing tables full of beer and food to sample.....oh and getting a sample of a barrel-aged beer, poured straight from the barrel...awesome! Along with the great conference that Zephers Adventures put on, the best part was meeting so many great folks.
We met the famous Brew Dad from "Brewdad.com"...aka Mike Besser,

Blurry picture of Brewdad....yeah we got a little blurry after sampling so many beers

 we meet the awesome duo from Colorado, Jeff and Chris Estes, who have the great site "Bottle Makes Three", and David Bardallis who has the great site "All the Brews Fit to Pint"...and so many more awesome folks.

Chris, Jeff, Us, Dave

Sure we got to be beer VIPS at Karl Stauss, Yard House-San Diego, Stone Brewing (Big Thanks!), and Beer PR & Brewery folks came to us and put on beer parties and other events, but in the end just meeting folks like us was amazing.

Foudre at Monkish Brewing

Fresh Beer we pulled from Golden Road Brewing Canning line

Ken Grossman giving the Keynote speech at BBC#14

The last big trip for us this year happened the week after GABF...yes we flew out to Colorado the following week for our first trip seeing the beautiful state of Colorado.

We saw so many amazing breweries from the small Funkwerks to the big New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, to Avery Brewing and West Flanders Brewing Co in Boulder, and Left Hand Brewing in Longmont. 

 
And our new friends Jeff and Chris from the BBC #14 showed us around Denver, where we visited Crooked Stave, River North, Epic and a few other places...and they let us crash with them and watch a COPS marathon while we sobered up (wait, nope, we drank a bottle of Tart of Darkness out of pint glasses!)....Beer people are the best!

There were so many other great events that we attended in 2014: Hood River Fresh Hop Festival, Oregon Garden Brewers Dinner & Brewfest, Oregon Brewers Festival, Little Woody Barrel Aged Brewfest, Holiday Ale Festival, and quite a few PDX Bottleshares. And we really enjoyed just getting out and meeting so many great people at these various events, bars, taphouses, homes, and media events.

Big thanks to all the breweries and media folks who sent us beer samples, had us attend media events and beer festivals or sent us media releases. Thanks to Chris Crabb, Lompoc Brewing, Oregon Gardens, Breakside Brewing, Sierra Nevada, Stone Brewing, Oregon Brewers Festival, Little Woody Barrel Aged Brew Fest, Ninkasi Brewing, Bridgeport Brewing, Old Town Brewing, Burnside Brewing, The New School, Fremont Brewing, McMenamins, Cascade Brewing, Kells Brewery, Lagunitas Brewing, Top Rung Brewing, and I'm sure we are missing a few others.

As far as resolutions go, we're going to try to post more of our adventures closer to when they happen.  We've got a couple of October adventures yet to tell you all about, so maybe we'll get started on that tomorrow-ish.

Cheers all, 2014 was awesome but may 2015 be the best year yet!