It’s a bit hard for me to believe, but the Brew Basement is now officially one year old.

Running a site like this has been an interesting experience. I’ve received more attention and traffic then I thought I would. Between all of you regular subscribers (check out the upper right-hand corner of this site if you would like to become one yourself), daily visitors, and the various syndication sites I would say that right now my writing gets between 300-400 views per day, which is a bit humbling.

What I didn’t realize is exactly how much effort a website takes up. I completely understand why most small sites stop updating within a few months after starting up. If I didn’t have a passion for this topic there is no way that I would have continued. Between keeping up with the basic site administration (updating and patching the code, fighting spam, tweaking the performance and security) and performing the background research for my topics I felt like at times I barely had time to write.

On the other hand, I’ve been able to drink a lot of really, really good beer. That alone has made this worthwhile.

So what can you expect in the next year? A lot more of the same, but with perhaps a bit of a different emphasis.

For one, I have a bunch of cellaring experiments bubbling around in my head, and I plan on devoting much more time to rolling those out.

Secondly, while I’ve been purposely focusing on the US beer scene (and New York brewers in particular) I plan on spreading my wings a bit more. Specifically, you can expect more Belgian brews being stashed in the cellar this year. It’s a crime I only have one lambic down there right now.

Thirdly, there’ll be a new look to the site itself coming out pretty soon. Expect a less “texty” (as Lisa likes to put it) feel to the main page.

And finally, you can eagerly anticipate the release of my first e-book within the next few months. I’m in the process of reformatting my online content in a book/outline format that can be easily distributed and referenced. I plan on updating this book a couple times of year to reflect the latest thinking and trends in the cellaring world.

I’d like to end this by saying thanks to you, my readers, and I hope you stick with me for an even better second year. I’d also like to thank my fellow members of the beer community, whose support and suggestions have been invaluable. Please take some time to visit some of their sites in the “blogroll” section of the website, you’ll find some incredibly entertaining and informative writing there.

And lastly, I’d like to thank my wife Lisa, whose enthusiastic support has been beyond belief. How I talked her in to letting me buy all of this beer I’ll never know!